Had a brand new commander.

We kept having to work weekends, and would get no time off after. Some of us would work 20 days straight. When told that we should be getting time off at some point, his reply was that we were soldiers 24/7. When enough people complained, he then put the blame on the squad leaders for not requesting the time off.

He would make everyone stay until 1700 to do formations for retreat. Average age of our unit was 30s with graduate degrees as the norm. Past commanders would let us go when we were done for the day, as long as our stuff was taken care of.

He started an investigation on a Soldier who was brought in on a suspected DUI when he fell asleep at the wheel. SM was overworked and under the limit, and wasn't charged with anything by the police. He brought in the report to show, but it didn't matter. CO flagged the Soldier, started singling him out for the smallest infractions, and moved that Soldier to another unit while under investigation.

He regularly cussed us all out for not meeting some arbitrary standards, routinely cussed out the acting first sergeant. He came down hard on me and initiated a chapter for failure to thrive when I was having mental health issues while going through a divorce. Battalion threw out the packet on it being unfounded, (I had a stack of character references, including multiple SFCs, and even the 1SG called on my behalf) but it took a year. It delayed awards, promotions, classes, etc, for a full year. I had been in for four years at that point. No one else sought behavioral health, someone reported him to the chaplain for bullying, and it became a shitshow. He apparently also insisted on assigned parking spaces.

New commander came in, got rid of nearly all of this, to literal standing ovation. From what I hear, it's an amazing unit again.

Treat your troops like adults, and they'll move the world for you.