In-Processing Briefings–Where’s the “Military Intelligence”?

So I’ve been going through the normal in-processing procedures over the past week or two.  First going into the office and meeting everyone, then being on leave for house hunting, and most recently going through the “right start” briefing.  This briefing is an all day deal, starting at 0630 and going late into the afternoon.  Ideally this is a way for new folks at a base to get an idea of what the mission of the base is, hear from the major organizations, and also get set up for payment and insurance.

I went to this briefing last Friday, and most of it was, to be blunt, a waste of time.  Most of the briefers were no-shows, so some guy came up and rushed through the slides, making light of whatever the subject matter was.  I was kind of ok with this, since most of the no-shows were organizations I didn’t really care about.  But of the briefers who did show up, there were two that I did care about–finance, and Tricare medical/dental insurance.  The finance briefer was great, and answered all my questions (which I didn’t have too many of, since I had been to see her during the previous day).  The Tricare briefing, on the other hand, was a joke. I considered the medical insurance briefing one of the most important, but, proportionately, it was given the least amount of time.  So at the end of the Tricare briefing I had lots of questions, very few answers, and in fact the briefer ran out of the room before I could even turn in my paperwork.  This was frustrating, to say the least.  Even more frustrating was the fact that the Tricare briefing was cut short by the staff sargeant running the show; and this guy then proceeded to brief us on the base chaplains (who were among the no-shows).

The chaplain’s briefing, which I would have otherwise been interested in hearing, was really bad, and therefore really frustrating for me to sit through (since it took away from the more important insurance briefing).  What was even worse was that the chaplain’s briefing consisted of just a bunch of slides with quasi-funny/ mostly weird pictures and random captions.  Here are two examples of the more memorable ones.

When life gets you off balance, come see your chaplain!

When life gives you the horns, come see your chaplain!

I am all for referring folks to see the chaplain, but ten minutes of slides like these, which robbed me of time I could have otherwise spent finding out how to get myself and my wife health care coverage, was incredibly frustrating.  So the whole “military intelligence” oxymoron joke seems appropriate here…  But I’ll leave it to the reader’s creative mind to figure out how best to apply it to the “right start” briefing debacle.