The Evals, Part II

It was during my tour at what the Navy laughingly refers to as “shore duty” for nucs (12 to 16 hour days were normal, plus all-night duty once every four days) that I found out how evals really get written.

Even though I’d been in the Navy for over seven years, I still had this naive theory that your chief was some sort of minor-league Santa Claus, who kept track of all the good and bad things you did all year, and summarized your performance fairly when evaluation time came. Boy was I out to lunch!

For part of my time on shore duty my official title was “Admin Officer”, even though I was really just the division yeoman. The job got that title when they actually put an officer in it; since we only had three or four at any given time, that says a lot about how confident they were in his abilities elsewhere, doesn’t it? He was eventually was replaced by a chief... who was replaced by a first class... who was replaced by me. The job went away when I did, so the admin officer is no more.

But I digress. One of my responsibilities as the Admin weenie was to help our chiefs prepare evals once a year. My nominal role was simply to type up their handwritten version and route them for approval, but our division officer made it clear that I, not the chiefs, was the one being held accountable for 100% completion on or before the deadline. So I pestered and whined and begged, but couldn’t get much of anything out of the chiefs until a week before they were due.

Then what they gave me was basically the guys’ own “brag sheets”, along with a few notes scribbled in the margins. Since most of our guys were first classes going up for chief, I had to get EXTREMELY creative with the write-up on the back (this was back when everyone got straight 4.0’s on the front, and the only thing that mattered was your ranking) to explain how each of them walked ten feet above the water and how not promoting them would be an offence against god and man. This was not easy, since most sailors are self-conscious about bragging on their “brag” sheets, and don’t write a whole lot.

In most cases the chiefs signed off on what I’d written wholesale, which meant I, the lowly yeo-bitch, was the one evaluating everyone else. And I must have done a decent-enough job, since no one batted an eye when I wrote up my own eval at the same time. Well, that’s not exactly true- one of the JO’s commented (in front of the rest of the officers and I) “Isn’t that a bit much for an E-5?”, to which my division officer responded without hesitation “He’s not your average E-5. Be nice or I’ll have him writing the fitreps, too”.

The moral of the story is simple: if you’re still subject to the eval system, you better keep track of everything you do all year (your chief won’t) and fill out that brag sheet like you’re writing your own eval. Because you probably are.