Respect, rank and national service - Chai's solution

My nephew is about to start his national service and I'm optimistic that this will be a positive growing experience for him - this has nothing to do with what awaits him there and based on my own experiences I am hoping for the best but expecting the worst. Nonetheless, I still have some reasons for my optimism and I'd like to share them.. The first reason is that it will get him out of the house - we're still in this never-ending pandemic with yet another wave driven by the Omicron variant. Even when I managed to help my nephew get a part time job before enlistment, the employer had him work from home because of the laws in Singapore regarding Covid-safety. The employer could not get everyone to return to the office and had to prioritize key workers, so my nephew got to work from home instead of experiencing working in an office environment. That's no longer an option once he serves national service, so I desperately want him to develop and improve his social skills by being forced to live and work with people has never met before. Young people need to be stimulated and challenged, they need to be taken out of their comfort zone and the pandemic meant that my nephew has not had enough of that in the last two years by default. I hope he will see this as an adventure, a new experience to embrace and that he will face his new challenges with a positive attitude. It is only for a period of two years, that's not a long time; back in the day, I served two years four months as the rules were very different back in the day but I remember an experience that I would like to share with you so it will give you some context about how I adapted to the adult world. 

One thing that dominates life in the army is your rank, you are constantly aware of the rank of the people around you because your rank defines your role in the army. Furthermore, you also want to know if you're of lower, equal or higher rank than someone as that would influence the way you interact with them. You can usually tell the rank of a person from their uniform but sometimes that's not always clear if they are in civilian clothing or if they are dressed for sports. You should always show respect to someone of higher rank by addressing them correctly, according to their rank and saluting them if they are an officer. When dealing with someone of equal or lower rank, you can be a lot more casual. I'm not going to go into the details of how to address soldiers of different ranks here but it suffices to say that it can be complicated for those who are new in the army and naturally, I didn't want to make a mistake by showing anyone disrespect. So in my desperation, I turned to a friend - let's call him Chai, he is an older friend who had already completed national service and at first, I thought he was going to draw me a few diagrams to help me recognize the different ranks and I was ready to rake notes. But Chai taught me a golden rule which simplified the problem, he said, "when in doubt, simply default to calling the person as 'sir' or 'ma'am' as that's how you would address the most senior officers. So if you see a staff sergeant or a master sergeant or if you just can't remember what rank that person is, use 'sir or 'ma'am' because nobody is going to complain about that even if you're effectively using the wrong term for them - so then actually, you are not going to get into trouble for this kind of 'mistake'. You need to understand the social context."

Chai continued, "A third sergeant might be mildly amused or even flattered if you address him as sir, but on the other hand, an officer is going to take massive offence if you addressed him as 'sergeant'. Think about it this way, if you purchased an item that costs $3 and you gave the cashier a $10 note, you're expecting $7 in change. If the cashier gave you $8 in change by mistake, you may choose to keep quiet about it and pocket the difference or you may choose to be honest and give that cashier $1 back. You're unlikely to get particularly upset over that mistake. But if the cashier only gave you $6 in change, then you're going to kick up a fuss and demand the full $7 in change you're entitled to. Even after you do get the full amount you are due, you're still going to be upset with that cashier for having made such a mistake. I've even been in countries where cashiers 'accidentally' make that kind of mistake with tourists, hoping that the tourists may not notice the mistake as they are unfamiliar with the local currency and when you do point it out to them, they pretend that it is an honest mistake. Thus in this case, if in doubt, just address the man as 'sir' and if it is a woman, address her as 'ma'am'. If that is the incorrect term, like if they are actually a sergeant then they may choose to correct you. But if they like being addressed as if they were an officer, then just continue calling them sir or ma'am." Yes he then went on to explain the different ways to address soldiers of different rank in the army - but more to the point, Chai turned it into a lesson about how to navigate my way through the complex dynamics of power involving the army's rank system. 

