Emily. Shock and Awe.

Phil. Just Like In the Movies.

Wendy. Ski Bum and Adventuress.

Rachel. Dancing Queen.

Julie. The Littlest Elf.

Chris. There Ain't No Party Like a Marching Band Party.

Cyn. Just a Pink Haired Girl.

 

The post in which I let you know about the Navy

Ok, so this has been building up for a while, here it goes.

In the past month, I've been placed in charge of my division for weeks on end. Not really placed, but just told "Hey, you're in charge." And I'm tired. I'm tired of the Navy, and I'm tired of all the fucking petty people in the Navy who are "leaders," but only care about how to use the people under them to get advanced. I'm tired of unreasonable goals, and the people in charge who only see numbers, and not how much work it actually takes to make those numbers happen. I'm tired of people skating off while other people do all the work, and the people who work just get shit on more. I'm tired of every single damn job being priority #1. When you give me two jobs and I ask you which is more important, don't tell me that they're both the #1 job. Because then I'LL decide which one is more important.

When I came into the Nuclear Power program, they started with this indoctrination of being "the best." We were told over and over that we are the best that the Navy has, and that we, the people working on the plants, are the reason that we've never had a reactor accident. BULLSHIT. Everyday that I go into work, I see so many fuckjobs, so many people that do not give a shit, so much shoddy and shady work, that I know the only reason we have not had an accident is due to the AMAZING engineering done by the people that designed the plants. Seriously, if those engineers had not spent years thinking of everything that could go wrong, and how to make the plant self-stabilizing, shit would have gone down by now. A LOT of shit. Because there is no way that with the people we have working on stuff, it would have been OK.

Also, we were taught that we, as Nukes, are held to a "higher standard." Right. If you do one thing wrong in the plant and a khaki finds out, you are fucked. (Hope you have some other blueshirts around to help you cover it up before your Chief comes!) And all the way through the pipeline our tests were monitored so hard! Cheat, you are out; no longer a Nuke. But in the fleet? Fuck that! You know who grades my tests now? One of my friends. You know what he told me to do? Write as much stuff as I can so that it looks like I know what I'm talking about. I do not know half of what the tests are talking about, but I haven't failed in 4 months! This is the effective training that allows us to operate safely. Oh wait, see that last paragraph.

Our senior leadership. The captain? Loves to talk about "Operational Risk Management." Gives him a fucking hard-on. But drive around for two months with a leak in one of the reactor loops? OK! The CMC? Supposed to be the voice of the enlisted person to the captain. Right. Another way to say it is that he'll repeat whatever the captain says, and say it's a good deal for us. Our Reactor Officer? I don't really know yet. He's new. The old one was awesome (actually looked out for us), but I have a bad feeling about this new one.

Finally, the Abraham Lincoln. The ship itself. I feel bad for it sometimes. It gets ridden harder than any other damn carrier in the fleet. We've already used as much fuel as the carrier that was built 6 years before us. But all in all, it's paying us back for it. The damn ship does not want to stay together. Three vital things broke this last underway. Each time we said "Oh, this is it. We're going home." Nope. The CO tried to extend us. It's turning into a broke-dick ship that cannot continue to be run the way it is. Which is a shame, since by it's timeline it has to last 30+ more years.

What do I think is the root cause of all of this? Well I've had a lot of time to think about it, and I believe it comes down to one thing: ownership. People feel zero ownership for the places they work in. They have no pride in a job, and only a fear of negative reinforcement. (Sometimes, people even stop caring about that.) If you really don't care about it, why try and do good work, especially if you would get no recognition for it? Not only no recognition, but your supervisor gets complimented on it. With ownership, you strive to improve, you want to help out, you learn new things, and you enjoy your work.

I don't really know what I hoped to accomplish by writing all this. Venting? Hope that someone on the ship reads it and reevaluates things? (Not likely) Just know that the rose glasses have been shattered, and I'll be out in 6 years.

posted by Christopher 3 comments 4:34 AM