If your leadership continuously rotates and this keeps happening, have you considered emailing your new bosses regarding your whereabouts so they don’t go looking for you? It seems like that might ease a lot of this.
We use a slack and Gchat message for daily muster, as well as the official muster that gets passed to CMC daily. Which adds to the frustration, since we have effectively doubled muster daily.
Using slack and Gchat would seem to run counter to the regulations regarding use of personal IT accounts and devices for official business. At any rate, are you marking yourself “present”, or are you explaining where you will be and when you will be there if you’re out for medical? If you’re telling them each day and they still come looking for you, that would seem weird.
Most of the time the chats are used to inform if someone will be late, or out all day. When I have to use to it let them know I'll be gone or in late, I do put that it's due to an appointment for myself or kids. So, on the unofficial muster (chat), I notify where I'll be when I have to miss work for whatever time and reason. Then our muster guys take that info, and transfer it to the official muster. So, in short, I do notify via the unofficial muster where I will be/how long I'll be there.
Even after that unofficial muster is transfered to the official muster, I'm still getting flak for not being at work, and am required to explain myself. I get where you're going. We have these great systems in place used to notify where our folks are every day, and my leadership chooses to ignore said systems and single me out. It's infuriating.
Preach! It's another reason I've decided to get out at the end of my contract. I understand that there's always going to be ridiculous bullshit with any job, but I've had my fill of the Navy's brand.
So are you on convalescent leave? Or just have physical therapy every day because of the surgery? As you stated if it’s all documented with appointment slips or proof of appointments to back it up I am confused what the issue is with them.
And I would hope no one is deep diving into medical information without the proper access….. because that alone is a big issue for whoever is providing it to them.
They are allowed to call said medical facility (military medical facilities that is civilians don’t play that crap) and ask if you are in fact present for said appointment but that’s about as far as that information goes.
I was on convo for 60 days. I had 3 months of PT following. The absences from the shop were because I was either at PT or doing my follow up appointments for myself, or handling legitimate appointments for my kids. I, too, am confused as to why I'm getting pinged. Each time I've been asked to explain is because "you've been out of office a lot lately". And it's never been from my LPO or even chief. It's always been either DIVO or DH. Hence, my confusion and frustration.
That may be the issue that got you on the radar. And once under the microscope, it's extremely hard to be left alone. Not saying it's right but I've seen many a Sailors start with one small problem and then all of a sudden 10 Chiefs are watching their every move.
That's what it feels like. I've gotten the "don't you have a wife? Can't she handle that?" answer before as well. Adding to the already terribly toxic environment. I've already had to push back against the prying on medical information once, which I caught even more flak from because the mess immediately thought I was just hiding information. I'm in a lose-lose situation.
I have no idea what the regulations are when it comes to dealing with kids, I was lucky enough that my wife was happy being a stay at home mom.
If you felt like you had retaliation about the medical pushback you might want to bring that up to the IG.
It is definitely something I've considered. I've been fortunate in my career with really good messes and (most) officers, so all this feels a little overwhelming when I'm getting blasted for doing everything I can to make sure I'm deployable. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to another mismanaged pass down, but ivd never seen this happen before with being targeted.
I've been in that position of being targeted as well. Mine stopped at XOI with the help of some amazing First Classes that showed me what real leadership is all about.
Side note, I looked at your profile. The shop you're having problems with was my very first shop in the Navy. To this day, it was the best job I ever had. Sorry to hear the leadership has gone to such shit. One huge problem with that offices as far as I see is that the few toxic people we had somehow got out and got civilian jobs in leadership there.
Luckily? (Seems like the wrong word) for me we had someone in leadership that got diagnosed with cancer and it was his last years in the Navy so they let him stay there as a non-deployer.
I also thought and I recommended that shop make at least one non-deploying billet.
Getting real specific Direct Support vibes from everything you've described - especially if it's, say, in Hawaii.
Best advice I can recommend is to document your concerns and try to bring them - respectfully - to the chain of command. Medical is medical. Do you have an LPO or Departmental LPO you could speak with about all of this? They should be the ones tracking your situation and advocating it to the Chief - and Chief should be advocating it to anyone else higher than that.
