Just Say NO
Welcome to Dover. A simple three-word phrase that I've heard three times since I arrived here. Once it sounded nearly sincere, and the other two times it was dripping with sarcasm. In my experiences with Dover thus far I'd like to counter with a four-word phrase. I wanna go home!
Arrival at Dover went smoothly enough. The gate guard waved us through. From there it went downhill at an incredible rate.
Step one, billeting. I walked in and asked for a room but it seems they lost my reservation. Not too uncommon unless you consider that I called two weeks in advance to confirm the reservation and they'd lost it back then too. Ok, I reserved a two-bedroom TLF for 30 days, here's my reservation numbers (old and new). How many in your party? Four. Well, you can't have a two-bedroom unit. The base commander's policy is that two-bedroom units are for parties of five or more. Sorry, that's the rules. So lemme get this straight… If I have a 16-year old boy and an 11-year old girl, it's ok for them to sleep on the same fold-out couch because the base commander said so. Gotcha. Ok, gimme a one-bedroom and we'll tough it out with both kids on the couch. No problem except the key machine is broken and you can't get into the room. We can tell the maid to let you in but you'll have to stay there or you won't be able to get back in after you close the door behind you. Wunnerful…
Step two, money. Filing the DITY move voucher was an experience in itself. At my rank I'm allowed 9000 pounds of household goods paid for, anything over that got a free ride but is not payable. Fine with me. I had almost 12,000 pounds of stuff in the moving truck, so I'll be getting paid for the full 9000. They ask for weight tickets for my privately-owned vehicle (POV). I tell them that it makes no difference, since I'm already max-ed out on weight, there's nothing inside the POV they'd pay me for anyhow. Well, they've gotta get a full and empty weight ticket for the POV anyhow or they can't process the paperwork. What's the point in getting it done twice? The answer went along the lines of "This is the way we do it, and we do it this way, because this is the way we do it, and we've always done it this way, so we do it this way. Does it make sense now?" So here I am, running downtown to pay $5 for a weighing, not once, but TWICE on the same vehicle. The girl at the weighmaster's desk thought I was nuts asking for one as a tare weight and one as a gross weight. So I've got two slips of paper that cost me $10 proving nothing and not getting me paid for a single ounce more than we'd established before. Why? Because that's the way we do it here. Essentially, I claimed the $10 weighing fees, which the government is now required to reimburse to me. This pulls ten bucks out of Uncle Sam's pocket and serves no noticeable purpose except justifying my doubts in the new "paperless Air Force".
Step three, housing. Finally, someone with a pleasant smile. I was told that I can pretty much have my choice of houses in the three-bedroom duplex variety, but I complicated matters by producing a letter from my wife's civilian chiropractor (who has been treating her for the last 16 years) requesting a single-level house because her arthritic hip has trouble working stairs. Ok, I'll be glad to help once you get a letter from your commander requesting it. I get a letter accompanying a copy of the doctor's letter and leave it for him to sign. A couple days later he reviewed it and asked that my wife go to visit a flight surgeon to verify the ailment. Simple enough. The doctor leaves us in the waiting room for 15 minutes while examining what was left of her AF medical record (after McGuire lost and re-started her record TWICE) and then calls us in to tell us that there's nothing in her record indicating a problem, so he called my commander with the recommendation to deny the request for single-level housing. Oh, and by the way, he thinks all chiropractors are quacks. Nothing in her military medical record about it? Well no $%&*!, Sherlock. In real life, when you find a doctor that helps you, you stick with him whether he's a civilian, military, foreign, alien, illegal immigrant, or honestly believes he was the guy on the grassy knoll before he was abducted by those pesky UFOs.
So if we want to press this issue, we can schedule a medical appointment with a military doctor, get the x-rays (which the flight doc said he's not qualified to read) and then get referred downtown to a civilian doctor to interpret the films. This process could take months, so we'll have to accept the duplex and live with her sleeping on the couch on bad days when stairs aren't an option. The final result from all this will probably end up being that when it's all said and done, the x-rays are taken, the evaluations made, second opinions weighed, and recommendations made, the government will have sucked up all the medical costs AND paid to move all our crap into a one-floor unit (as well as cable & phone disconnect/reconnect fees) all because they couldn't accept that the answer they were already supplied with was correct. Where's the fraud, waste, and abuse folks when you need them?
