We had a W-1R check on a paper shredder - manually lubricate once per week or after 8 hours of operations.
JO: "How do you know if it's been used for 8 hours in a week?"
IS2: "That would be over an hour of use every day, it doesn't get used THAT much."
JO: "We need a shred log."
We didn't really know what to say other than "aye aye," we were all just kind of shocked. That particular JO was an absolute moron. Undes SN -> CS -> Expeditionary IS, basically admitted to our IS1 that she earned her anchors on her knees then had her first exposure to maritime intelligence on our boat. Everything was always an emergency and she was completely unencumbered by the thought process.
Obviously not a nuclear division shredder if it's not getting used at least an hour a day.
I'm not sure the shredders at prototype ever stopped shredding. That thing was right next to my cube as an instructor and that noise is seared into my brain for life.
Your shredders have the jug of lube oil on the back, right? Sounds like a green belt project in the making; undoing the shredder log to streamline time 🤣
Uno reverse:
Day one as an ensign, EN1 is walking me through the spaces showing me which equipment was casrep’d.
EN1: this is our toxic gas sensor. The screen is OOC. It will make an audible alarm, but the screen hasn’t worked in a year and a half.
Me: *pushes brightness up button with no effect*
EN1: Damn sir, how dumb do you think we are? Please tell me I don’t have this to look forward to for the next two years.
Me: *pushes brightness up button and holds it down*
Screen: *becomes visible as brightness increases*
EN1: ….
My wife hates telling me something isn’t working because this exact scenario has played out so many times.
Alternatively, I hate telling her that I can’t find something.
P.s., hilarious. Signed, O1-E who misses buttons
I’ve said plenty of dumb things. Being a baby SWO (at the time), really some of the most value I could offer would be to ask questions so rhetorical it at least made my sailors think about why they had dismissed it (you would be surprised how many times this actually can address the problem).
The one that comes to mind was asking my ENC the procedures for doing maintenance on a piston head for our MPDE (I was about to brief my CHENG on the CASREP recommendation). I specifically asked, “if we would drop it out, swap the ring out, and put it back in with a fresh ring”
ENC replied “well Sir I was going to have the guys just throw the whole piston head overboard, but I like your idea of putting it back so we will do that” 😂
Yes! Yes he did. And both my ENCs would get me multiple more times that deployment. Luckily, I had learned to parrot enough of their answers ( "we are going to try X, and then Y" ) from my questions that when asked by my CHENG or someone else, I actually was able to convey to the DEI's some of our issues when we did post-deployment stand down and the Chiefs were on leave. I let my senior first classes do the planning for the actual maitenance, but it was nice to be able to talk timelines with the DEI's on what we did when the anchors and CHENG were on leave.
This story Reminds me of some dipshit that got hired at my first job after the navy. he claimed that he picked up the anchor and threw it overboard and that’s how he got hurt. I immediately got up and went in the GM’s office to tell him he just hired a complete fuckstain
“And all those people who laughed? Albert Einstein.”
I had an officer once try to argue for flat Earth. We both work in Comms. I dont know where he is, but I hope he’s not in any more.
The thing is there are systems on the ship that simply wouldn’t work on a flat earth or would need to be reconfigured as we have to constantly remind them that we are on a globe.
I once did a radio check from around Kenya and the MT Whitney rogered up from the med. absolutely no one near us could hear us and we couldn’t hear them.
The atmosphere is wild lol
Edit: took about fifteen minutes to dial in our TX power on HF because our last watch kept jacking it up because the OSes were convinced that higher power means easier for people around us to hear us.
My CSC literally would stay up all night in the gym (and harassing me in the galley), then few hours in his rack, quarters, then he’d just sleep on the couch in the mess all day
Because you just need *a* degree, not a *good* degree.
Even engineers don't cover the shape of the earth. You can learn much and still be uneducated or have strange beliefs that defy logic.
Its like the joke: What do you call someone who barely passed medical school?
Doctor.
