Wasteful Military Spending

The wasteful purchasing we indulge in can be pretty bad sometimes.

At the command I work at now, one of our shops ordered 2 filter washers, needed (and so kept) 1, gave the other to my shop.

We don't use it because the value it adds to our services is less than the cost of getting rid of the waste it generates and another shop already provides that the filter washing service (after all, they ordered the freaking thing in the first place).

For two years ours has been serving as a parts bin for the other one and so it wouldn't work even if we had a use for it (and this after wasting the time and money to construct it).

So we try to get rid of it - CO says no - he's the only one who can authorize us to remove equipment (which came as a surprise, since we've been getting rid of unnecessary/broken junk since I've been here).

So we couldn't get rid of it or leave it as is, we had to spend money to get the thing running again.


Needless to say the other shop doesn't get to cannibalize it any more - we aren't buying their damn spare parts for them. That money comes out of *my* OPTAR.