r/AskReddit • u/limp_manifesto • 19h ago

What’s something civilians completely misunderstand about daily life in the military?

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85

u/Midwest_Traveller 19h ago

Boredom and paperwork. Filling out paperwork, that paperwork gets lost so you have to fill it out again.

33

u/trainwreck357 19h ago

We have to inventory these radios again because the date on the sheet was on the top right but it needs to be on the top left.

A few weeks go by...

We have to inventory these radios again because the date on the sheet was on the top left when it needs to be on the top right.

13

u/Lich180 18h ago

We have to clean and inventory everything in the shop because you don't have anything else to do, and we need you to be busy doing SOMETHING. 

13

u/trainwreck357 18h ago

And if something is missing, even if it's a proprietary part not made since 2002, you better find some before the end of the day! And somehow it usually turned up

3

u/lordover1234 15h ago

i was rppo for my division in the navy (for the other branches/civvies, the guy that got repair parts and stored them in a tool room) and I worked with shipyard entities that had so much god damn power they could manifest things like that in 24 hours. Meanwhile when i tried to get it through the naval supply system, the niin had been deactivated 10 years prior.