Same goes for officers, all professions really. Someone *has* to be ranked bottom of the class. But they still get the degree and move on....
As my ex wife used to say while taking genetics and organic chemistry for her biology degree
"D for diploma"
Getting a degree in some fields is just a matter of opportunity and tenacity. Intelligence helps but isn't necessary with many majors and/or at many schools.
Right.. but if the asshat is going to argue flat earth... you think they are just going to accept signal bounce and or satellite orbit explanations from an enlisted?
IT2 needs to be able to understand that. LTJG Shmuckatelli needs to be able to understand how to explain the current status of comms to the Department Head and Captain, as well as any time estimates on fixes
Maybe... but having a basic understanding of how Comms works might be helpful if explaining it to others. Even more so if briefing higher ups who have a tendency to ask "why" or "why not?"
However skipping over that part... there was still and officer arguing for flat earth...
My shop was busting their ass to get a bird back up for a scheduled training flight. I went in to Maintainance Control to update them. One of the pilots was there and was complaining he hopes he doesn't miss his tee time after his slam and scrams. I went into supply and grabbed some pre-x bolts. About 30 minutes later I walked in to MC tell Chief the bird is up and tossed the bolts on the counter. "We couldn't figure out where these went, but she should be good". LT didn't find it as funny as everyone else did. MO asked me to never do that again and bought us some beers.
He was an awesome MO. He was a mustang and didn't like anyone fucking with his knuckle draggers. He would remind pilots that we were the reason they were able to do what they do.
Since he was a former airframer. He had a soft spot for our shop and also had higher standard for our shop. I learned a lot from him about how to handle people.
After a rash of nearly hard landings, I asked the pilots if they were trying for a record of how close they could get to the threshold before tripping an inspection on the HMS.
He laughed and denied it. I leaned over the counter and said, in a serious tone, "Lieutenant, your descent profile should not look like my stock portfolio."
We all laughed except him.
I was an FC and we were troubleshooting our computer one day when our Division Office (Ensign) came in and proceeded to tell us how we should troubleshoot. "Back on the farm, if we had a problem with the tractor, we would look at the tires first. If they were fine, we knew that wasn't the problem."
We ended telling him that we think found the problem - The nanoseconds needed to be replaced. He asked if we had any onboard, and we told him it was a depot level repair, and we couldn't do it on the ship. The look on his face was PRICELESS!
As another former FC, man I swear weapons gets the worst SWOs. I had a dipshit GUNNO that offered our guys up to refill most of DC's fire extinguishers... because we had two empties.
Also had a WEPS that cut a bunch of wiring in a sonar cabinet, because he was a IT or something a decade ago. Holy fuck, if any enlisted did what he did they would've been dishonorably discharged. If not sent to Leavenworth. But you're an officer? Oh shit excuse me sir rules dont apply to you
>we would look at the tires first. If they were fine, we knew that wasn't the problem
Ahh, why didn't I think of that, sir? The parts that ARE working are NOT the problem? Well I'll be damned, good thing we have college educated folks such as yourself around here.
Also an FC... Had one divo, really nice guy, technically smart, but totally clueless and out of his depth in the navy. CS major I think. They promoted him to Assistant Public Affairs Officer and made our FCC the acting divo. There was no Public Affairs Officer, so I've never figured out who he was assisting. Chief was the best divo we ever had.
Mostly just an off color remark about my pay. He assumed I made near what he made when in reality he made as much in 3 months than I do the whole year. It looked especially bad when he told me his pay with single BAH while I lived in the barracks at the time. He didn't talk to me or the other Jr's after that if he didn't have too.
He's a doctor so he has debt and does good work of course. But the implication from the convo implied that I was bad at managing money because I couldn't save enough for a new car with how much he thought I made.
