Not that big of a deal, but for LCpl, Cpl, and Sergeant, I never did a promotion ceremony. I knew the promotions were coming, so once I saw it hit MOL I just put on the new chevrons and rolled with it. When people would ask, I would just make up, "Oh we already did a small promotion ceremony first thing this morning with the Detachment" or whatever. Nobody thinks twice about it when you're confident.

When I picked up Sergeant, one dude from another platoon kept asking 3-4 times that day, "Are you SURE that we did a promotion ceremony for you? Who did it? Who all went? Why wasn't I there? Where's your warrant?" And I put it to rest with, "How the fuck else would I be wearing Sergeant chevrons? Admin has my promotion warrant, I gotta go down and get it."

Staff Sergeant was a different beast, my Captain made sure that there was a big company-wide formation, so everybody knew, kind of hard to skate out of that one. I got a big framed promotion warrant, so it was pretty cool.

At least I actually earned my rank. Knew a dude who needed to level up from tan belt in MCMAP to get promoted, so he ended up just buying, first a grey belt, then green, then brown. Over the course of a few months, he would just put on the next higher belt, then go down to Admin and complain that it wasn't in his MOL. He would wait a few weeks until someone else was working, then he changed his belt and went down to complain again. Tan belt to brown without a single MCMAP course, refresher, whatever.