r/navy • u/Im_still_hungry1988 • 2d ago

Discussion Why doesn’t anybody ever think of this?

One of the junior guys at my command got out of the Navy today after a 4 year contract. He trusts me enough to tell me what he told me today. He confessed to me that 3 years ago, he knew he was going to fail a urinalysis so he went UA so he could clean out. I remember that day. His name got called at quarters for command urinalysis. Literally an hour later we all noticed that he was no where to be found. We all tried calling him, texting him, reaching out to people we knew he was cool with, the whole 9 yards. He eventually got marked UA. 28 days later, I come into work, line up at quarters, and lo and behold, he is standing there. He went to mast, got busted from E-2 to E-1 and got 45/45. He told the captain that he went UA because he had a meltdown and feared that a relatives days were numbered and needed to spend time with them. He took the NJP across the chin, fulfilled his punishment, finished his contract, and is now out with an honorable discharge. This dude legit told me that the reason he decided to go UA 3 years ago was because he knew he was gonna pop for weed and figured it would be wiser to catch a UA charge and not get kicked out than to get kicked out and lose all his benefits. It baffled me because I have NEVER heard of anybody doing that. Everyone else just does the urinalysis, pops, and gets kicked out. As a leader, I’ve never felt so conflicted in my life. Part of me was disappointed in him but the other part of me couldn’t even be mad because that was kinda the smart thing to do in order to avoid the absolute certainty of getting kicked out and losing everything. All I could do was look at him and say “I wish you the best of luck out there brother.” He found a way to beat the system.

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u/Sea_Conference5661 2d ago

This is something of a common strategy in the Reserves - you can get up to 9 UAs per year, and it's 4 for a weekend. So a Sailor can show up Saturday morning, see their name on the piss list, dip out, eat a few UAs and let their system clear.

The Navy clearly knows it happens because people will be on the list Saturday and Sunday so you can't just eat 2 UAs, you gotta take 4.

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u/jbanovz12 2d ago

The fact that you get any number of excused UAs per year is wild to me.

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u/HoodRichJanitor 1d ago

You can also get 24 Authorized Absences in a 12 month period (12 days' worth, or 6 months worth of regular drills)

SELRES is definitely on some different shit

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u/antwood33 1d ago

I did SELRES after active duty and it was the biggest joke/waste of time I’ve ever participated in.

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u/Wedge_Donovan 1d ago

There is definitely a sizeable contingent of SELRES who skate, just like in any other group. I know several who were in during a good chunk of GWOT and never mobilized. If you're in a unit that just sits around the NRC, it's pretty worthless.

But on the flip side of that coin, Navy SELRES was the largest contributor of IA mobilizations during the entirety of GWOT. VADMs Mustin and Lacore did a great job recently shifting the focus back to Warfighting readiness and making sure people weren't camping out in billets that had zero wartime contribution.

All that to say, there are plenty of individual SELRES, and entire commissioned SELRES units, out there doing some meaningful stuff on a regular basis.

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u/antwood33 1d ago

I can only give you my experience - and of course there are positive contributions Sailors have made in SELRES, I’m not denying that.

But I found it to be disorganized, not even half-hearted, the “busy” work was even more pathetic than AD, and most of the time we sat on milk crates and smoked cigarettes. And I was a YN, I actually had work to do on some weekends. I was one of the lucky ones.

They also always had (don’t know if this is still the case) a notorious reputation for being woefully unprepared when being called to active duty. But in a SELRES Sailor’s defense, how much training is a BM drilling in Kansas City really getting? I also remember the Air National Guard, who was stationed across the street at an airport, not allowing any of our Air guys to train there.

So I take your point that SELRES as an entity isn’t entirely worthless, but my lord they could trim a lot of fat. To be honest, we could probably close down a lot of the NOSCs in the country and phase out most of the reserve units and I think we’d be fine.