tristane

Yesterday was the first day I got upset at the Platoon Hour. When we first arrived our captains gave us the opportunity to each week nominate the Cadette of the Week. He or she would then get their names on the anti-tank cartridge placed next to the board, as a small reward for having exceeded in something that week.

The price was meant as an encouragement for us to give our best in every assignment we do, but in this darned Land of the Medium Fat Milk (which really is an acronym for Sweden, believe it or not) it has spun off to a place where nobody dares to appoint anybody else and the department has week after week bent their backs to give it to somebody else. The food ladies, the janitor, the adjutant, even both our captains have gotten the nomination for "having gone out of their way" to sort something out for us. Then last week the appointed president of our weekly debates suggested that if we didn't have a cadette of the week to nominate, we wouldn't nominate anybody.
"We shouldn't have to force a name if we don't have one."

Ever since that day, the nominees stopped. When the question was brought up, the class felt silent. Last week I got tired of this, and raised my hand for Hunter who, in my mind, had exceeded in a very well planned and executed class on Wednesday. My suggestion was dismissed in favor of the Cpt. B who had given eight people the opportunity to go to an apparently very good seminary about death held for those in the Captain Program. So cadette of the week went to Cpt. B.

This week when the question was brought up again I felt the same rage brooding again when, once again, nobody raised their hand to a nomination. Instead I raised mine and called out Birdie for his performance at his shooting range class that morning. His name was put up on the board and as the only name on the board when called up for voting, he only got eight votes. The rest kept silent.
When the president asked if we could approve Birdie as the Cadette of the Week, people called out "No..!"
So the nominee was discarded and we were once again left without a cadette of the week.

The decision pissed me off in so many ways. Not so much because I had the only nominated name, I didn't give a fuck about that, but not only was it a poor way to conduct a democratic procedure, it was also pretty harsh on the one name on the board who had gotten votes.
This is the way democracy works, people. If you don't vote, you have no right to complain about the results.
Thus I have decided that from this day forward I will each week nominate and vote for somebody that I think have done something exceedingly good, whether it was saving the world from plastic bags or handing me an extra towel after having spilled my coffee, and to never again give my vote to somebody with a paycheck. I would rather give it to a school mate whose bravado I didn't see, than the captain who does what he gets paid to do.
We deserve that prize, and we should get it.

I think it's such a fucked up attitude from this department when they'd rather have no cadette of the week at all, instead of a name that everybody don't agree on.