Ending Up With a Worse Devil

When I was still in the military myself along with a few other peers in my platoon were called in for a meeting with our First Sergeant. He asked us about how we felt about our current platoon sergeant. Almost everyone echoed the fact that our platoon sergeant was irritating and problematic, which was true, but I stated that having him in command was better than whoever may come after him; it was better to deal with a devil that we know of rather than one who may or will be worse. The others including the First Sergeant didn’t have much to say on what I said, and eventually our platoon sergeant was moved to another company. In his place was an inefficient leader who made things MUCH harder than it needed to be. Problem after problem occurred, people complained, but ultimately the damage was already done. I won’t say that they should have listened to me, but if my peers had been willing to look past the meeting and thought of the consequences we would have avoided a multitude of problems.

This is a condensed account of what happened, but the lesson still stands. My Introspections are not a place to complain about events that are past me, so I will not get into details. All I ask is that my readers learn from them and think ahead to avoid bigger problems later on.