Do you find yourself wanting to throttle some shite because he "takes offense" for something you say that reflects an attitude that you had to deal with daily?
I upset all my civvy counterparts with my black humour jokes - I dont give a shit..They WILL hear them. I hate office politics and my straight-speaking upsets the eco-system, they would prefer being spoke to behind their backs it would seem..

What riles you about civvy strasse??

Oh to many hates of civvies to mention here.
"mangers" dont have a fooking clue about man management or logistics. Just capable of crawling up some one elses arse to get the "manager" job and be able to use a few Excel sheets. Is one of my pet hates tho

I have Sinn Fein supporting Irishman at my work,who has defended the PIRA on the odd ocasion in front of me.
Not suprisingly,my reaction is not exactly calm.
The last time it happned,I was called into the supervisors office for an informal warning,and warned of the dangers of "intimidation" and "racist harrassment"

"Your not in the army any more ****" Was what I was told
"But I am in MY OWN country though?"

Dirty c unts.

Managers have been my pet hate since getting out.

Unwillingness to take a decision.
Unwillingness to take responsibility for the consequences of a decision.
Inability to see the link between results obtained and resources expended - in either direction!
What seems to be a positive eagerness to be distracted from the main effort in favour of something high-profile.
An assumption that because they got a good report in their last job, they must be shit-hot and all-knowing in their new one despite this being their first exposure to the particular line of work.

I've met a fair few good ones, but for the most part I wouldn't trust them to do up their flies without holding a meeting first to ensure any blame gets spread.

Every time I hear one talking about 'mission statements' I want to beat them to death with a copy of TAM.

I most hate the Blame game. Also the lack of integrity, not wishing to take any responsibility or be accountable, when the brown stuff hits the fan.

Fecking Moral cowards 75% of them.

I think we have to accept that we are not - and never again will be - real civvies. The unique culture of the British Army, with its tribal loyalties and its emphasis in basic training on the application of external discipline until self-discipline is developed (unlike the system employed by the US and others, where they attempt to zombie the recruit and then rebuild him or her from the ground up, like a 6 million dollar man in cammo) not only makes for a more flexible and proactive soldier, but also ingrains in most of us long-term a basic level of reliability and responsiveness that is lacking in anyone with no serious military experience. Civvies have never been trained or tested in any meaningful way....and that is why they often suck so badly at their jobs.

We don't turn up late for a meeting because we got distracted. We prepare beforehand. We analyse the situation, identify options and pick the best course, then follow through. We know the drills and the SOPs, and when to go with a scientific wild-arrsed guess. We take responsibility for and understand the consequences of our actions. We know that in a perfect world there should be no rights without responsibilities, and that while RHIP, it also has bigger burdens than those carried at the coalface. We watch and learn. We don't suffer fools gladly.

I still use some lessons learned 34 years ago as a teenage J/Ldr in my daily life, not to mention all the others I have picked up in my subsequent military "career" . I would also invariably choose an ex-Tom over a similarly-qualified civvy for employment every time, (and frequently have done).

There used to be an ad campaign touting a bunch of UK employers who agreed that Sandhurst followed by a 3 year SSC was as good as a degree as far as they were concerned. As far as I am concerned, if you have done at least 6 years with an honourable discharge, and two objective Army references rate you "good bloke", then you are in the top 10% of the civvy workforce, and any organisation would be lucky to have you in preference to many of the back-stabbing pigdribblers and slope-shouldered paper pushers that pass as employees in civvy life.

On the other hand, some ex-soldiers are useless mongs who couldn't be trusted as trolly-gatherers in a Safeway car park without close supervision...

Communication. I have yet to meet a manager or supervisor who knows the benifit of Good Communication. As in tell the troops on the ground WTF is going on, instead of blindly following memos etc from on high.

Originally Posted by duryard

Oh to many hates of civvies to mention here.
"mangers" dont have a fooking clue about man management or logistics. Just capable of crawling up some one elses arse to get the "manager" job and be able to use a few Excel sheets. Is one of my pet hates tho

not being funny but half the hierachy these days in the army do eactly the same thing!!

Originally Posted by smartascarrots

Unwillingness to take a decision.

This seems to be taught as part of the MBA course. Ignore it and it will either go away (claim credit for solving problem; tea and medals all round) or eventually become a major crisis (justified in throwing money and sweat at it to neutralise - claim credit for dealing with tricky crisis; aforementioned T&M) Only a fool apparently bothers with minor, non-critical stuff.

Originally Posted by smartascarrots

Every time I hear one talking about 'mission statements' I want to beat them to death with a copy of TAM.

They do love their warspeak, don't they? I had to sit through a meeting recently where the phrases "tactical strategist" and "strategic tactician" were both employed. I think they could hear my eyeballs rolling up 180 in their sockets...

Originally Posted by jonesy279

Originally Posted by duryard

Oh to many hates of civvies to mention here.
"mangers" dont have a fooking clue about man management or logistics. Just capable of crawling up some one elses arse to get the "manager" job and be able to use a few Excel sheets. Is one of my pet hates tho

not being funny but half the hierachy these days in the army do eactly the same thing!!

I was about to say the same thing. This perception of civilians after we have served 22 years is very often a forced or chosen perception. There are good and bad civvy managers and there are good and bad throughout the military CoC.

Maybe some are expecting too much from young colleagues who have yet to learn from their mistakes in life. If you keep saying your civvy colleagues are poor performers then you are unlikely to change your view when a good one comes along. Don't let your perception cloud your future.