This Guy In My Chain of Command, aka Idiot

I have not blogged in quite some time. I have come to peace with the fact that a person who has done more to encumber my career in the Navy over the years is going to be ENTITLED to a portion of my retirement. I am living in the little hovel in Rolla after my first term in college on the GI Bill. I am mulling over the CPO Mess at my last command and weighing the dimensions of just how that fits in todays' Navy. To be quite frank, IT DOESN'T! When the leader of the CPO Mess is the CMC with no ability to step back and let his Chiefs lead in their own abilities. To step in and brood over the actions of a man in a leadership position where that man is, by design, created by his fellows, to make the decisions that will control the lives and careers of those in his charge, is beyond mere micromanagement. It is absolutely reprehensible at it's core. From those people-decisions the Chief makes to the tiniest seemingly meaningless deeds that are automatic to most Chiefs, this man had to have a hand in and a thumb on top of. As an example, there was a time when he had contacted me in my last few months as I sat at a friend's house with nowhere else to go, as I was basically homeless after separating from my wife, he asked me if my Mess could help. This man not only scolded me for showing up late to an event that he himself had not only showed up late for the past two years, but hours and hours late. Chief's initiation is a get there when you get there kinda event. Most of the people he was mentioning as he chastised me had only shown up in the last few minutes. He not only scolded me, but took me aside and commenced to chew me out for over an hour and a half, telling me I had disobeyed an order and actually disrespected the entire mess and him. He had a member of the mess go around and take up a collection for me which ended up being a whopping $160. He presented it to me and commenced to tell me a story he had told me on two separate occasions which had absolutely no bearing on my situation whatsoever, and gave me advisement that was not only wrong, but illegal! A couple weeks later, after someone in the Mess had retired I had been having heart attack like stress symptoms at the office and my doctor couldn't see me until the day of the guy's retirement, of which I didn't really know this man and didn't get along with him, nor he, me and I didn't plan on attending. He called me later that week and after chewing me out for a while he told me he was ordering me to pay back the money the Mess had given me to the CPOA treasurer. If anyone has any knowledge of how a Chief's organization operates, the Mess is to be held separate from the CPO association. To pay the money back that some members of a CPO mess came out of pocket for, into the CPOA goes against that separation in every facet of the very bylaws of the association it is being payed into. But as I was in the last few months of my career and this being my last Mess, I set out to pay the money back in a way that would greatest benefit the Mess the best. I would open an online account that would draw from my initial investment to pay for itself so the members of the CPOA could pay their dues at any time by simply going online. This was again interpreted by this man as a direct violation of his order to me to just give up the cash to the treasurer and be done with it. This is what a Chief does. He takes a situation that could be negative and transforms it into a benefit to his community, his people and his Navy. This is only a tiny part of the reprehensible actions of this command structure of which he was a part of. If I made a list of careers that had been shredded by the decisions made by him and this command structure it would be lengthy, to say the least. This is without a doubt the worst part of my career and I have wished more than anything to forget this tragedy of a chain of command that cares not only for it's people but has went out of their way to be a bludgeon to ruin their careers and personal lives. I just wish I could forget it. more later...