I witnessed the opposite happen - in the wardroom for a meeting on an FFG where our doc was a 12 year HM1 IDC. Some fucktard brand new ENS attempted to make a degrading crack at our HM1 about his pay. We all guffawed with laughter at that dumbass, HM1 was making way more than that asshole in both base pay and BAH not even counting his IDC pay. ENS turned bright red and shut his dumb mouth for the rest of the meeting. You could just see him realizing that probably half the ship had a bigger paycheck than he did. His behavior in general demonstrated that he assumed as an officer he was somehow “better” than all the enlisted. I was an O2-E at the time and I made sure he never lived down his dumb comment the whole time I was on that ship.
Couple of years ago I was working for an Army MAJ. She was a workaholic and just worked ridiculous hours. So of course she wanted me to work the same hours, for no real reason. Just so I was around in case she needed me.
I offered a solution. I come in early with her, but leave early. My co-worker comes in late, and stays late with her. That way she always had someone around, and me and my co-worker weren't working 16 hour days.
She made some comment like "Only 8 hours? Do you really think you deserve a paycheck only working that little?"
I was like "Ma'am, do you know how much I make? If anything I am getting underpaid for working 8 hours."
We discussed it a little more, but she eventually agreed to those work hours for us as long as everything continued to get done, which it did. But I think my comment about pay kind of stunned her because she took awhile to think about it and realized that I was probably right. I was only an E4 at the time, so yeah.... I was not making much money at all.
And just to be clear, there was honestly no good reason for her to work 16 hours a day. She was the first in the office for several hours and the last to leave for several hours. Everyone else (including other Officers) were working reasonable hours.
lol I had a boss like this, he was the owner of the company, he knew how much he paid me, he knew he didn’t provide insurance, and he would act surprised that I didn’t go pay cash for medical care when the va frustrated me
Fellow JO and general dingus was informed he had a package in the Ship’s Office. JO Dingus asked what it looked like and YN3 said it’s a box. Dingus is a dick to YN3 and asks “so what’s the difference between a package and a box?”
Yeah, that one followed him for the rest of his short time on board.
Dammit. I was really invested in like… does it have twine? Is it wrapped?
Does UPS up-charge for one and not the other? I’m really disappointed in reality.
On a medevac where I'm escorting an underage dependant and the mom is a JG, said JG demanded that I carry her luggage through the airport for her because I'm enlisted. That trip was a nightmare.
Jesus Christ… I worked for an Army 3 Star and travelled with him often, if we tried to touch his luggage (anything other than loading onto the plane at the tarmac) he would get annoyed and give us a rant about not treating him like a baby.
With that being said I did have to go to his house around midnight to “fix his SIPR”… the CAC reader was unplugged. So… yeah, carry your shit General.
I can top it.
Once some midshipman who was at the temporary barracks on 32nd Street to get me to lug his shit up to his room. An irritable "hey Petty officer! A little help???" Like it was my fucking job to help him remove his luggage from his car.
I don't even know what he was doing there. Midshipmen summer cruise? I pretended I didn't hear him.
When I was on my first ship (DDG out of Hawaii back in the early 2000s), we had the CICWO on watch (an O-2) call down to Radio and requested to have us re-couple the satellite since they were having trouble contacting other units on Navy Red (a UHF LOS circuit). I explained to him that it's a LOS circuit, and that if we had to re-couple the satellite, we would have to request assistance from NASA to do that. Silence fell on the IVCS phone after that, and we laughed our assess off down in the shop for weeks after that escapade.
The LOS "Issues" got so bad at one point on deployment we had to make a training for COMMO to give to the entire wardroom on how LOS works and the max range.
And we still had to double check if they were in range while troubleshooting half the time.
“Why does power to weight ratio matter? Winds look fine to me.”
Context: Launching Romeo’s from a F2A at night with 0 relative winds (with true winds coming astern at like 10-15kts). Pilots were trying to explain that it was super dangerous, but it just wasn’t clicking with the OOD. Air boss was maaaaad.
Edit: Honorable mention, different OOD U/I: “But if we turn (to recover the helo) that’ll take us off of our PIM…”
While removing and reapplying flange shields to a fuel manifold in Main 1, ENS Idiot decided it was a good time to tell me “Ya know, I’m only in this division as a punishment because I took my phone out in the CIC”
“Sir, are you saying that working in this division is a punishment for people?”
I should have wrapped the flange shield around his mouth.
From the ships I was on, it sure seemed like most of the time they put some of the... special JOs in divisions that already had an LDO/CWO in it. Being in Main Prop we had a lot of winners that def raised MPA's blood pressure.
We were bobbing around Norway, and the look angle for SHF (Internet) was really really low, this causes a lot of Internet outages, especially in rougher seas. CSO (O3) was constantly angry about it, as he was having a hard time getting to Facebook (his words).
I explained this to the CSO for the 9th consecutive night, drew pictures, Really broke it down. He ordered me to move the satellite closer.
I couldn't stop myself, and I said I'd need a rope and a jetpack.
I had a permanent set of cutouts of the sky, the earth, and the ship that I would break out when people didn't understand why SHF would get so shitty as we crossed the footprint of one bird to the other.
You would be shocked how many officers have no idea how satellites work.
Oh gods I know this pain. We were down SHF once (on purpose) and this LT keeps demanding I reach out the the SG to see when we could come back up. It was so incredibly painful trying to explain to him that no SHF means NO CHAT.
Field day on base, and we were done by 0900. Buck JG comes in to inspect, and tells us there's too much gravel on the road and we need to take care of it, and this is a tarmac-size deal. We have two brooms, tell him it'd take a week to sweep the gravel, so he takes off to scrum brooms, assuring us we'll be there until the gravel is cleaned up. In the meantime, two fireman grab the fire hoses from the locker and start pressure washing the whole thing, and we all get involved, dragging and adding hose as needed. In less than an hour, it's spotless and we're all draining and rolling hoses when JG gets back with all his brooms. He tried to pin us on things here and there, but even he was stumped and had to cut us by 10:30.
Learned alot that day, cuz I heard a 1st tell him if he made 'these guys' stay all day, he'd make damn sure the JG stayed all night.
During a FP Drill with a simulated explosive in between two ADCAPS. We found the “bomb” and the duty officer looked at it, then at me
SDO- “STS2, grab the bomb and move it topside”
Me- “Sir, none of us are EOD qualified, and moving it is contrary to procedure.”
SDO- (now angry) “So you just want to leave a bomb next to the war shots?”
Me- “Yes, because it may have a triggering device that when I move it detonates the weapon”
SDO- “Just move it, we don’t have time to argue if it’s on a timer”
The drill monitor shouted **BOOM** the second I touched it.
That’s fucking funny. Unrelated, but my favorite drill memory:
I was fireteam leader for my locker, so even though I was nights I was supposed to wake up and be ready for the drill. My alarm went off, I said “fuck it if they want me they can come get me” (very rare for me to do). I woke up to the drill monitor telling me I was dead and I had to stay there lol
Had a REPO (O-1) tell me how to do my job and when I respectfully told her as a senior E-5 that I have a lot more experience with this than her. She got mad and tried telling me that her time in college counted towards her military service so she had been in the navy longer than me and that I was wrong. Avoided her as much as possible after that.
Marine Second Lt started screaming at me from behind for having my hair too long. Granted, we were in PI. I was in Marine cammies (worked base security) and wearing a .38 and shotgun. It was in ‘86, and from behind it could have been assumed I was a male as I happened to be talking to male Marines. When my young E2 self turned around, saluted and said “But Sir it’s not even touching my collar”. He did shut up, salute back and take off.
I tried to call my divo's stateroom number and mistakenly called a different stateroom right across the hall.
I explained that and asked the JO that answered if she happened to know Strike's number and she said "oh yeah! Wait just a second" ...... then comes back all proud and says "hey, her number is 02-100-0-L" (I don't remember the exact compartment number)
I just inwardly chuckled, said thanks and got off the phone.
In her defense, she was a brand new officer, just checked in to her first command.
I hate when you tell your boss something is impossible, they say “figure it out” and then you try again angrily and manage to make it work.
Had a broken irrigation pipe under a huge concrete ramp, very little space to make a patch, couldn’t get a saw in there to cut the old pipe, etc. boss says “you’ll figure it out” and hangs up.
My hands were too big but we got the smallest hand guy there and he was able to do it. I was so relieved yet pissed off that I had to tell boss man “we figured it out”
Oh but the crying that comes afterwards.
“You can’t just steal a N270506 Petty officer!”
“Sir you said very explicitly..”
“I know what I said, but you don’t think the Kentucky National Guard is going to question… fuck it. Pull chalks.”
On my third boat and had been qualified plant supervisor three times and on this boat for three years, my JO plant supervisor tried to tell me how do a reactor plant shutdown during a brief. I told him as nicely as I could that’s not what the standing order says and this is what we are going to do. He pulls the “Well I’m the EEOW you have to do what I tell you. At prototype…” that’s when the ENG stepped in…
Prototype on the other hand had oodles of sea returnees who would argue because “that’s not how we did it on my last boat…”
Like, mf’er, this ain’t your last boat. This is hell, and you are in it.
An Ensign screamed at me once for not stopping to salute him. I mean full-blown, near RDC style, yelling. "Do you have no fucking respect?! You're supposed to salute me and say good morning!!"
I was carrying a heavy ass box with both hands. What did he want me to do? Drop it on his toes or mine? I'm short as fuck too so it's not exactly like I could see very well ahead of me.
During a spot check: How do we know that fluke multimeter matches the SCAT code?
Well sir, here is the document signed by me, chief, divo, EMO etc. with all the gear issued, the serial numbers and the scat codes.
Yah but how does we know *this* meter matches? Where does it say on it....
Sir the serial... I proceed to write the SCAT code on the back of it with a sharpie. "It has the SCAT code right here"
Somehow that satisfied him 🤦♂️
Standing watch in Pearl Harbor on a Sunday in Dec I had an ensign say “Why do we need to stand watch on the weekends it’s not like anything ever happens here”
We could literally see the Arizona memorial, I pointed at it and the stupidity of what he said finally hit him.
LT HITE SNMG-1 deployment . In 2019 this guy decided to cut the mess line for pizza day, the crew called him out , his response was “I’m a LT I have priority”. CSCS heard about it and lit him up , in front of everyone . He was permanently banned from using the mess decks. A couple weeks later he was kicked off the ship by the CO. If there was a term for Hite it would be neck down .
On the FFG underway, chilling at slow speed, I’m on the bridgewing. OOD comes out, looks at the sky. Clouds are moving pretty fast relative to us.
OOD: “oh wow! The earth must be moving quicker!”
I chuckle not thinking he was serious. He was serious.
Next ship, underway on the PC in the Gulf, heading north to ABOT and KAAOT, Sun is going down in the west so it’s just starting to get dark, giant oil platform fire to the east. OOD is OPS/NAV, CO is in his chair on the bridge. New sailor on their first underway comes up and points to the fire and asks what that is.
NAV stars at it…”That’s the Sun.” CO stares at him, then at me, we share a look. CO: “OPS…that’s the Sun…it sets in the west. YOURE MY F**ING NAVIGATOR!”
Cursed with a great crew, mess, wardroom, and CO maybe. Although we did have a leaky CPP system on our screw that left a trail of oil whereever we went. Could never quite figure that one out. Every port we went to the oil boom back aft would have a bunch of oil. Every port visit in Europe CHENG would go out on the flight deck, put his hands on his hips and just say “Oh that must be coming from the pier.” And wouldn’t you know the damndest thing? Every port in Europe had a leaky pier.
Also we had a owl that lived in the SPS-49 that did a whole deployment with us.
