

The Infamous List of Things I Will Not Miss When I Retire

by Dennis McGinn Milk that tastes like it came from a cow with mad cow disease. Milk that has a shelf life greater than that of a nuclear bomb or that would not evaporate if placed on the sun, has to have things in it that are not good for you. Having my clothes inspected on a hanger to ensure that I know how to use a washing machine and an ironing board. Being told when to be home at night. Having to find not one, but two people I do not like to go out on liberty with. The smell of some guy's rack who believes the shower is an annual requirement. Staying up all night to watch a blank radar console. Fresh water wash-downs right after it stops raining. People who contantly bitch about issues and do nothing to try and fix them. Trying to store everything you own in 4 cubic feet of space. Laundry that comes back soaking wet. Where is the QA in laundry? Haze-gray anything. Having to hunt down a roll of toilet paper any time you have to go after 11am. Having to assemble 10 people to get something done that can be accomplished by two. The slowest internet on the planet. Bill Gates couldn't design one slower if he tried. Meat that has more fat than a liposuction clinic at the end of the day. Breakfast sausage that tastes like it came from Hannibal Lecter's restaurant. Fried chicken, baked chicken, grilled chicken, dry-ass chicken, chicken salad, chicken ala-king, chicken noodle soup, chicken adobo, chicken nuggets, chicken patties, bar-b-que chicken, chicken ribs, chicken teriyaki, chicken gumbo, chicken stir-fry, chicken stew, chicken ravioli, and that's just for openers. Chicken twenty times a week. Colonel Sanders has nothing on this place. Hamburger and Hot Dog meals with no buns. This is Home Economics 101 people. Hot dogs with the word Dingo anywhere on the box should have been rejected immediately. Only putting out butter when there is no bread. When bread is available, all you ever hear is "nobody broke out the butter." Having to sleep in a space that smells like a gas station restroom everytime the ship takes on fuel. Otherwise it just smells like a restroom. Having to build a levee around your rack to keep from flooding it out every time they ballast the ship. Sleeping in a space the size of a two car garage with 65 other people. Not being able to sit up in your rack. Sleeping in a rack with less space than the Humane Society would consider acceptable for a German Shepard. Animals have more rights than Sailors. People who put on the same underwear and clothes they had on before they took a shower. People who are 'qualified' to stand a watch based on their rank and not on ability. People who are 'not-qualified' to stand a watch because of their rank versus their ability. The Morale Supression Training Team (MSTT). The fact that if 20% of what is in the Plan of The Day is accomplished, it is considered 'fantastic.' People who leave their stuff out and then complain when it disappears. Locks keep honest people honest, morons. The Chinese laundry skyline at the foot of the ladder in CC2 Berthing. The fact that the Navy has always separated people that they should keep and kept people that they should have separated. Moldy bread. I never buy more bread than I can eat before it goes bad. Conversely, we never run out of chicken. Standing Weapons Control Officer when I have no weapons available. Five hundred plus movies in the ship's inventory yet they repeatedly play only about 20 of them. Any movie about the inner city with the word 'Friday' in it. Having to get permission to go to the bathroom. Going to the bathroom before Quarters in the morning, only to have them tell me that I need to do a urinalysis test.....right now! Seventeen people having to share one computer and no printer. Forty seven different types of laser printers on board and toner cartridges for two of them, and those are all broken. CSs who think making waffles for breakfast means 'thaw them out.' That I can not buy a soda or candy bar on the mid-watch. That the ship has a seventeen year supply of Lady Speed Stick, 30 boxes of boxer shorts that barely fit a Chihuahua, but nothing that people really want to buy.....like cheese in a can! All the shirts in the ship store are XXXXXXXL. Who thought that buying the same number of each size shirt was a good idea? Ship store sells tax-free cigarettes 75,000 miles from land that are more expensive than the Navy Exchange on the beach. Conversely who thought the few cartons of cigarettes that were left over from the 9 month deployment would be enough to last through this one? White uniforms on a ship....strike one. Velcro laden gun holsters with polyester pants.....strike two. The fact that some people who carry a loaded weapon cannot figure out how to use a bottle of Spray & Wipe and a rag. The fact that 'Common Sense' is not a topic on the Navy Advancement Exam. People who do the bare minimum or nothing at all and get better evaluations than I do. CSs who put a potato in the oven for 3.7 micro seconds and consider it a baked potato. Hash