"Hey you! SNBM!"

The morning after reporting, I began my check-in process. I was assigned a sponsor, who was a BM3 that had been there for about six months. I reported during the holiday season so many of the people I was supposed to meet were on leave at the time. I met the BM1 who was in charge of Deck Force and his utmost concern was that I found myself an apartment. They had an E-3 who had been living on board the station for over three months so the BM1 didn't want me to do the same thing. After about three days at the station, he sent me out into town with the instructions "Don't come back until you've found a place to live."

I went out into Gloucester, eighteen years old, trying to find an apartment in the middle of winter. I found a studio apartment at a reasonable price and was able to meet with the landlady. I was then introduced to one of the many benefits of being in the military. Despite the fact that she had several other people interested in the place, she knew that I could be counted on to pay the rent because she could always call my Commanding Officer (CO) about any delinquencies.

I later met with the Executive Petty Officer (XPO) who was a Boatswain's Mate Chief. He started with the alcohol speech because I was underage. Next he informed me that "If it's in blue, then it's not for you. If you're looking for a girlfriend, then do it outside of the gate." In accordance with the Coast Guard's Personnel Manual, which contains descriptions of "unacceptable romantic relationships", dating someone at the station (a small shore facility with less than 60 people) would result in disciplinary action.

Over the next several weeks, I was usually addressed as "SNBM" (said as a word rather than one letter at a time). When work had to be done around the station, I was used as an intermediary between the BM3s and the non-rates. I received my fair share of resentment from both the petty officers and the non-rates. The E-4s didn't like that I was a "direct 'A' schooler" because they had been strikers and "did things the hard way". The non-rates gave me a hard time because I was young and inexperienced an I technically didn't outrank them so they didn't like when I was put in charge of work projects. I can completely understand both points of view but on the other hand I didn't go to "A" School because it was the easy way, I did it based off the limited amount of information I got from my recruiter.

I was routinely counseled by a few of the BMs that I wasn't performing on an E-4 level and if I didn't step it up then I wouldn't advance when I was supposed to. This didn't really help much, as best as I could tell all E-4s did was use the SNBM to do their job for them. I was so fed up with these nightly talks that I considered changing rates just to work for someone more reasonable. I'm glad I never followed up on it because it would've been a choice I regretted.

Eventually, they switched up the two duty sections (there will be a later post explaining the work schedule) so that I worked under different BMs and things improved ten fold.

I advanced to BM3 in June 2004.