Bad Billeting Made Worse

Even before I switched tents to get a bottom bunk, I had the opportunity to move to a bottom bunk in a hard-billet, transient dorm room. I chose not to move. The transient dorm rooms are 8-man/4-bunkbeds open-bay rooms down a long hallway; they would be proper rooms, but they don’t have a fourth wall. The main reason I chose not to move was because there was actually less space and storage in the transient dorm room. There are four bunk beds in probably a 12-by-12 room. Instead of a fairly good-sized footlocker, they have thin, half-height wall lockers, which are too short to hang anything and too tall and without shelves to stack t-shirts and underwear. Instead of an electrical outlet per bunk, they have one electrical outlet with a six-plug power strip (most having power strips plugged into them, which is a fire hazard). When I checked out the room previously, there were multiple plugs waiting their turn to be plugged in. Instead of a front door with a cipher lock that provides some security, they don’t even have a door. Everyone’s extra bags of stuff (I have three full A-bags of stuff that doesn’t fit into my footlocker) just sits out in the hallway of an unsecured building. There were plans 2 months ago to have wireless Internet in the transient dorms, but while the other dorms already have it, the transient dorms currently do not. The bathrooms are inside, but they’re actually smaller, too (the toilet stalls are ridiculous; I paid a visit when I was trying to decide whether to move and while I was seated on the toilet, my knees literally touched the door and when I was pulling up my pants, I hit my head on the stall wall. I felt like Mr. Bean in there.) So the colonels get 2-man rooms, the lieutenant colonels get 3-man rooms, and majors and below get 8-man open bays. And staying in the tents “is not an option.” So they know we have better living standards in the tents, but are making us move out. Oh, and guess when we have to move…24 December, Christmas Eve! After 7 weeks of wishfully looking forward to moving up somewhat, we (O-4s and below) are actually moving down. And now I have to hope and scheme to get a bottom bunk again. It’s beyond frustrating. I’m actually a little angry and don’t know the positive that I’m supposed to focus on. Man, I’ll have to pray extra hard for patience tonight.