Navy-First permanent duty station

I had a strange first permanent duty station.  Strange for anyone, but really strange for an E1.  A seaman recruit.  I had just completed my "A" school.  To be a disbursing clerk.  Which mainly handled pay records based in a mainframe computer.  But also handled issuing U S Treasury checks, and the associated paperwork.  And also settled both PCS  (permanent change of station) and TAD (temporary additional duty) travel claims.

So my first permanent duty station was The Navy Finance Center.  Which was located in the Anthony J Celebreze Federal Building near the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio.

I had no idea what I was getting into, and played it by ear.  Which was okay when checking into a standard military duty station.  I had no idea there was no uniform shop or barracks.

Luckily the Navy leased out a block of apartments for pay grades E1 to E3 in the suburb of Parma.  So I was not, luckily, forced to rent my own place on E1 quarters allowance.

However, I was thrown into a 2 bedroom setup with Ricardo Alvarado.  Who didn't pay his bills.  Which I didn't find out til later.  He talked me into hooking up a telephone in my name.  Then ran up over $300 in long distance before he transferred out.

I reported to work at the Federal Building every day.  And was assigned to work for Chief Brillian.  The coolest Chief Petty Officer I ever worked for.  In the customer service department.  Taking phone calls from all over the world.

But mostly the phone calls were from dependent wives bitchin about not receiving their allotment checks.  Several times I was able to see Chief Brillian put these cunts in their place.  They would expect the Navy to wire them money, when not enough time had even elapsed since the mailing of their allotment check to even handle it by mail.  Under the assumption their check had been lost in the mail.  So they would fly into a psycho bitch meltdown, saying something about having checks "out there".  Meaning hot checks.  Chief Brillian would say writing hot checks is a crime.  Norfolk is in such and such a county.  I'm gonna call the sheriff there and report you.

Which would throw these psycho bitches farther into a rage.  And Chief Brillian would be called up to the Commanding Officer's office.  And nothing would happen beyond the co saying "you gotta cut that out".  Then he did it again later.

There were only like 70 military people there.  And over 800 civilians.

There was a civilian named Martin Virsis there in customer service.  And Chief Brillian hated his guts.  And every one in management wanted to fire him badly.  So one of my duties was to listen to the code a phone.  Which was an answering machine.  And one day Martin Virsis left a message on it that he had been caught with another man's wife.  And had been beaten with a baseball bat.  So he would not be at work that day.

So I tell Chief Brillian.  Who laughs while listening to the message.  A GS-12 taped the message saying he thought that would be enough to fire Virsis.  And Virsis was still there when I transferred months later.  The way it was explained to me was all a civilian in the Federal government had to do was file an appeal thru the union.  And it all went away.

So this was a strange first duty station for a seaman recruit