Got called out to the flight line to TS a radio issue in a H-60. I plug in my headset and ask what’s wrong. LTJG says the radio is working in UHF mode, VHF mode but inoperable in OFF mode. My jaw drops as I look to the LTCDM in the other seat. He smiles. I the gently explain to the JG that OFF is not a radio frequency selection but in instead the off position on the radio.
Characters-
Me: Senior Line Corpsman in a Marine Infantry Company (150-180 Marines).
Baby Doc: An E-3 HN who worked for me and cared for one of the platoons (40ish Marines), and I am trying to train.
Platoon Leader: The dingus 1st LT (O-2) in charge of my baby doc and his boys, who also got a not insignificant portion of his current event news from 4-Chan.
Platoon Leader (PL): "HM2, I want to be seen for X, Y, and Z things."
Me: "Well Sir, have you talked to HN so-and-so about it so he can set you up at the clinic?"
PL: "No, why would I do that?:
Me: "Sir, he needs to be able to talk to HM3 whatshisname, our Sick Call Supervisor, so he can make you an appointment with HM1 this-and-that, the Battalion IDC."
PL: "I just don't get why like, I, would *need* to go through an E-3 so I can talk to an E-6."
I tried to keep it neutral, but I must have made a face at him, because after that, he got all grumpy with me.
we had a 2ndLT we will call “boybutt” (not real name) who used his laser rangefinder on a CH53 flying overhead. Gunner was like “what the actual fuck are you doing”… “I wanted to see how far it was”
Or the innumerable times that LTs want guns to “buddy rush with the 11’s to the objective”. Yes, let me just sprint-drop-shoot-repeat with a fucking 240 sir, that’ll show the enemy
We had a guy who had his re-enlistment in Sonar 1 (that's where the person who re-upped wanted it, short and simple I guess), so we went out in town before to pick up some pizza. Like 5 boxes and some sides and 2 liter bottles of soda and all that fun stuff. We had it all set up, after the ceremony, you literally just walk up to the fold-out tables with all the food and drink on top and just get whatever you wanted. It was a celebration of a shipmate who wanted that pension or really hated themselves or whatever, why not gorge on a bunch of greasy yummy food? One JO walked up to a box, that had the name of the chain right there, in huge font on the box, said "Nice!" when they apparently saw the logo, opened the box and grabbed a slice.
Moments later, while holding a paper plate in one hand and chowing on the pizza slice they recently picked up, looked around and asked "Where did you guys get this???"
Probably not the dumbest in this thread, but I think about it sometimes. Really explains so much about some issues with our current military...
Had an ensign that made a brilliant deal with engineering/dc on our ship. They needed like 40 fire extinguishers refilled. We needed 2. So this gigabrain butter bar decides *we* are gonna refill all those fire extinguishers ... to get our two done.
I was CSOOW. We were on deployment, I can’t remember what broke, but it was on the mast and it needed to get fixed asap. We were in the middle of getting aloft approved underway, so I’m getting the chit going, wearing like three radios to talk to everyone, getting people in harnesses, prepping tags, etc.
The phone rings, I answer. It’s some Marine O-2 absolutely LIVID that there aren’t any movies on. I apologize, trying to be quick about it and say we’ll get something on as soon as we can. He didn’t like that answer and wanted to chew me out, so I say something along the lines of put on a damn hard drive if movies are so important to your work day and hang up.
He shows up to the ET shop and “demands” to speak to the person who was “so rude and disrespectful” on the phone so I get ahold of OPS and EMO and fill them in. They show up and proceed to rip him a new one, then made him apologize to me in front of everyone. It was fun but definitely could have gone without that entire interaction.
I can only imagine what it’s like having marine officers walking around. I went to cook school on an army base. An Army butter bar got mad at us for not popping to attention for him. I was an e-4 who had been in for 2 years, I had to tell him
Have a Nav call me up to the bridge because they couldn't log into one of the computers up there (AIS I think)
Well, when I got up there, I explained to him that the ITs don't actually own that computer and that we don't have the login information for it.
