Bitter

Imagine, if you could for a while, you're standing in the middle of the road in the hot sun, wearing your uniform, carrying a rifle, and your purpose is to stop cars and other vehicles and examine whether the people inside have proper authorisation to enter the installation you're guarding. Boring work, don't you think so? Well, now imagine doing that for 2 years of life. Not just any 2 years of your life, but 2 years of your youth. 2 years of your youth spent looking into vehicles. Would anyone voluntarily accept that?
Everyday as i see the RPs in my base come in to report sick I'm really glad I ended up being a medic and not any other man position. At least by interacting with the doctors and medical personel and equipment I'm learning stuff that is useful eventually when I leave the army. I really can't imagine how I can cope if I was made a RP. I'll probably mope around the whole day bemoaning my fate.
These days, I wonder how my medical centre survived before. The story goes that, our quality check is coming soon hence all the regulars are in a frenzy trying to make the place proper and put up a good show for the auditors, which means more work for us NSF.
Herein lies the paradox. Let's use simple economics to explain this situation. Normally, in an outside organisation, there would be an incentive to work hard as by doing so one can shine and hence maybe gain a promotion or a raise. Switch it back to my context, there are hardly any incentives, as pay is linked to rank, and rank is only gained after you have spent a certain amount of time in the service, thus the incentive to work hard is non-existent. Therefore the rational economic being would choose instead to do nothing in the medical centre as either way he'll still get paid, will eventually get a higher rank and thus pay, and move closer to his ORD date. But however, there exists disincentives such as extras, DB etc to ensure that we still work.
Thus, with such a model in place, it is obvious that a rational economic being would only work to a level that is enough to ensure that he does not get any disincentives, but not so much as he does not get anything for working so hard. In short he'll just do the bare minimum each day, with the ultimate goal of finally working towards his ORD date. This model does not incoporate human behaviour, maybe some people take immense pride when they do things and insist on doing everything well. I used to be one of them, but I figured it's no point. It's a harsh reality that in the army one will never be rewarded tangibly for good work, but when something goes wrong we get it triplefold. So why bother? I rather spend time trying to prevent myself from getting into trouble. It's quite sad really, to let go of my values of "do it well or don't do it at all", but I blame the circumstances solely for turning me this way.
In conclusion, the amount and quality of work is very low. Along comes the quality check, which requires a greater quality of work than what is being done now. So how do the superiors, who's rice bowls are affected by this quality check, ensure that the quality of work increase? Not by giving incentives, as there is no way for thme at their level to increase the pay, but by upping the disincentives, like deducting our hard earned off, thus now the bare minimum level of work is raised.
Any economic student can tell you that incentives work way better than disincentives. Therefore, it is evident that such a system is woefully inefficient. There is no profit motive to wokr hard. In a sense there are parallels to communism and the principal agent problem, both of which are highly inefficient.
Simple economics.
Another bugbear is that rank equals right. I have changed my stance, you want me to respect your rank, act your rank, and understand your men. To all my friends who become doctors and come abck in 7 years time to serve as MOs, never forget 1 thing, you and the medics are the same, all NSFs. Understand that there are many places in this world he'd rather be than where he is now, and treat him like a human being. Be someone worthy of respect. I may follow your orders, but it maybe just because if I don't you can make things difficult for me, that's all. You treat me like a human being, I feel good, I would work hard for you. You treat me like dirt, I'll still do the work for you, but shabbily, but not until the point you can blame me for it.
There are some days I feel like telling them, "look, you're not paying me enough for me to worry about this" but I know if I say that I'll off to DB before an army sergeant can yell "insurbodination" in my face.
Also, to all those people who read until here and are starting to pick up the phone to call the military police to come and arrest me, I hereby state once again that I believe that national service should stay and it serves its purpose. My point is, those people commanding us NSFs should try to understand the NSF's psyche, and thus provide us with an environment where rational economic beings can be fully maximised.
Besides, at the end of the day, you may be the RSM but a lowly coporal could end up being a hotshot lawyer after he ORDs. :)