Khak-hater's position is flawed. The navy has established a process of selecting some people to be promoted and some not. If you don't meet the requirements, you don't get promoted. Simple. So if a 7-yr MM1 will make chief with an EAOS 3 months later, then what's wrong with that? Oh, some poor 14-yr MM1 wants to make chief. Sorry, he's a loser and shouldn't be promoted.
It's not hard at all to meet all the wickets to make chief, so if you haven't made it in under 10 years, then you're either in an overpopulated rate or you haven't done what's necessary.
The Command Career Counselor actually sent out a site-wide email last month when the board selection results came out and accused everyone who made board and were decidedly getting out a few months after making chief as a Buddy ******. A long diatribe about how those people should do the "honorable" thing and pull their chief package. Completely irresponsible. I wrote up a response, but deleted it because it would make waves...and I'm good at making waves, but didn't want to that time.
Your CCC was wrong too. It is not possible to get out a few months after making Chief. You will not be promoted to E-7 unless you have at least 2 years of obligated active duty. The Navy will normally not frock an E-6 to CPO unless he is eligible for the actual promotion - unless the CO does it to screw the guy over (as in one of my earlier posts) or to give the guy a "taste" hoping he will like it enough to stay in. Neither of those two scenarios occurs frequently.
I have seen plenty of PO1's carry around that stupid book for a week only to give it up. When asked why they even bothered to take the exam, the invariably answered that they wanted to put "selected for promotion to CPO" on their resume. That was a cheap way to screw their shipmates. Here's why:
No civilian employer gives a rat's ass about being "selected". Either you performed well as a CPO or you never performed as one at all. Which do you think carries water with employers?
Most do not care even if you were a CPO. They are only reading the part of the resume that says what you were trained for and what you did.
There are HUNDREDS of applicants for every job who turned down a promotion to go elsewhere. It sure doesn't impress me to see that someone is so hard to please that promotions and pay raises are not enough to keep him loyal. ( I might be a lot more understanding about someone passing a military promotion to get out, but many employers won't see it that way. If they were never in, they'll just see you as a climber. This is never positive)
so, having it on the resume isn't justification for doing it.
Also, the Navy may set up its own procedures for selecting people for promotion, but they also have to rely on the assumption that people who seek a promotion actually want a promotion.
If a guy is on the fence, and making CPO will keep him in, he should try.
If a guy wants to stay in anyway, he should try for every promotion he can get.
But, regardless of what the Navy system allows - or even encourages - you are not doing your "duty" by clogging up the promotion process if you have no intention of taking the promotion.
You are not only screwing your buddies by doing this, you are screwing the Navy. You are leaving them short of the number of CPO's that they have billeted. Those guys who missed the cut would have been far better Chiefs than nobody. Considering that those are the people who will end up doing the work of the CPO's without the pay, privileges, or rank of a CPO, it seems that the Navy is going to get them as de-facto CPO's anyway - only less motivated. This would not have happened if only applicants who were intent on getting the anchors took the test. It is called acting in good faith.
good rule of thumb: If you might want to be a Chief Petty Officer (or whatever paygrade comes next) take the test. If you are certain that you don't want it bad enough to stay in the Navy to get it, you have no business taking the test.