Allow me to share an example: there was this master sergeant Tan in my unit and technically speaking, I was supposed to address him as 'master' or 'master sergeant'. However, given that he was a lot older than a lot of the younger officers, I showed him respect by simply addressing him as 'sir', as if he was an officer. So once he gets his next promotion, when he would have the rank of a third warrant officer, then I can correctly address him as 'sir' - technically speaking, it was incorrect for me to address him as 'sir' but master sergeant Tan didn't mind at all, in fact he rather liked it. On the other hand, he would get quite upset if anyone addressed him simply as 'sergeant'. You see, the rank system works like this. Once you become a third sergeant, others will address as sergeant and that will remain the case as you get each subsequent promotion to a second sergeant and a first sergeant. The next rank up is a staff sergeant and then you become a master sergeant - so these staff and master sergeants are a lot more senior than your average third sergeants but they're not quite warrant officers yet. Now these people are 'regulars' - so they are soldiers who have signed a contract to make a career in the army (as opposed to conscripts serving the minimum time period). There are stuck in the middle of the food chain, a very frustrating disposition indeed when you consider that a well-educated 18 year old can enlist and within less than a year become an officer of senior rank to them. These officers will probably then go onto university and earn a lot more than these staff and master sergeants - so you can see why someone like master sergeant Tan is craving for respect and by calling him 'sir', I'm giving him that one thing he desires most. Thus deliberately getting it wrong in this situation could yield much better results than getting it right when we empathize with MSG Tan's situation. 

After all, the rank system can be confusing to those who are new to the army. I've seen officers who are barely 19 or 20 years old talk down to a sergeant who is at least 12 years older simply because of their rank. Oh your age doesn't matter in the army, it is your rank that defines your position in the food chain there. By the same token, it doesn't matter how rich your parents are or how good your grades at school were, only your rank matters. That's such a far cry from the civilian world where the opposite is true, nobody cares what you did in the army or at school, it is your wealth that ultimately defines your role in society. Thus it is very interesting what does happen when you take people out of the civilian world and place them in a whole new world where the rules that they have been living by all these years no longer apply. I had naively thought that it was all about learning the new rules and I would be fine as long as I understood the rank system but Chai taught me that it was so much more than just about your rank in the army, it was about how people felt about themselves and their place in the system. Thus the way to get along with people isn't simply to memorize how the rank system works but rather, try to how different kinds of people react once you assign them a rank. It's not a simple matter of "oh give a young man some power and it will go to his head, he will be tempted to abuse that power", it forced me to analyze why some people would want to crave that power for the sole purpose of abusing it whilst others are not interested in it at all. Thus the social dynamics of this situation is an interesting study in Singaporean sociology. It forced me to exercise judgment, rather than default to following the rules - I hope my nephew will learn to solve such problems. 

How would my nephew react to a challenge like that? I don't know, his first instinct might be the same as mine, which was, "I need to learn how this rank system works very quickly by memorizing all the rules." However, I can't claim to have figured all this out on my own - I did get some much needed help from my friend Chai. This was a topic that came up in conversation recently with a friend, I said to her that I don't claim to know how to solve all my clients' problems but I am very good at finding the right people who have the solutions. Back in the day, I was reliant on being able to find friends like Chai who were in a position to help me out, at least for my nephew, he can simply Google the answers. But if he did that, he would probably just end up at the Wikipedia page which does explain the rank system very clearly but that's just information without context: whilst Chai wasn't as detailed as that Wikipedia page, he certainly gave me a lot more useful advice about negotiating those tricky relationships in the context of the army. Thus, whilst my nephew (like so many of his generation) has the luxury of simply asking Google, I'm wondering if the would lead to him getting better answers? However, whilst Chai's advice was certainly superior, I was dependent on being able to get hold of him, be it on the phone or in person to get that advice whereas all my nephew needs is i smartphone to Google anything he needs. Besides, Google won't be able to deal with more complex questions like, "there's this guy in my unit who is so hard to get along with, but I must work with him; thus how do I deal with this situation?" For something like that, you need the insight of a friend like Chai as Google wouldn't have the answers. Will my nephew know how to find the answers that he needs? 

So I wish my nephew the best of luck and I hope he will be able to respond to anything that will come his way in the coming months. Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting anyone to 'teach' him anything useful during his national service - most of the time, the people in charge of him would barely be a year or two older than him! Rather, it is through such experiences that he will come to the realization that he is expected to solve his own problems like an adult, find his own solutions and that's where the growth will happen. I'm cautiously optimistic and keeping my fingers crossed for him. Thus, you might wonder if I am going to want to call him and give him loads of advice about how to cope with such situations during his national service but no, actually I believe it is better for him to try to find his own solutions when he encounters such problems in the first place and there's nothing wrong with getting it wrong in the face of such challenges as long as he is willing to learn from his mistakes. Well, we shall see. Fingers crossed. My nephew is due to start his NS tomorrow on the 4th July, good luck to him. Please let me know what you think, leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading.