What do platoon leaders do?

I think today is a good example.

I left the house today at 5:30am to be the officer-in-charge of a company PT test. While everyone was doing their events, I manned the backup stopwatch.

Once everyone had finished their pushups and situps, we got positioned for the two-mile run. Because we use a half-mile stretch of road near the railhead for this, there needed to be people at both ends of the route. For this event, my job was to stand at the far end and call out the time as people ran by.

After this finished at 8:30, everyone was released to "conduct personal hygiene." I went to the gym and got ready for work.

At 9:00, I went to the company headquarters to attend the taping of the people who exceeded their maximum height-weight ratios and get some face time with the company commander. I'm due for my quarterly review, but it's hard for my commander to schedule times, so it's on us to pop in from time to time and check.

From there I walked over to the battalion headquarters to turn in some forms. My ORB (Officer Record Brief -- a kind of formatted military resume) is still pretty sparse, so I turned in what paperwork I had on my degrees and military schooling.

By 10:15, the commander still hadn't come back, so I went over to the motor pool to sign off on the "5988" forms -- the ones that say what's wrong with what trucks -- so that they could be sent over to our Maintenance Platoon for repairs.

At 11:30 I went to lunch. I had a 1:15pm appointment at the WIC office, so I drove over there, then called my wife to give the directions. In the meanwhile, I had lunch -- two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and an apple -- and then read some from "Team of Rivals," the book I'm in the middle of.

We finished the WIC appointment at 2:15; I saw my wife and son off and then went back to the motor pool to prep a memo for one of my soldiers who's requesting leave. Because that soldier is overweight, a memo has to accompany his leave request detailing why he should be able to take the vacation he's earned (yeah ... *sigh*).

After that, I went back to the company headquarters to turn in the memo and pick up a bag of aluminum cans for recycling. (As the Recycling Officer, I turn in the cans for 25¢ a pound and give the money to the Family Readiness Group.) I checked up on the APFT scorecards and fixed a couple of errors, then check on the commander again.

The boss was still not back yet, so I went to the PX at 3:00pm to pick up a few things.

When I got back, the commander was in, but wasn't available, so we arranged for me to come back Thursday morning (I'll be volunteering at the school tomorrow).

Since there was nothing else for me to work on, I went over to the local shoppette where I snacked on some beef jerky and a Coke while I studied Korean. From there, I went home.

So that's it -- I drove around, did miscellaneous stuff, and put 47 miles on my car (the commute being less than half of it).

And that's kind of what I do on a daily basis.