All of us
would definitely, in one way or another, have an interpersonal conflict with
someone that we know. The result of the conflicts could either be good or bad,
depending on how the parties handled them. This incident described was one of
the incidents which I encountered during army.
When I was
in my unit in army, we were asked to train this bunch of trainees. However,
their treatment was very different from what I experience during my Unit
Induction Programme (also known as UIP). Maybe I’ll elaborate a bit more on our
UIP. It was a very tough period of time (usually two months or so) and we were
drilled so hard so that we can meet the time limit given for our deployment.
Our punishments were rather harsh but all of us have to go through it so that
we would be operationally ready for our deployments.
So this
bunch of trainees came in around Feb 2010, around four months after our batch
turned operationally ready for our deployments. Due to the fact that they were
of a lower PES status, their training was not as tough as compared to ours. But
this was not the part which I was unhappy about. The thing was that this batch
of trainees was generally lazy and does not take much initiative when doing
work. It was also a difficult task teaching them the theoretical knowledge of
the equipment used as they were generally inattentive. As we were staying in
the same bunk as them, we also had the chance to know their personalities that
till today I still have bad impressions of.
Things
started to get worse as their training were not done properly, as the third sergeants
involved were too close to them. They would not punish them like they would do
to us in the past because of that and also because of their physical
capabilities. Being someone who went through harsh punishments and treatments, A
and I thought that the sergeants were not doing things the right way. (For your
information, I’m only a Lance Corporal back then. I’ve got no say over anything
that involves training.)We started complaining to one of the sergeants on
Facebook openly (people, remember not to do this) and it even involved the
sergeant B whom I was rather close with. We complained about the training, we
complained about the sergeants and also the trainees.
Things got
out of hand when our platoon sergeant knew of our complaints on Facebook. (See,
I told you all not to.) Even though he did not mention names when he scolded
the whole platoon regarding this issue, A and I knew that he was talking about
us. All of us were asked to remove any related things on Facebook and was asked
not to do so anymore. If anything like this was to happen, we would be issued
extras. (Extras are punishments in the form of guard duties for us). My platoon
commander even asked the two of us out to talk things out as well as to offer
him suggestions on what can be done.
I was
rather angry as I knew someone tipped us off. Our platoon sergeant had no access
to A and my facebook profiles. The first person who came to my mind was the
sergeant B as he was on good terms with our platoon sergeant. I did not approach him as I was really angry
at that point of time. And I guess it was inevitable for our friendship to
strain after such incident happened. I could remember very clearly that the
last sentence sergeant B told me after our platoon sergeant gave us a dressing
down.
“If there’s
anything you are unhappy about, you could have just told me. And by the way, I’m
not the one who told him about that. ”
After that
incident, we did not talk to each other anymore. Every time I look back at this
incident, there would always be a sense of regret as something could have been
done to salvage our friendship. But anger got into me so badly back then which
cost me a friendship that was hard to come by. If there was a chance for me to
do things all over again, I would have chosen to handle things in a matured
manner. I would have approach him personally and sort out the related issues
among us. If you were in my shoes, would you have reacted differently to things
that have happened?