My low opinion of most military doctors comes from personal experience, mostly at McGuire's "medical hobby shop". The experience of seeing a physician's assistant hired as a Captain in the USAF and serving as a qualified flight surgeon. The experience of bringing my kid in after she dropped a bowling ball on her finger and needing an interpreter to explain to the Russian-speaking civilian-contracted doctor what a bowling ball was and then being told to have her take Motrin and go home. The next day the finger swelled further and we went back. Take more "vitamin-M". By the third day the kid was wailing, the finger turned white, the nail fell off, and the skin underneath was bright purple and we rushed to the emergency room where they executed a highly controversial and experimental procedure called an X-RAY. This clearly showed two fractures in the finger. Ain't it amazing? X-rays, do you believe that? What will they think up next… The following experience involved a fractured wrist and the same Motrin-based cure for three consecutive days worth of visits until someone finally ran an x-ray and realized maybe a cast was in order when seeing that nearly all the bones in her wrist were broken. The final experience was watching the birth rate at McGuire rise unexpectedly when they found women getting pregnant from their husbands months after the military doctor did vasectomies on the men. Two problems became clear through the investigation. One is that the doctor never cut the vas deferens, and the second is that the doctor wasn't a doctor. His papers were fake. Yes, boys and girls, nothing but the best for our troops.
Ok, back to billeting… I hit the point where I can claim a temporary lodging expense by producing paid billeting bills. So I go up to the desk and ask that I be charged for the days already spent here so I can file my TLE paperwork. A simple request, no? The rapid-fire response from the lady with growling eyes and one continuous eyebrow from temple to temple goes as follows… "I can't let you stay more than 30 days if you want to stay longer than 30 days you will need a letter from your first sergeant explaining why you need lodging longer than 30 days and we can't guarantee you lodging longer than 30 days but if you have the letter from the first sergeant the managers here can check to see if they can give you a room on a day-to-day basis in excess of 30 days". (yes, it all came out as one sentence). Uh, 'scuse me ma'am, but I only wanted you to charge me for the days I've been here so far so I can go claim the TLE. She runs back into the same tirade non-stop until I cut her off in the middle and said "BUT I'VE ONLY BEEN HERE A WEEK. All I need is for you to charge me for the week, I get my receipt, and then I get out of your hair. Fair enough???". (silence)Oh. (silence)… Yes, we can do that.
Next stop is to put the camper on the RV lot. Name? SSgt Behrens. Phone number? I dunno, I don't have one yet. Duty Phone? I dunno, I just got here. Ok, that's $10 per month or $108 per year. So I pay the man for a couple of months and then ask the location of the RV lot. I get this look that says "Whadda you mean you don't know where the RV lot is?" Well, sorry, maybe I failed to mention it, but I JUST GOT HERE! Ok, no harm, no foul. So are you going to tell me the combination to the gate lock so I can get in? What combination? The combination to the lock on the gate. What lock? What gate? You mean the RV lot doesn't have a lock? How do you keep the fence closed? What fence? You mean to tell me there's no fence either? What's to stop someone from messing with my RV (whose lot is on the far side of the runway all secluded so no one can see anyone tampering with the RVs)? Lemme get this straight.... The RV lot is just an open parking lot with numbers painted on the spots. You don't maintain the lot, you don't secure it, and you don't even have the area lighted at night. Tell me again... WHY AM I PAYING YOU FOR THIS? I might as well keep it on the street, in my parking spot, or downtown in the K-mart parking lot, it's just as poorly secured AND it is lighted. Well, that's the way we do things here, and the way we do things here is the way we do things here because that's how we do things here. Hmmmm, didn't you used to work in TMO?
So far, this is typical of the people supposedly hired to help you. Anything involving the word SERVICES, most certainly is not service-oriented. It seems people here are most decidedly spring-loaded to the NO position before even hearing what your situation is. I was beginning to get a complex and wondering if my deodorant was failing or if it were my personality that made everyone treat me like a hooker in the front pew on Easter Sunday, but then I started speaking with others around here who are relaying similar if not identical stories. If there's a way of getting out of doing their job by making you go hunt for more paperwork, they'll gladly take that route. If the approval process takes 5 steps, they'll only tell you about step 1 and wait until you come back from your wild signature-chase to fill you in on step 2.
I'm sorry folks, I'm not from around here. I have spent the last few years spoiled in Oklahoma where you stop by someone's office to drop off some paperwork and you can't just drop it and go. If you DON'T sit down, kick your feet up, pour a cup, and chat about the weather, wife, kids, and fishing it's interpreted as being rude. Things down South don't move slower (as evidenced by the tremendous student graduation rate), it's just more relaxed and civil so there's less tension and it FEELS slower & more comfortable.
Around Dover it seems people find a macabre joy in telling you they can't help you (even before you fully explain the problem), or the initial look you get is one that clearly says "Who are you and why are you bothering me?". It's clearly easier for them to "Just Say NO".
This experience has helped me come to some conclusions. The obvious one is that I want to go back to Altus. First thing Monday morning I'm heading to MPF to fill out my dream sheet. It's going to read ALTUS, ALTUS, and ALTUS. If I can't escape here by next summer (when my enlistment is up) I'm seriously considering calling it quits and getting out as opposed to signing up for my last hitch before retiring. Pension be damned, I paid my dues with rude, obnoxious, self-centered people who live in their own little kingdom at McGuire, and this abuse is getting old REALLY fast.
A word of advice… If you get orders to Dover… Just Say NO.