I *completely* understand that there needs to be a hierarchy, but there seems to be a big discontinuity between these different classifications. When I was in the Navy, I noticed this extended to eating accommodations, and even how ships were built (different hallways for enlisted and officers to walk down). This may have made sense “back in the day”, but why does this separation continue to exist today?
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The Navy is way extra on the separation of Officer and Enlisted more than any other branch. The Army for example is way more relaxed when it comes to that. We may not hang out together on the weekends but it’s pretty normal to eat, train, and work around your Commander. If you’ve got a high speed one anyway.
Historically, officers were aristocrats and enlisted were commoners, so logically each was treated the same inside the military as they were in general society.
Militaries haven’t changed with the times because they’re probably the most conservative organizations around, with a huge emphasis on following traditions.
In the US Army this separation is mostly gone, but it still exists because various reasons that I will oversimplify as ‘professionalism’.
Officers are encouraged to keep a social circle that isn’t the people in their command. This sounds bad, but Officers have a large degree of control over the careers of enlisted. You can imagine that even the perception of nepotism is bad.
My detachment joined another for a deployment, and the leadership of this other organization did not keep this separation, and the nepotism was so blatant that everyone referred to it as ‘the club’. If you were in the club (aka it’s members liked you), you had all the opportunities. If you were not, you only had opportunities until you competed with someone in the club. And as far as I could tell, ‘membership’ required respecting the nepotism. So even if they liked you, if they didn’t think you’d perpetuate the will of ‘the club’, you were out. I would not recommend this style of running things, it caused many problems.
You don’t really see it until Colonel rank. I’m an E6 and will talk to the captains and majors as bros. The ass kissing comes when you see the Colonel, as they’re often times, your commander aka CEO.
Other nations though than The States, enlisted are peasants and can’t do anything unless an officer tells them to.
The modern justification (rightly or wrongly) is to maintain and reinforce the chain of command.
It’s not just officers vs. enlisted. Even among officers there’s separation, e.g., between commanding officers and staff officers.
And among enlisted staff, there’s separation between e.g., sergeants and, say, PFCs or other enlisted.
Basically sailors / soldiers / airmen from different ranks are highly discouraged from mingling and socializing with each other.
The theory is, maintaining separation prevents favoritism and other issues under the stress of war. A commander might be hesitant to send a favorite officer or enlisted to dangerous situations. A sergeant might single out an enlisted buddy he often drink beers with over others.
Even a *perception* of favoritism can lead to dangerous situations in times of conflict.
Even in private-sector businesses, you’ll see a separation between management and non-management staff, in terms of their compensation, perks, privileges, and how they comport themselves. It’s just socially awkward to be in a supervisory role to a bunch of people, and also act like you’re “Just one of the gang”. Sooner or later, you’re going to be in a position where you have to force your subordinates to do something unpleasant. You don’t need to be an asshole about it, but maintaining a separation can help lubricate those interactions.
Because military outfits place a much higher emphasis on *obedience* than you need at Dunder Miflin, it’s all the more critical to instill that sense of rigor and separateness. At the end of the day, these are tried and tested leadership techniques which have worked with real humans for centuries, for men quite literally facing down death.
Only the US navy could possibly afford to build ships with officer’s and enlisted hallways, my lord.
Every other navy in the world they share largely the same spaces, except perhaps dining/messing and quarters.
Wait, sorry: they build ships with different corridors? That seems …. impractical!
Officers and enlisted personnel have fundamentally different roles. A warship is a great example.
A helmsman (an enlisted sailor) turns the wheel to move the rudder, but a bridge officer (Officer of the Watch/Officer of the Deck/Conning Officer) issues the order that determines which way the enlisted member will turn the helm.
Likewise, it is often an enlisted member that presses the button to activate a weapon system that fires a missile or gun, but the officer gives the order.
Why is this?
Imagine that the ship runs aground or its missile or shell hits a civilian airplane or ship? Who should stand trial and face repercussions for the error?
Well, the officer does. Because *responsibility* for the decisions that led to the incident falls on officers, not enlisted people.
If the person actually operating the ship’s helm or weapons is also responsible for the outcome of that action, they would be too distracted to *also* perform their task as efficiently as is possible.
While enlisted people carry out most of the tasks that a military performs, officers are responsible for the outcome of these tasks, even if they have no physical hand in them, and *even* if a poor outcome is due solely to an error or omission by a soldier/sailor under them.
This frees enlisted personnel of ethical and cognitive burdens related to decision-making so they can just focus on their tasks.
Decision-making responsibility gives officers their authority to command their teams. Thus enlisted members need not consider what action is needed, or whether they will face repercussions when someone makes the wrong decision. They can just do their job.
Unless an order is manifestly unlawful or an enlisted member’s conduct is grossly negligent, the enlisted member must always obey an order and the officer is always responsible for the order’s outcome.
To give officers the room to comfortably contemplate their decisions, their operational accommodations are usually less spartan than for enlisted personnel.
In the US, the Navy is on a whole ‘nother level where it comes to officer-enlisted relations. The US Navy derives its traditions from the 18th century Royal Navy, which did have completely separate treatment of officers and enlisted. The US Army, in contrast, derives its traditions from the Prussian Army, and was much more utilitarian. (The American Revolution is right around the time that the Prussians were dropping the whole powdered wig thing and instead expecting soldiers to be field-ready as soon as they woke up rather than having to spend an hour doing their hair and make-up.) That’s not to say there isn’t a separation, but it is far less pronounced, and more for a reason (to avoid conflicts of interest and favoritism) than tradition. I can’t say why the USN has not updated its traditions, but probably because the officers like it that way.
As for prisoners of war, there are actually laws (Geneva Convention) as to how POWs are to be treated, and those laws are international and were developed at a time when officers were often aristocrats, so it was expected if one aristocratic officer captured another, they would get together and dine together and share a sherry and be chums. Whereas the enlisted were just supernumeraries in their story. That is a bit of a caricature, but the laws were made by officers, who had it in their best interests to make sure they were well treated if captured.
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