Is this stupidity, or the smart thing to do?

[Hawk200]

I wear my flight cap with a little "fishtail" in it....

Always looked like a ducktail to me....

[NIN]

All this time I thought it was that head was shaped weird.  Even if it's not the reason, your head is shaped weird.  Kinda like Beavis....

<beavis>
"Shut up, a$$munch!"
</beavis>

(Full disclosure: I've known Leo since we were cadets together in 1981.  I get to use my Beavis voice on him...)

[SDF_Specialist]

I know this gets brought up every time we have a uniform wear thread, BUT... Is it so frigging hard to wear uniforms properly, ....

Probably a lot harder than some might think. There was the Air Force major on CNN that had an epaulet on backwards (the leaf was toward his collar on one side).

I was in an Air Force tech school, and one morning our instructor came in. I looked at him for a second, and then said "Uh, Sergeant...How many stripes do you really need?". He had a shirt on with stripes sewn on the sleeve, and had put shoulder marks on the epaulets too. He glanced down, started taking off the shoulder marks, and replied "Guess I think I need more when I get dressed in the dark." We laughed about it, he was good natured. He was actually one of my favorite instructors.

But little slipups do happen.

He wasn't a Major, he was a Lieutenant Colonel. Talk about insult to injury.

[NIN]

I can't help but find uniform infractions on other people.  I don't know why, I just find myself looking over someone's uniform when I see it.

I've been busted in the past leering at a uniform violation when in conversation with somebody.  It's like fixating on a gigantic pimple on their nose.  People who know how I am will pick up on it and say "is there something wrong with my uniform?"

Sometimes I can't help myself, and I just blurt it out, interrupting whatever conversation that person was in.  I'm like the cadet that corrected NIN in front of others.  I've gotten more tactful over the years, but sometimes I just walk into the room, and I see something so obvious, I feel compelled to announce it. 

As long as it is done with proper courtesy, most people appreciate the correction.

Many years ago, I was at my first NH Wing conference only having just moved there a few months before. Married life was taking its toll on me (I had a "middle management" problem with the wife pregnant with our first, if you take my meaning..) and I was still wearing the old-style service coat that I had bought when I was around 25 and a LOT thinner.

So I'm in a group of people that included the MA Wing commander, Eric Schollman, and Curt Lafond, then our CP director at Wing (now Chief of Cadet Programs at NHQ) and we're shooting the breeze when I notice Col Schollman edging behind Curt on the other side of this little circle of people, sort of hiding behind him, putting Curt between us.

"Sir, what the hell are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm looking at those buttons on your service coat and when they come flying off I want to be out of the line of fire."

Talk about embarassing (yeah, I'd been putting on some weight, and yeah, at the time I was over the weight standards, but geeez...)

[SDF_Specialist]

Gee NIN, that comment seemed a little uncalled for. RHIP.

[O-Rex]

I love to tell this story:

We had a group command & staff call on a military base, and one individual was wearing white athletic socks with 1550's ( ! )  We break for lunch and another member comes back with a PX bag, and before the meeting resumes, pulls the offending member aside and asks, "when is your birthday?"  White Sox answers "Oh, it was last month."  The other member hands him the bag, with a pair of black $1 dress socks and says "happy belated birthday."  White socks disappear, and the world went back to spinning on it's proper axis.

[topsecret]

What did you do?

The way I learned to do it on active duty was the same for those senior and junior to me.  Ask for a moment of their time to "ask them a question," and then privately and politely let them know.  Not in a gotcha manner, not condescendingly, but let them know.

We're all teammates regardless of grade.  I'd want my teammate to let me know if I was out of regs (be it a missing nametag, unzipped fly, etc).  Any mature person should want to know as well.