my military occupational specialty

Since I left MEPS on an open contract, I wasn't quite finished with my enlistment process.

Two days after I swore in was November 10, the Marine Corps Birthday. Not too long after that, SSgt Trent told me that at the Birthday Ball he had been talking to a Marine in the Public Affairs field named Sgt Niman and found out you needed an interview to be accepted into Public Affairs, so I said "Get me an interview!"

First I met with Sgt Niman in the Rockville office. He talked to me for a few minutes about being a Combat Correspondent, which is what I wanted to do, and what he had done. (The other choice is Broadcast Journalist) I told him about working on various school newspapers, being on the yearbook staff, how I liked to write and take photographs. Then he handed me a 100 question test and told me I had to get 80 correct to pass.

At first it looked easy: catching grammar errors, spotting sentence fragments, and hunting for spelling mistakes. The usual copy-editing stuff I liked dealing with. But it soon turned on me...semi-colon or comma, comma or no comma, comma in wrong place, freakishly obscure grammar errors, and things so odd I wasn't sure if I'd heard of them before. In the middle of it I overheard Sgt Niman talking on the phone and he was saying that I was the smartest person he'd ever interviewed. That made me grin before I continued staring at the placement of double sets of quotation marks.

I finally decided that I was done and figured I had missed about 15 questions. I was looking through it one more time when I realized I had written on the papers he told me NOT to write on, so I quickly tried to erase my scribbles as best I could. He graded it and said something like, "It figures." I had scored 80. He told me he usually tells people they have to score 70. I didn't know whether to be happy or not.

Passing that test and getting a good report from him got me an interview with another higher-up named Captain Devine. That interview over the phone also apparently went well because even though he never said, "You're in" he did say, "Do well in the school and remember you'll be a Marine mixed in with other service members so act accordingly..." All I had to do now was wait for the paperwork to go through the proper channels and get into the system to be official, which happened at the very beginning of January 2003. All I had to do was sign my name on the MOS contract papers and I was done.

There's a saying we heard many times during bootcamp and MCT that is used when plans change and it shows how Marines are expected to be flexible: Semper Gumby. My first experience with this arrived just a couple days before I left for bootcamp. My recruiters told me that someone hadn't checked to make sure there was an open space in Public Affairs for my recruiting district. There wasn't one, and that meant I had to pick a new MOS. SSgt Trent was a 3043 Supply Admin Clerk and the way he described it sounded like it might be challenging but fun at the same time. It seemed like it would be more interesting than many of the other choices available (cook, postal clerk) so I went with it.

Gunny Babb and SSgt Trent both told me that while I was at bootcamp they would keep an eye out for any openings in Public Affairs and that also while I was at MCT I could possibly get my MOS switched back. As it turned out, neither scenario worked out, even though the Chief of Public Affairs/OccFld Sponsor, Master Gunnery Sergeant Turner told me himself there were still boat spaces open! The people at the recruiting command who could give one to me just didn't want to, because I had willingly picked another MOS. Ah well... What I could have done was refused to go to boot camp because they had broken my contract but I was ready to go so I just went.


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In my MOS number, 3043, "30" is the field and "43" is the specialty identifier. I picked 3043 Supply Admin but later I found out that I wasn't supposed to pick a specialty, only the field. I got lucky and they gave me the specialty I requested anyway. Here is the official Supply field description:



OCCUPATIONAL FIELD 30
SUPPLY ADMINISTRATION AND OPERATIONS


The supply administration and operations OccFld includes personnel in the areas of ground supply administration and operations, warehousing, preservation and packaging, hazardous materials storage operations handling, fiscal accounting and purchasing, and contracting procedures per the Federal Acquisition Regulations.

Qualifications required include personal computer operations. Duties involve administrative and government specific procedures and the use of material handling equipment in the movement and storage of supplies and equipment.

In all MOSs within the OccFld, technical skills are required regarding military and commercial specifications on supplies and equipment being procured, stored, and maintained. These skills and duties must be performed in garrison, contingency and combat environs.

These Marines are required to understand and apply operation of various multimedia, data scanning, and retrieval devices; office and warehouse management procedures; automated information services data entry and external systems interface procedures; asset accounting functions; financial budget formulation; management and analysis; and the proper handling, storage, and disposal of hazardous material.

Formal schooling is provided to Marines entering the OccFld. Types of entry level jobs include work as automated information services supply stock control clerk (retail and wholesale), warehouse clerk, packaging specialist, fiscal clerk, and personal computer operator.


Primary MOSs

MOS - Job Title - Authorized Ranks

3043 - Supply Administration and Operations Clerk - MGySgt to Pvt
3044 - Purchasing and Contracting Specialist - MGySgt to Pvt
3051 - Warehouse Clerk - MGySgt to Pvt
3052 - Packaging Specialist - MGySgt to Pvt


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What a Supply Clerk Actually Does


Below in plain English is what went on in my supply shop in 7th Communication Battalion. My unit in Albany, the Supply Chain Management Center, is so high up in the supply chain we didn't usually do anything we learned about in the basic school. In Iraq, I did a lot of the same things I did in the shop in 7th Comm.


Our office is basically in charge of everything our battalion owns and orders, which also means we are in charge of the battalion's money. My MOS learns a little bit of everything at our MOS school, but most of it we learn on the job once we get to our unit. Also, our battalion is big enough that everyone pretty much works in one area of our MOS instead of dealing with all of it. Otherwise our brains would explode.

My main job is the DASF section. I order and keep track of all the battalion's repair parts. When, for example, Motor T needs a new tire for one of their Humvees, someone there writes up an order form and gives it to me. I keypunch it, and at the end of the day I send all the orders out via a special website to the main supplier on the island. If they don't send it, they move the order to a supplier in the United States. The supplier, whether it's on the island or not, then sends out status on each requistion to let us know if the part is backordered, cancelled, or shipped. I keep an eye on all the orders and when problems arise, try to fix them. Each backordered part is supposed to have a shipping date and sometimes the shipping date will come and go and nothing happens. Sometimes they will say it shipped but we never receive it or they ship a different amount than what we ordered. I also have to make sure that each section has enough money left for the quarter to afford what they want to order. When the gear arrives in our warehouse I do the receipting transactions and help make sure everyone gets what they ordered.

Other sections in my office that are also part of my MOS:

MAL: A list of everything the battalion owns, like satellites, trucks, computers, and rifles. One person in our office adds and subtracts gear, orders new gear we are authorized to have and makes sure things are disposed of properly when they break.

CMR: Each section of our battalion has a list of the gear that belongs to them called a CMR and one person in that section is responsible for all that gear. (Responsible Officer) An example would be Motor T, whose CMR has all their trucks, water bulls, Humvees, and trailers on it. The CMR clerk is in charge of moving gear from one CMR to another, changing the names of the responsible officers when necessary, and conducting reconciliations. A reconciliation is when the responsible officer and the CMR clerk verify that the CMR is correct and fix discrepancies.

Fiscal: Our fiscal clerks are in charge of the battalion's money as well as purchasing of anything that I don't take care of in my DASF section. The government credit card holders' accounts and payments are managed here. They also take care of buying things like office supplies and plane tickets, basically anything that isn't a repair part.

Float: They didn't teach float at all at school. Generally, the gear they manage is very expensive and when it breaks we aren't allowed to dispose of it and/or able to fix it at our level. The float clerks' job is to shuffle the parts back and forth between "Main Float" who supplies the gear and our maintenance section who puts them back together.