Wow, this devolved into a pretty divided arguement. What's wrong with the majority meeting the required standard and reserving the extra practice/level of effort for the few occasions where a much higher ceremonial guard standard is required? It's not really an all/nothing event horizon.
It's pretty easy and ingrained to do the basics, and doesn't take much effort to maintain your personal standard and put in the basic effort into your own drill movements, but group movements and parades are definitely something that takes time and practice.
Sometimes you specifically get told not to make a big deal of it and get this messed up dogs breakfast of ceremonial drill, but the orders come down from the stratosphere thinking they are doing people a favour. In my experience those are always a nightmare, as you spend more time figuring out some half assed thing rather then just doing it by the book (which is easier because you've already spent a bunch of training time practicing it for these kind of occasions).
Personally think there is definitely value in learning drill, and it's a great tool on basic to get people used to working with their wingers, rotating people into taking charge of a small group and other really useful skills that are generally useful in any walk of life, but can be critical in military taskings. Like anything else, builds muscle memory, so grateful that 15 years out of basic, I can still manage to bash out the fundamental movements with no real prep and doesn't take much to do it properly. It would be ugly if I got thrown into a parade position tomorrow morning and had to call out drill movements as that needs practice to maintain, but basic was also good at learning how to cover for you winger and do the movement on the right foot or whatever if they made a mistake.
Think we've generally got a pretty good balance in requiring people to maintain their own dress and deportment to the standard and find it pretty straightforward. All professional workplaces have a standard and ours isn't particularly onerous. We give people the uniforms, and all they need to do is some basic groooming. There are some who make the arguement that "just meeting the standard" means you are a bag of hammers, which most would agree doesn't make sense. I generally don't trust anyone who consistently is unable to meet a basic dress standard, but also wonder am suspect of anyone that can remain a textbook example at all times during an extended grind where everyone is pitching in to get it done (like that one person who is suspiciously clean and comfortable after the push to get things done so you can secure the ship after coming alongside when you were landing garbage, doing repairs, cleaning stations etc).
As an aside, the argument about neatly trimmed vs daily shaving with a beard makes no sense to me. If you have a moustache, you still shave everyday, so logically follows that if you have a beard, you should still do your cheeks and neck on the daily. Not going to lose sleep over it, but a lot of Philadelphia lawyering on the go there as a result of the imprecise wording and lack of clarity, so they should probably fix that so that all units are following one standard. Enjoy the shaving routine and hate throat stubble anyway, so not a big deal for me, but seems to raise some pretty strong feelings on both sides of the divide.
The best way for a group to move from point A to point B is en masse. Doing drill. Not looking unorganized and like amateurs. I wanted to avoid saying this but if you don’t want to do drill or object to it vehemently then find another line of work.