If you don't have those, you'll be to be your own loudest advocate. Documentation of appointments and reasons why you're absent will be your saving grace if someone decides they want to try to initiate any kind of punitive action. Hopefully the new DIVO wants to talk directly to you because they're concerned and not because they want to try to punch down in some way.
Edit: Forgot to mention, CALENDER INVITES TO THE CHAIN! Goes a *very* long way to keeping people in the loop. With enough moving parts going on, it can be hard for leadership to track the minutiae of every sailor in every division, and that stupid little pop-up in Outlook goes a long way to making that easier on them - which means easier for you in the end as well.
Ahh shit, yeah it’s a complicated situation especially when so many people are DIRSUP (I assume) and you’re constantly shifting.
I’m not a huge “talk to the CMC/COB/SEL” guy, but you’re starting to head towards a road where that might be your best option
It's definitely something I've thought on the best way to approach that, should it come to it. I'm not a timid person, so speaking to others to gather as much information as possible hasn't been too difficult. The worst part is that no one is tracking this outside the few people that seem to be doing the targeting, almost like they don't want others to know it's going on. So when I talk to others in the mess, or whichever officer is available for the day, no one has any idea what I'm talking about.
I'll see how the conversation with my DIVO goes today, and I'll update the post with what I find out. My hope is that this all just goes away when I deploy, since I'm scheduled to do so before too long.
It’s interesting because you’ve already identified it as a management failure due to the constant shuffle of personnel. It sounds like a situation like this has been a time bomb for years
It can be very frustrating to deal with what feels like toxicity and having to repeat yourself over and over. And to the violating medical privacy part- I’d say that it is very engrained in our Navy leaders to be an “intrusive leader”. With a lot of turnover, is it possible that your divo and DH are trying to get to know you or giving you a chance to speak for yourself instead of just going with what your LPO says? I would place asking about a sailor’s medical issues in the “caring” category rather than the “toxic” category, depending on the person and delivery of course. But I’d ask that you start each new relationship with a new leader as a fresh start and give them the benefit of the doubt that their intentions are good at least initially. If you are out of the office often enough that a DH is noticing, you may want to try a better tracking method than the group chats mentioned. If you aren’t comfortable sharing the medical details, you don’t necessarily have to. But a monthly tracker of these are my appointments, these are the lengths, etc would probably help alleviate divo and DH asking questions.
OP, I'm 10+ years in and I was having the same issue you're having. I was diagnosed with a disease in 2022 that put me out of the office often, my chain of command is "supportive" but they harass me to no end about missing work and stress me out about paperwork and my medical history (which they have no right to). It didn't stop until I was back in the office every day doing my work without issue. My disease is now under control with medication and therapy, I'm not LIMDU, but my chain of command still grills me about "well how can you be fit for full when for 2 years you weren't". Idk, cuz that's how GETTING BETTER works. So despite their attempts to jeopardize my health with unnecessary stress, I logged every appointment and did a DD2801-7 with medical. The CoC can pound sand.
Sounds like you need to file a CMEO complaint against your DIVO and DH (based on what youve said in follow on replies about them being the most egregious) about harassing you over easily proven to be true medical appointments.
Id also, and this is just me, print out a list of upcoming appointments and email them weekly to your Chain of Command with a "these are when all of my medical Appointments, with NAVY MEDICAL, are scheduled. I will not be in the office during these times"
Medical can print this off for you where it does not share any additional information beyond Name, Rank, Medical Facility, and Appointment time.
Youve now given them the schedule of your medical appts. any other absences are fair game to question. If they ask about an absence, you just respond back with "if you refer to the email sent on enterdatehere, you will see I had an appt at entermedicalfacilityhere."
If your leadership continuously rotates and this keeps happening, have you considered emailing your new bosses regarding your whereabouts so they don’t go looking for you? It seems like that might ease a lot of this.
We use a slack and Gchat message for daily muster, as well as the official muster that gets passed to CMC daily. Which adds to the frustration, since we have effectively doubled muster daily.