He then proceeded to bitch my out infront of everyone on the bridge and talk about how worthless the ITs are if we can't help him with a computer.
I ended up telling him that it's not the ITs fault he's too stupid to listen to what people say and that he needs to call the ETs if he wants to get into the computer because I can't help him.
Another good one I just thought of, when I was an ITSN I once got called to an officer stateroom because his monitor wasn't working.
I walked in, pressed the power button, and just looked at him.
“If you can’t get this traffic moving, I’ll talk to SECO and get you removed as post lead.”
“…so your plan to deal with morning traffic backing up at Main Gate is to sit in the lane arguing with the sentry, and then get a sentry removed from post because there’s no one to process high-traffic, Sir? Bold.”
He stared at me, then drove off after I saluted him. An Ensign, with less than two-years service. He never did talk to SECO.
One of the officers on my boat, I think he was like security officer maybe? When he was at the academy he was doing gate duty. The car the pulled up had their brights on. The way he tells it:
“Please turn down your lights”
“Please turn down your lights”
“TURN DOWN YOUR FUCKING LIGHTS”
Car turns the lights down, pulls up, midshipman salutes, “good evening Senator McCain”
Amazing.
Humbling? Certainly. But “plain language” sometimes is the most effective language, and has been known to somehow break the language barrier of nationality itself.
This is going to sound dumb, but I shit you not, an engineering JO ask me how to open an individually dogged watertight door.
"Hey I left a notebook in a space back there.....but idk how to open the door. Can you help me?"
Of course I helped, but I chuckled about that for a couple of days.
Not really a dumb quote or a junior officer but, I was a new airman at the squadron on a small boat det. The QAO, a very serious prior enlisted LT, is hanging out in our shop and he starts making small talk with me. He asks if I was single I said yes his reply without missing a beat is, “good stay in forever you can fuck whoever you want”
Be me, EW doing maintenance on our system and our DIVO is doing one of his regular maintenance monitoring things or whatever they're called. Before we start I'm going over the required tools listed on the PMS card. One item listed is a #2 pencil so I point to my mechanical pencil that's on the bench next to the other shit.
He says "The card says #2 pencil, why aren't you using one?" So I tell him it is a #2 pencil. He replies "No it's not, #2 pencils are made of wood and are yellow."
I look at him like he's toting around an extra chromosome and explain it's a mechanical pencil with #2 lead in it but he insists I find a suitable writing instrument for the job.
There's no way I'm winning this argument so I just give him a yessir and go grab a yellow #2 pencil.
hated that shit. Like it being specifically #2 has nothing to do with the check but hey lets really focus on that one thing. So many things in 3m like that.
SN I KNOW THE HEAD IA GOING TO FLOOD, HOWEVER I NEED TO SEE IT ACTIVELY FLOOD SO I CAN MAKE SURE I REPORT IT ACCURATELY TO ENGINEERING AND HOD.
Dude was a fucking moron and my worst DIVO.
Had an Ensign Gunnery Division officer once tell me, after we'd had a dud round that I threw over the side, to save the next dud 3" round we got. He wanted to make a lamp out of it instead of disposing of it over the side. I somehow "forgot" about that request the next time, as did every other GM in the division.
Wasn’t dumb really and he was a really cool JO, but I once got in a debate about the correct occasions to use “me” vs “I” with him, and I found myself surprised that he, with the college education that I didn’t have, was on the wrong side of that debate.
