Fleet Marine Life #133 – Pros and Cons
Proficiency and conduct marks can make or break your Marine Corps career. It decides who gets promoted and who doesn’t. It counts for over 50% of your cutting score. And you know who writes them? It could be my Sergeant, or it could be my SNCO. Most of the time, I have no clue, because no one ever tells me.
Whenever you receive pro/con marks, you’re supposed to receive a counseling. It’s a sheet of paper that says, “These are your pros/cons. These are the reasons why you got them. These are some suggestions to improve them.” Speaking of counselings, you’re supposed to receive monthly counselings and counselings whenever you get pros/cons. In my Marine Corps career, I’ve received only 5 counselings. If you want me to improve myself, what do you want me to do? I don’t know everything!
You may think that it’s my fault, but let me ask you a question. Is it my job to make sure my boss does his? And besides, it’s not like I’m going to die if I don’t receive a counseling. I got shit to do.
I remember my Sergeants constantly hounding the Corporals to make sure that the junior Marines get their counselings. The junior Marines will be taken care off regardless of what the Sergeants do or say, but what about the corporals? As usual, the Sergeants are MIA when it comes to doing routine counselings for Corporals.
Anyways, I digress.
The thing about pros/cons is that it sounds good on paper. You have a boss that oversees you and gives you pros/cons depending on how well you do.
The thing is though, if your boss never bothers to see what you’re doing because he’s a lazy fuck, what the hell is he supposed to give you? And usually, you will be working for lazy fucks who play favorites. So they will give you whatever they feel like giving you. If their vagina hurts that day, they will give you some crappy pros and cons without any counseling or any reason.
I knew a go-to Marine that does nothing but good work. He was a few minutes late one day and got a negative counseling for it. A few weeks later, it was revealed that his lateness, not his hard work, defined his low pros and cons. This is bullshit.
One day, when all the lower-downs received low pros and cons, somewhere in the range of 4.0 – 4.2, I questioned my Staff Sergeant about it since our Sergeant Major and CO told our company how great we were doing.
That comic above is the same conversation I had with him. I could see how uncomfortable he was. He was rubbing the back of his head like it was going to help him think of more bullshit to spew out of his mouth.
He promised us all higher pros and cons later. A few months later, he gives me lower pro/con marks than before and flies off to Okinawa without informing anyone. Fucking fantastic.
All of my SNCOs would swear to everyone that they would go by the book. But few can even cite which Marine Corps Order talks about Pros and Cons. I would ask and they would always “challenge me” to look it up. That MCO is called the Individual Records Administration Manual (IRAM). Don’t go off whatever bullshit the SNCOs make up and throw in your face. Here is the MCO for you to see.
MCO P1070.12K W/CH1 – IRAM
http://www.marines.mil/news/publications/Documents/MCO%20P1070.12K%20W%20CH%201.pdf
What events rate pros/cons?
What makes up “conduct?”
Conduct Table
What is “proficiency?”
Proficiency Table.
Getting shitty pros and cons for no reason since 1775.
What a broken system. Back during WWII, you had to prove yourself to be an officer. Today, any idiotic yahoo can get a commission by getting a degree, even a stupid one. Picking up on the enlisted side is just as bad. If you suck the commanders cock, you can pick up rank, but good marines who refuse to play games stay at the bottom.
Anyone know if there is anything in the orders about limiting p/c’s because of medical status? I’m being told my scores can’t go any higher because I’m limited duty. I’m on a med board for a severe injury and am having my scores knocked down because of it. I bust my fucking ass staying in shape, absolutely ideal weight standards, run every day, and can smoke damn near anyone on a CFT. But ya know, can’t run with the group since the corps fucked up my heart, so I’m an outcast…
What do you mean by p/c’s? Sorry, too many acronyms in the damn military.
pros and cons. sorry, I make it a game to make up acronyms at work and use them frequently. I’ve found if no one knows what your acronyms mean and you have an excel spreadsheet with lots of colors and bold lines, everyone thinks your busy. That, and a track ball mouse with lots of buttons. No body wants to take your computer then.
You sir, have skating down to an art
I instructed my marines to say that if anyone asked for me, I had to complete my GTTS. They figured it was some kind of safety thing, but it just stood for Going to the Store.
Try looking up the other physical standard order MCO 6100.13
if not, you can try to search via Marines.mil > Orders and Directives > MCO P and search for Medical Limited Duty
bahahaha..finally..ive been waiting for this..pros/cons is what your superiors like and dont like about you..in my unit the best pros/cons a marine could get was 4.3 4.3..most got 4.0 4.0..haha one guy got 3.9 3.9 and has no njp’s..people always tell me its just bc we are shit bags and i tell them they are full of shit..my unit was changed by our base commander bc of all the shit that was going on..anyways we had this one faggot sgt that left our unit and right before he left he went on the share drive and made everyones pros/cons lower bc he didnt like the pros/cons gunny gave us..we finally got a gunny that gave us pros/cons we deserved..but that sgt fucked us his last day here..not like i give a fuck tho..im already an nco and i know i wont make more rank before i get out so as long as i get my 4.0 4.0 when i eas they can shove all that shit up their asses..lmao..thanks K..btw im gonna upload a video of me getting my DD214..its gonna be amazing
That Sergeant is a big time hater, for sure! The only reason he would do that is to prevent outstanding Marines from getting promoted quickly and having a chance to compete against him.
A video in first person view of one getting his DD-214?
Make sure you have free bird playing in the background and if you can get free bird to play instead of the japanese national anthem on the base PA your name will be greater than chesty pullers
Free Bird over the PA system… That, my good sir, is the most brilliant thing I’ve ever heard of in my life.
As an NCO tasked with determining starting pros and cons, we were actually given a print out of the MCO with the paperwork, but with how little feedback we get from higher we never even get to find out what the scores we recommended became before officially being submitted. ntm our Sergeant was telling us things about the scores that didn’t match up with the exact order he gave us, so he probably fucked them all up.