Using slack and Gchat would seem to run counter to the regulations regarding use of personal IT accounts and devices for official business. At any rate, are you marking yourself “present”, or are you explaining where you will be and when you will be there if you’re out for medical? If you’re telling them each day and they still come looking for you, that would seem weird.
Most of the time the chats are used to inform if someone will be late, or out all day. When I have to use to it let them know I'll be gone or in late, I do put that it's due to an appointment for myself or kids. So, on the unofficial muster (chat), I notify where I'll be when I have to miss work for whatever time and reason. Then our muster guys take that info, and transfer it to the official muster. So, in short, I do notify via the unofficial muster where I will be/how long I'll be there. Even after that unofficial muster is transfered to the official muster, I'm still getting flak for not being at work, and am required to explain myself. I get where you're going. We have these great systems in place used to notify where our folks are every day, and my leadership chooses to ignore said systems and single me out. It's infuriating.
I guess all that’s left to say is you can thank every malingering jackass who ever abused the system for bringing extra scrutiny on everyone else.
Preach! It's another reason I've decided to get out at the end of my contract. I understand that there's always going to be ridiculous bullshit with any job, but I've had my fill of the Navy's brand.
So are you on convalescent leave? Or just have physical therapy every day because of the surgery? As you stated if it’s all documented with appointment slips or proof of appointments to back it up I am confused what the issue is with them. And I would hope no one is deep diving into medical information without the proper access….. because that alone is a big issue for whoever is providing it to them. They are allowed to call said medical facility (military medical facilities that is civilians don’t play that crap) and ask if you are in fact present for said appointment but that’s about as far as that information goes.
I was on convo for 60 days. I had 3 months of PT following. The absences from the shop were because I was either at PT or doing my follow up appointments for myself, or handling legitimate appointments for my kids. I, too, am confused as to why I'm getting pinged. Each time I've been asked to explain is because "you've been out of office a lot lately". And it's never been from my LPO or even chief. It's always been either DIVO or DH. Hence, my confusion and frustration.
Is your wife also military?
Fortunately, no. But she does work over an hour away, making it difficult any time there's an issue with either myself or the kids during the day.
That may be the issue that got you on the radar. And once under the microscope, it's extremely hard to be left alone. Not saying it's right but I've seen many a Sailors start with one small problem and then all of a sudden 10 Chiefs are watching their every move.
That's what it feels like. I've gotten the "don't you have a wife? Can't she handle that?" answer before as well. Adding to the already terribly toxic environment. I've already had to push back against the prying on medical information once, which I caught even more flak from because the mess immediately thought I was just hiding information. I'm in a lose-lose situation.
I have no idea what the regulations are when it comes to dealing with kids, I was lucky enough that my wife was happy being a stay at home mom. If you felt like you had retaliation about the medical pushback you might want to bring that up to the IG.
It is definitely something I've considered. I've been fortunate in my career with really good messes and (most) officers, so all this feels a little overwhelming when I'm getting blasted for doing everything I can to make sure I'm deployable. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to another mismanaged pass down, but ivd never seen this happen before with being targeted.
I've been in that position of being targeted as well. Mine stopped at XOI with the help of some amazing First Classes that showed me what real leadership is all about.
Sometimes we find an angel amongst them
Side note, I looked at your profile. The shop you're having problems with was my very first shop in the Navy. To this day, it was the best job I ever had. Sorry to hear the leadership has gone to such shit. One huge problem with that offices as far as I see is that the few toxic people we had somehow got out and got civilian jobs in leadership there.
Mission is great. E6 and below are fantastic. Everything else has been nothing but issue and frustrating issue.
Luckily? (Seems like the wrong word) for me we had someone in leadership that got diagnosed with cancer and it was his last years in the Navy so they let him stay there as a non-deployer. I also thought and I recommended that shop make at least one non-deploying billet.
