What do you do when a soldier refuses to listen to your directions?

Really?...what has happened to my beloved Army...you kick his ass out..after smoke the shit out of him and put his ass on extra duty mopping water in the motor pool while it's raining.

As a nco I would crush his glasses and smoke him/her until I got tired and then recommend him/her for a article 15

I would take him out of formation directly to the next higher in my chain of command and recommend calling MP to come confine this soldier till the AR 15 was ready.
. As a 1SG I never had it happen but I would have called the MP to come get him.

Regulations are regulations! They signed up knowing they had to abide by a higher standard than civilians do. Follow it with a paper trail. Never to late to get em' out for failing to follow regulations. The Army is downsizing anyways.

Step 1) Explain to the soldier that I don't like being "that guy," but I'm really good at being "that guy," so he or she doesn't want me to become "that guy." Repeat the instruction.
Step 2) Upon continued refusal, counsel the soldier under Article 92 and assign corrective action. Something to the tune of three straight Saturdays of battalion staff duty. Assign random shit details during the week in the meantime.

I am not saying what I did was right; it wasn't, fortunately for me I was never caught! My philosophy was you do what I tell you do to because I am the Gunny! Rather than smear or soil my troops record I chose this route to take them into a BEQ room, shut the door and who ever walked out was declared either the winner or the one who was right! Just saying! I didn't have to do that very often!

Look him square in the eye, and calmly state that life is simply a series of choices- he made his, now it's my turn to make mine. Instruct the rest of the formation to "fall out" but stay close by (making it loud and clear that I don't want any witnesses). THEN remove the sunglasses, crush them and explain that I am the H.M.F.I.C. and everyone is the same height in the horizontal position. Also remind him it's not the first time I've been in a fight, won't be the last, I'm not scared of being hit, I will damn well make sure he looks way worse than I do at the end of it. Then give the order for the formation to fall back in- problem solved. A little intimidation goes a long way
S/F

Try issuing Orders, and not Directions.

Laundry bags aboard ship could just about fit even a larger person.. and filled with one and the darkness of night outside the skin of the ship at sea with nothing but the sound and swish of water flowing past... THAT could be a very good way to 'remind' someone of the dangers if they continued to be the shit bird they were.

Not that I ever participated in doing something like that to anyone, of course... just sayin'....

My sailors knew that I would give them the shit jobs and would make sure that their liberty time was curtailed drastically. I very seldom passed disciplinary problems up the chain of command as that would be a failure on my part as the division chief or leading petty officer. To the man they would tell you that Canada's mast was way worse than Captains mast as the Chief could ruin your day for a long time the captain only screwed up your paycheck. We did not fill out a mess of paper work we just took the bull by the horns and got the job done.