browns that are neither hashed nor browned. People who can make a laundromat sized box of detergent last 12 months. People who stink so bad that the maggots are relocating. People who get more urine on the seat and floor than they get in the toilet. People who insist on reading 'Gone with the Wind' on the toilet after a 4 hour GQ. People who throw trash and Q-Tips on the floor and expect someone else to clean up after them. People who store a deployment's worth of 'happy socks' underneath their mattress, until they are all stuck together like one big pancake. People who think that one pack of cigarettes is enough to get underway with for two weeks. Some OSs who give new meaning to what OS really stands for. The childish 1MC announcements about cleaning stations and fresh-water wash down. What happened to professionalism? The bosun's pipe and time bells, either use them all the time or not at all. If they can not pipe, then they are not qualified to be the BMOW. The lack of Tradition in the Navy Core Values. Thanks Tailhook. Golden Shellback Certificates for a steel beach picnic, popcorn and a movie. I can not think of a better way to maintain the focus on the war on terrorism. As long as it is clean, it doesn't matter if it works. People whose uniform would stand up by itself without a hanger because dirt fibers are stronger than fabric fibers. People who think the uniform T-shirts are actually supposed to be brown, or that they have to make an appointment at Jiffy-Lube to change the oil in shirt or better yet, as long as the neck band is above the belly button, it is okay. People who do not understand that unless you are one of the Blues Brothers, white socks are for PT gear. People who think 'Early chow for watch reliefs' means 'Everybody not actually on watch.' People who actually believe that a cigarette filter can take down a helicopter from 300 feet away. People who actually think that when they flick a cigarette butt which weighs 1 microgram over the side in a 20 knot wind, that it will actually go in the water. Those are the morons I want cleaning up the O2 level aft of the stacks. People that think the O2 level is an ash tray and personal trash can. People with 4 hours in the Navy telling me how to do my job. The only thing spot checks accomplish is wasting paper and printer toner. Onloading stores where the boxes clearly state 'Not suitable for human consumption'. Eggs manufactured from materials collected from a dermatology clinic and and mixed with laxatives. The fact that after a good meal onboard, it is always followed by bad news. The fact that some people consider New Caledonia a liberty port, let alone a country. That you can get a Navy Achievement Medal for putting soda in a machine or washing the dishes as a mess crank. The the Flight Deck Safety Supervisor is actually the Line 4, 5 and 6 Line Captain for the Sea and Anchor Detail. People that think that it is okay to sell a completely melted candy bar, stale crackers or flat sodas for full price. People who find it fashionable to wear pants on liberty that are too big for Santa Claus. People who think that a motorcycle drive chain is fashion accessory. Drunk sailors who find it acceptable to use the bathroom in their socks or worse yet, bare footed. Painting for the sake of painting without proper preservation. You can not polish a turd. It will look like crap in three days. Drinking water that you can not see through. Televisions that only get 4 channels. I thought the BBC was bad. Navy television commercials. Navy training movies that were shot on black and white 8mm film, transferred to Beta Max, then to VHS and finally to DVD and then labeling it as 'NEW and Informative' That some people think that it is acceptable to put out 15 bottles of salad dressing, 14 of which are Blue Cheese. INMARSAT invariably always goes out just before a team scores during a sporting event, but remains rock solid through all of the lame-ass commercials. Navy coffee is not considered acceptable until it has stewed and burned in the urn for 48 hours, at which point it only has two viable uses: black topping a freeway or tarring a roof. Anything that can instantly stain a ceramic coffee mug on contact has got to be worse for you than smoking. That the only true consistency from one meal to the next is PB&J. And you have to make that yourself. The fact that we use 10 times more paper now than we did before we went to the 'paperless' Navy. The fact that there is a lock on the toilet paper rolls in the bathroom. That the ship spends upwards of 5,200 man-hours per month during cleaning stations and the ship still isn't clean enough. The fact that in the Navy, silver is senior to gold; i.e. LTJG bar to ENS bar. Why is it so difficult then to comprehend why the ESWS pin is silver and the SWO pin is gold? The fact that the ESWS program was not renamed FREEWS after the program became mandatory and they created a flag for it. That there is more emphasis on training for emergencies than there is on training people to be effective leaders.



Dennis P. McGinn © 2009