Let's talk about food. The Air Force contracts out all details for food. They also charge a la carte rates (if you are paid the stipend, aka BAS,to procure your own meals.) The Air Force holds the contractors to the contract AND the quality of the food. I include the and because usually government contractors are held only to the contract and anything not mentioned in the contract (such as tasty food) is not legally binding. The Air Force listens to its people when they compliment OR complain about the quantity, quality, or anything else about their meal service. More importantly, the Air Force ACTS on these comments.

The Army on the other hand, insists on using its own personnel to procure, prepare, serve, and supervise meals in its dining facilities (usually, rightly so, called "Mess Halls".) Now I know that all the branches of the Army cannot be electronics maintenance but a mess sergeant should know how to clean up his equipment. A few short years ago (when we still had the Skill Qualification Test or SQT), most of the mess sergeants in my unit failed the sections on sanitization of their cooking equipment. HHHMMMMMM..... Anyway, The Army, just looks at the numbers. X number of dollars for Y number of meals for Z number of soldiers. They pay lip service to complaints about quality or tastiness through the "Dining Facility Council", a group of soldiers selected from the units supported by the dining facility, whom the soldiers in the unit can address their grievances to and who, in turn, can pass those grievances on to the dining facility council for action. Unfortunately, the unit commander and or Sergeant Major is also on the council, and they cannot take these complaints seriously because that would mean that there is something wrong in their unit. Of course, their unit is perfect and anyone who says anything different from that view is a dirty slacker, a malcontent, or a dirty leg (actually, most Sergeant Majors in the army could not use the word malcontent because it has more than two sylables.)