This Terminal Lance cartoon reminded me of something which has always bothered me about very important ninjas touring the area.
At the Terminal Lance site, the author laments the soul crushing histrionics Marines endure every time someone of importance has the slightest chance of being in a one kilometer radius of them.
The upcoming visit by the very important ninja is heralded by certain key phrases such as, “working party”, “police call” and “field day the $#@! out of the barracks.” These key phrases kick off a festival of sweeping, swabbing, spitting, polishing, and a general malaise of cleaning things which are already clean, then cleaning them again. Though I fortunately have never been party to it, this historically requires rocks to be painted for no discernible reason.
Upon the announcement, I always sprinted immediately to the Career Planner’s office to remove the pistol from his mouth. He would rather end it all now than be laughed to scorn later when he has to discuss reenlistment options to the battalion. Talking him down also got me out of a full half hour of cleaning something.
As a Staff Sergeant working in an S-3 shop (operations and training), I recall our Major entering the office one day to let us know the Division Commanding General would be in the area.
“Staff Sergeant, I need you to clear all that off your desk and square away your area.” Statements like these cause the average Marine to fantasize about driving sharp objects into their eyes then roughly breaking off whatever is left sticking out.
I have always striven to be better than average with my response: “Absolutely, sir. The General would be pissed if it looked like work was being done in here.” Suffice it to say my fitness report from this particular Major turned out somewhat less than stellar.
Belonging to an institution whose cornerstone leadership trait is integrity, this kind of response to the imminent visit by the very important ninja has always struck me as somewhat dishonest. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly believe in maintaining a well policed area. On occasion I’ll look around my own office and realize I need a flame thrower and a pitchfork to square it away. However, when Marines are ordered to use a floor buffer on a concrete deck, a small part of my soul dies.
Later in my career, I took some perverse pleasure in sending someone’s blood pressure through the roof with remarks like, “What are we doing, fooling someone it’s like this all the time?” It would seem to me if we need the area to be extra special double-secret probation clean when a VIP is nearby, then our daily standard of police was far too low. If we tolerated the overflowing dumpster the rest of the time we were just being inconsistent, lazy leaders.
But what do I know?
One of my favorite general officers was the Vice Commander of our Command. He was known to show up at an overseas operations center (performing a real world mission 24/7), sniff the air and state loudly "I smell a lot of fresh paint and floor wax. Any of you had time to actually do your job?"
I always loathed when functionally brain-dead officers ordered us to clean our spaces for an inspection to his standards (he just transferred from leading the admin offices, to running the engine rooms, while we were 2 months into a 6 month underway deployment) because his white gloves got dirty while inspecting an operating engine room. He ordered us to clean everything for another inspection to happen in 48 hours, and he wanted ALL of his spaces to be perfect.
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Apparently he hadn't quite internalized what "all" of his spaces included. Since this order resulted in me stripping, waxing, and buffing the passageway outside the Engineering office, while the ship was underway, at 3 AM.
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Using a buffing machine, in a narrow corridor, on a ship that is rocking, means that machine is constantly slamming against the sides of the passage. And the Chief Engineer's stateroom was directly opposite from the office.
He stuck his head out from the stateroom, looked at what was happening, did a full-blown face palm, asked us to do what we could to reduce the banging, and then spent almost 45 minutes after breakfast having what was described as a "spirited" discussion AT our new division officer about reasonable expectations of cleanliness in engineering spaces while underway, and a reminder about the consequences of giving general orders to engineers, and not understanding the possibility of malicious compliance.