The Importance of Keeping Appointments

Article 86 of the Uniform Code Of Military Justice. This Article covers Point and Place of Duty. That means from PT formation to COB, that is where you are supposed to be. What a lot of Soldiers do not understand that includes appointments made by them or someone else. We have appointment times, formation times and many other start times that dictate we will be there. If a Convoy has a time of fifteen hundred hours and the Soldiers decide to show up late because they did not feel like getting ready on time people could die. If they rolled out on time, they may have avoided an ambush.
It sounds extreme but time management plays a critical role in the Army. When you make an appointment that spot has been reserved for you. That means if you have been given the last slot someone else is going to have to wait for another one to open up. This could be one day or one month. And because you missed it someone else is still going to have to wait when they could have had that spot and been there. If you are going to miss the appointment or cannot make it due to mission or other circumstances they do allow us to cancel the appointment with in twenty four hours.
The Army allows us to make appointments for whatever we need. Be it for a medical appointment, house goods, CIF, Smoking Sensation or whatever we need these recourses are available to us. But when Soldiers start missing appointments theses systems start to become inefficient. What a lot of Soldiers do not realize is that when they miss an appointment it does not just affect them; it affects the entire chain of command from the Squad Leader all the way to the First Sgt.