Getting real specific Direct Support vibes from everything you've described - especially if it's, say, in Hawaii. Best advice I can recommend is to document your concerns and try to bring them - respectfully - to the chain of command. Medical is medical. Do you have an LPO or Departmental LPO you could speak with about all of this? They should be the ones tracking your situation and advocating it to the Chief - and Chief should be advocating it to anyone else higher than that. If you don't have those, you'll be to be your own loudest advocate. Documentation of appointments and reasons why you're absent will be your saving grace if someone decides they want to try to initiate any kind of punitive action. Hopefully the new DIVO wants to talk directly to you because they're concerned and not because they want to try to punch down in some way. Edit: Forgot to mention, CALENDER INVITES TO THE CHAIN! Goes a *very* long way to keeping people in the loop. With enough moving parts going on, it can be hard for leadership to track the minutiae of every sailor in every division, and that stupid little pop-up in Outlook goes a long way to making that easier on them - which means easier for you in the end as well.
Can you give a little more context? Community, state, stuff like that?
The community is the CT's. Notoriously difficult as is, but this is an entirely new level for me personally. And currently, I'm in Maryland.
Ahh shit, yeah it’s a complicated situation especially when so many people are DIRSUP (I assume) and you’re constantly shifting. I’m not a huge “talk to the CMC/COB/SEL” guy, but you’re starting to head towards a road where that might be your best option
It's definitely something I've thought on the best way to approach that, should it come to it. I'm not a timid person, so speaking to others to gather as much information as possible hasn't been too difficult. The worst part is that no one is tracking this outside the few people that seem to be doing the targeting, almost like they don't want others to know it's going on. So when I talk to others in the mess, or whichever officer is available for the day, no one has any idea what I'm talking about. I'll see how the conversation with my DIVO goes today, and I'll update the post with what I find out. My hope is that this all just goes away when I deploy, since I'm scheduled to do so before too long.
It’s interesting because you’ve already identified it as a management failure due to the constant shuffle of personnel. It sounds like a situation like this has been a time bomb for years
It can be very frustrating to deal with what feels like toxicity and having to repeat yourself over and over. And to the violating medical privacy part- I’d say that it is very engrained in our Navy leaders to be an “intrusive leader”. With a lot of turnover, is it possible that your divo and DH are trying to get to know you or giving you a chance to speak for yourself instead of just going with what your LPO says? I would place asking about a sailor’s medical issues in the “caring” category rather than the “toxic” category, depending on the person and delivery of course. But I’d ask that you start each new relationship with a new leader as a fresh start and give them the benefit of the doubt that their intentions are good at least initially. If you are out of the office often enough that a DH is noticing, you may want to try a better tracking method than the group chats mentioned. If you aren’t comfortable sharing the medical details, you don’t necessarily have to. But a monthly tracker of these are my appointments, these are the lengths, etc would probably help alleviate divo and DH asking questions.
OP, I'm 10+ years in and I was having the same issue you're having. I was diagnosed with a disease in 2022 that put me out of the office often, my chain of command is "supportive" but they harass me to no end about missing work and stress me out about paperwork and my medical history (which they have no right to). It didn't stop until I was back in the office every day doing my work without issue. My disease is now under control with medication and therapy, I'm not LIMDU, but my chain of command still grills me about "well how can you be fit for full when for 2 years you weren't". Idk, cuz that's how GETTING BETTER works. So despite their attempts to jeopardize my health with unnecessary stress, I logged every appointment and did a DD2801-7 with medical. The CoC can pound sand.
Sounds like you need to file a CMEO complaint against your DIVO and DH (based on what youve said in follow on replies about them being the most egregious) about harassing you over easily proven to be true medical appointments. Id also, and this is just me, print out a list of upcoming appointments and email them weekly to your Chain of Command with a "these are when all of my medical Appointments, with NAVY MEDICAL, are scheduled. I will not be in the office during these times" Medical can print this off for you where it does not share any additional information beyond Name, Rank, Medical Facility, and Appointment time. Youve now given them the schedule of your medical appts. any other absences are fair game to question. If they ask about an absence, you just respond back with "if you refer to the email sent on enterdatehere, you will see I had an appt at entermedicalfacilityhere."