These Boots Are Made For Walking: Polished Boots Are My Achilles Heel

[thebaldguy]

I shine my shoes and my girlfriend's shoes as well. I can't stand to see scuffed up dress shoes with nicer attire. I see that a lot with the younger guys. Nice shirt, nice tie, nice suit, but the shoes look like they've been shined with a brick. It's just wrong.

Shining shoes with Kiwi polish help protect them from the snow, ice, salt, water, etc. Properly shined shoes last longer and look better.

[Uncle Bubba]

Oh.  I was talking about actually polishing floors.  

I don't know if using liquid shine on the floor was against regs but it was certainly verboten. At Infantry School at Benning and The Zoo in Bamberg we used Johnson's Paste Floor Wax and a buffer. Both places it was a PITA to do, too. I don't know which barracks was older, the wooden ones on Harmony Church or the concrete block ones on Warner Barracks Kaserne, but the gods only know how many coats of wax had been applied to those floors. In Bamberg at least we could get drunk and ride the buffer while we were working on the floors. At Benning it was just recruit drudgery.

[Uncle Bubba]

Army regs were a high brush shine.

Individual units had variations.  For instance, my unit had two levels for BDUs:
1. Fluff & Buff: For use when expecting to do manual labor or something more vigorous than desk-jockeying.  Involved freshly laundered BDUs, straight outta the dryer and brush shined boots.
2. Starch & Spits: For when in garrison and no heavy lifting expected or if expecting contact with those outside the compound.  Heavily starched BDUs and spit shined boots.

Starching BDUs and using an iron hot enough to press them with all that starch in them being against regulations notwithstanding, eh?

"Fluff and Buff", while I didn't call it that, was pretty much my everyday uniform. I did press the uniform, but did it by taking the uniforms out of the dryer before they were fully dry and placing them between the two sheets of three-eighths-inch plywood I had between mattress and bunk. They looked good at morning formation and I didn't have to stress about having to redo a starch job on them after wallowing in dirt/mud/snow (depending on the season) and grease all day. And I was obeying the regs, which haired off several NCOs who wanted everyone dolled up every day.

[Perd Hapley]

I don't know if using liquid shine on the floor was against regs but it was certainly verboten.

Huh?  Don't know what you're talkin' about, Fred.     Whatever we used, I was never very good at it. 

[Uncle Bubba]

Huh?  Don't know what you're talkin' about, Fred.     Whatever we used, I was never very good at it. 

Some of Uncle's more-senior minions would rather that you worked on your floor-polishing than the less-important stuff like weapons handling, marksmanship, map-reading, etc., right? I got some of that, too.

"My gear and weapons are clean and ready, Sergeant! Looking forward to the scheduled MOUT training today!"

"Yeah, but the floor's not shiny enough, Private. Get to work on it. We'll do MOUT some other time" 

*edit*

That one was made up, this one isn't. Not exactly on point but in the same vein.

Midway through REFORGER in '82, on the third day of sitting on a hillside, most of us doing nothing but sitting while the NCOs played high-stakes Hearts, one of my squadmates complained to our buck sergeant squad leader, "I'm tired of just sittin' here, Sarge. When're we gonna do some training?" The response, to raucous laughter from the other NCOs, was, "How 'bout I make you you low crawl up and down this hill for a while? That's training."

[Balog]

That's my objection to all the obsessive compulsive folding/starching/waxing/polishing so beloved of the "old Corps." I'm sure it's traditional and what not, but when I was kicking in doors in Iraq I was glad they chose to invest my training time more into "how to kill people" and less into "how to look pretty for the general".

[RevDisk]

Some of Uncle's more-senior minions would rather that you worked on your floor-polishing than the less-important stuff like weapons handling, marksmanship, map-reading, etc., right? I got some of that, too.

Midway through REFORGER in '82, on the third day of sitting on a hillside, most of us doing nothing but sitting while the NCOs played high-stakes Hearts, one of my squadmates complained to our buck sergeant squad leader, "I'm tired of just sittin' here, Sarge. When're we gonna do some training?" The response, to raucous laughter from the other NCOs, was, "How 'bout I make you you low crawl up and down this hill for a while? That's training."

Ever want to do so many push ups your arms completely fail and you literally can't raise them above shoulder level for three days?   Remember those little bars you hung from your weapon qual level badge?  Rifle, pistol, etc?   Yea.  Locate or fabricate one that says "Buffer" and hang it off your expert marksman badge.  Above rifle.

[Uncle Bubba]

Ever want to do so many push ups your arms completely fail and you literally can't raise them above shoulder level for three days?   Remember those little bars you hung from your weapon qual level badge?  Rifle, pistol, etc?   Yea.  Locate or fabricate one that says "Buffer" and hang it off your expert marksman badge.  Above rifle.