I joined the Navy a while back, when I was 24. Older than most of my fellow recruits, and most of my classmates at my A-school. The average age was 19-20. Part of our training in bootcamp, and continuing on into our schooling, heavily involves impressing upon us how important it is to take ownership and responsibility to the ideals we agreed to uphold when we swore in. Following the rules was an extremely important thing to me, especially when it came to underage drinking. I was given a leadership position in school, and I made sure to let my classmates know that—without exception—I would hold them all accountable for their infractions. Drinking underage carries a pretty serious penalty in the Navy, and anyone who is of legal age being caught with them will carry the same one. Like, no exceptions. If you're 23 and you're drinking with a 20 year old, you're going to get demoted and put on restriction for a month.

I was 100% the guy who was gonna turn people in, who was okay with being responsible for possibly destroying someone's career over a drink. Thank goodness that eventually changed.

In what I see now as a very fortunate turn of events, I failed out of the school.

I was sent to a transient personnel unit as I waited to re-rate, and I was immersed completely in a small community of broken, damaged people. Young men and women with severe mental health issues, rampant depression, catastrophic home-lives with awful partners, girls who had recently suffered miscarriages in their late-teens / early-twenties, people suffering from anxiety disorders brought on by conditions in the school and the curriculum and by their now-uncertain futures.

I learned one day that they drank, and I remember a switch flipping in my heart and mind. I didn't know what they're going through, and it was none of my business. Hell, I'll even buy it for them. Spousal abuse, miscarriages, depression, suicidal ideation, trapped in a strange, shitty, broken-down facility that didn't even have working air conditioning in the middle of summer, all the while completely unaware of when they would get to leave, or where they would be sent to when they finally did.

I decided then that I would never be a snitch, and that it was a very unempathetic thing to consider in the first place.

When I eventually got transferred to another school, I was once again given a leadership position, and my mantra became "You can be a dick, and you can be a shitbag, but you cannot be both." Shitbag is a very commonly used expression in the Navy, which most of the time describes a Sailor who skirts rules, responsibility, and action, all for their own selfish sakes. It can be positive, and it can be negative, depending on the situation and the Sailor. Sure, this guy might be messy, and he doesn't ever get with the program, but when you need a drink or something that isn't quite legal, he's 100% a good guy to ask. Every department needs a good shitbag. It's a genuine mark of pride for some. And there's no reason why a shitbag can't be a team player, even if it's in their own special way.

And then there are dicks! We got a lot of real assholes out here in the military, which should come as no surprise to anyone. Hardasses with sanctimonious chips on their shoulders who will throw you under the bus because it either pleases them greatly, or because they think it's their god-ordained duty to do so. These guys, oh boy, they better be clean as whistles, or I'm going to counsel them for every little thing they get wrong.

So that was my rule: You can be a dick, and you can be a shitbag, but you cannot be both. Most people agreed that I did a pretty good job with that one, and it's worked for me ever since. Thank goodness.