DA Civilians, Contractors, Liaisons and Local Nationals......

I'm a DAC, MSG (Join to see), and I know my place. In other words, I'm not equivalent to anything and nobody has to salute me! :-)

I guess there are clowns all over the world. I've seen my share on active duty, in the civilian ranks, contractors, and to a lesser extent among LNs.

MSG (Join to see)

As with everything else, there are all kinds of people in the world, some good, some bad. Military personnel, DACs and contractors are no different.

When I was active duty, I had no real use for DAC or contractors, especially if I thought they were filling jobs that I thought military personnel should be filling. I had no real reason for that, it was just my personal opinion/preference.

Now that I am on the other side of that aisle as a major provider of contract services and personnel to the government/military, I have a totally different opinion and attitude about it. Duh... However, I still firmly believe there are positions that only military should fill.

I would say that after having served for 23 years, and having been a contractor for 10 years, there is goodness and badness among all categories in the workforce, and that includes our military SMs.
The whole "equivalency" issue makes for great stories and good debate. I knew some spouses who thought they should be afforded the same military courtesies as their military spouse...I'm sure many of you have heard the story about "I'm Mrs COL so and so" or " I am Mrs SGM so and so."
Yes...some of them really feel that they deserve to be saluted because of their "equivalency"...it always makes me chuckle.

In my last assignment I worked closely with DAC and contractors as well as the Senior Civilian Representative (SCR) and his staff.
In general and for the most part they were honest, competent and had great work ethic.

There were exceptions, I made life as difficult for them as I could... the others I used and supported best I could to get the job done.

My experience with DAC, contractors and GS position fillers in garrison, well, etiquette rules here at RP limit my ability to accurately state my opinion for many of them.

MSG (Join to see) I have the best of both in my shop, one was an E7 of 12 years of service, great career I must say. She is the most helpful person you could ever meet. In the other side I have a retired O5... I won't ad anything in that side.

I'm on the flip side of this discussion, but as DOD/DON Civilian, I give the Marines that I work with regularly the respect they deserve. Although I will say it can be frustrating as a Retired E7 having to explain to an Active Duty E7 that I work WITH you...not FOR you :)

I have worked with some good DACs and contractors over the years, and then I have worked with some real asshats as well. While I was the NCOIC of the Tank Driver Simulators at FT. Knox, I had 22 DAC Instructor/Operators and one Training Specialist (training record keeper). Of the 23 I only ever had problems with one of the Instructors and the records tech. The Instructor was an older gentleman who had over 50 years service as a Soldier/DAC and was a general pain in the ass for a nice guy lol, and the record tech was a KYARNG MSG and didn't like that he had a SFC as his boss at his "civilian" job and we butted heads a lot while I was the NCOIC. Both were good workers, just general pains in the ass.
While I was the OPs NCOIC in Kuwait for ASG-Ku, I had a DAC Chemical specialist, GS-5 I believe, that thought way too highly of himself and it took the Asst DPTMS, a GS-11, to help him understand that I was in fact his boss as I ran the EOC and the OPs shop. Contractors have ben hit or miss, most of them earn their extremely high pay and work their jobs....others, especially a lot of veterans, do sometimes "think" that they ARE government employees and you get all kinds of douchebaggery from them. Local nationals in Iraq that I worked with or "employed" mostly were in it for whatever they could get out of the unit they worked for or the individuals they came in contact with. I had 15 or so interpreters that I was in charge of during OIF-III as the S-2 NCO for my BN, most of them worked hard and did a good job for us, hell they worked their butts off after I took over and started treating them with a modicum of respect that most others did. They wanted a better country for themselves and their families, most every night I would eat with them in their little compound on the FOB and shoot the crap and socialize with them. A few were only there to get whatever they could for as little work as possible, and they didn't last too long once I caught on to them or the company command team would inform me of their performance. So, pretty much like everything else we deal with as service members, there are good and bad in all these categories.

MSG Danny Ibarra - wow is all I can say about that full of...DAC