Loveable thing about a peacetime navy, is mission focus and comradare tends to dissapear. Those who are better at 'playing the game' will always beat the 'queen and country' types. And for Canada, our navy hasn't been relevant for a LOOONG time..

Couple of guidelines most of my peers would use, and why:

  1. always tell two friends. One person is a liar, one person is forgetful, and one person never tells the right people. Always tell two freinds. Odds are, one of them hates the other enough to help you point out when they fuck up, one of them likes you enouhg to go to bat for you when someone is trying to burn you, and at the very least, they may not trust each other enough to do something underhanded together.

  2. Watch for those who never send emails. You email a question, he comes to your desk. Uses words like 'don't worry' or 'yeah, not a problem' You'll probably be stupid and get burned the first time till you learn, but whatever. Save all correspondence. To mitigate this, follow up conversation to them with "As per our conversation. [then describe the conversation] send it to them. He will probably not respond, and I would follow previous rule too.

  3. When the blame game comes around over a fuckup, take the lead on it. Everyone else is worried about covering their ass. When you take responsability, you get to shape the narrative. Instead of 'well, he didn 't X' it's now 'this isn't done right. I'll see that this doesn't happen again, and we get solution Y implemented. I'll come see you when I have a concrete plan' Bosses tend to give two shits about whose fault something is (unless they want an excuse to burn someone) and looking for the blame dissapears when someone gives them an answer anyways.

  4. Boss tells you to do something that will step on someones toes? Same as #1. Rule we learned in PLQ. When given conflicting orders, tell the guy in front of you about the conflict. Then if he sticks to it, go to it. Word your written correspondence as if it's a plan, so when the stepped on toes look to make an example, you let him burn himself out on a peer, instead of your ass.

  5. Women really do suck. My department when I deployed in 08 was mixed. Oddly enouhgh, only my watch got padded with women. The other one was a damned party, everyone did great. Mine was a nightmare. Infighting, caddy, gossip, and complete inability to handle complex tasks or stress. Treat them as incompetent until proven otherwise. The ones that are competent? funnily enough they tend to be pleasant to work with as well.

  6. Wanna make a friend? building those cross functional teams? Every department had a perk. the communicators had a VOIP phone, it was like cigarettes in prison. Find the beta schlub who had to call home every foreign port and talk for hours. Bring him into your space 'under escort' and let him use the phone, save his expensive minutes for later. Keep the door locked because your boss hates 'guests' Guarantee that guy will help you when you have to do a RADHAZ and go up to fix an antennae and need the hull techs gear (whom the boss delays lending you) the clerk going the extra mile to unfuck your pay, or sometimes, just the other manager who goes to bat for you in the bun fights (where they rank you among your peers for consideration)

I'll add more as I remember more.