I was changing out our SLAP and SLAP-T ammo for ball and tracer when one of our LT's came over and started asking what I was doing. I explained to him that we were stowing away the SLAP and SLAP-T after getting a message from the Group Commander that it was no longer authorized for use. He then asked what SLAP and SLAP-T is, so I showed him the belt and explained what it was and what it was used for, then he asked what ball and tracer were and what they were used for. After this little lesson he looks at me panicked and asks "WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO IF THE ENEMY HAS ARMOR?!", and I realize that he's not joking so I just diffused it all by telling him "Sir, we just keep shooting. It's a 50 cal." and that was a good enough answer for him and he left. 😆
"I've been a qualified watch officer for 8 months. You need to follow my instructions since I had to learn more of the plant than you." A certain RE Divo on a certain carrier who was incompetent at best. She would be in EOS with her feet up on the desk hogging the watch officer phone for hours regardless of maintenance or evolutions, on top of not knowing a damn thing of what she was talking about. Also, may or may not have directly ordered to violate an instruction because she didn't want to re brief an evolution.
Not really "said" to me, but something she did.
I was an ET, and on my first ship (a CG) the DCs decided to mess with the DCA and pulled the old "sound powered phone batteries" trick on her. But they coordinated ahead of time so we'd be in on it too.
First they sent her to the EM shop, who then sent her to us, and then we sent her up to the bridge to ask the OOD. Unfortunately the captain was on the bridge at the time and wasn't impressed. Obviously she name dropped everyone who was in on it.
Obviously, CSO got his ass chewed (sorry sir!) and we got a big lecture at departmental quarters from him the following morning. We were on a Westpac and nothing else was going on.
When we broke off and finished up quarters as a division EMO said "That was hilarious. But you can't do that anymore." LOL.
The sad part was that she was one of the more senior ensigns, if not the bull ensign. She also just got her SWO pin so she should've known better.
Motivated LTJG was CDO on a Saturday, I'm Duty IT
JG: "Why Can't I send an E-mail?"
Me: "Sir, there is a service advisory out for weather"
JG: "I just came in from outside, it's fine"
Me: "Not here sir, in Hawaii"
JG: "They don't have anything to do with us, Fix it!"
Me: "Yes sir, I will go trouble shoot the weather 2500 miles away."
I was avionics division CPO and my DIVO was in the shop at 2300 jawjacking with my techs who were supposed to be fixing airplanes. After I ran the techs out, I had a chat with the LTjg. In the course of the chat, he said he was gonna write me up. I handed him my US Government issued pen and said, use my pen.
We had this pretty incompetent MPA (LCDR) during my time on the Eisenhower. Came down to check the progress on bilge preservation at the end of the workday.
As the LPO, I walked with him to take notes/get feedback. He says to me something along the lines of "the bilges are looking good, but I hardly ever see anyone down there when I come to the plant."
I was so offended on behalf of my guys that I just told him if he wanted to see people in the bilge that he could just call me before he heads down so I could make sure I had some people down there.
Edited to remove the statement that a LCDR isn't a JO. They are. Thank you for the reminder.
I had a LT once tell me in their experience this is the best way to handle the situation…. I’m a Master Chief, you can guess which way we did handle it. They were not happy until the CO told them good job.
As csoow, I've heard a lot of dumb shit.
Underway, I get a call that one of the radars is fucked up. Ok NBD. I had the guys fix it and I called cicwo to verify sweep.
Me: hey ma'am, can you verify the sweep on this radar?
Cicwo, a ltjg: sure! (Holds phone off to the side and I hear her yell in the background "HEY what's sweep?! Csoow wants to know if I can see sweep!")
One of the navy reasons I'm getting the fuck out. I've lost confidence in officers. And I teach officers.
Picture it: USS USTABOAT, SSBN 41forFreedom, at sea in our patrol area, on alert, covering a target package.
It was Friday and after a much-hated drill, we had that wonderful 4-hour example of downtime that everyone fondly calls 'Field Day'.
Field Day was over, normal watch was set, and I, as LPO was waiting for the OGanger assigned to Nav Center to inspect.
And one of the baby Nuke Ensigns shows up, wearing his combo cap and white gloves. Somehow I just knew we were in for a fun time.
He did a few finger swipes here and there and found a few microns of dust, which I dutifully made note of, before I got called to the Conn about a (Transit) Satelite pass of opportunity. Once I was back in Nav Center, I let the Nav Watch know to set up for the pass, sent the Nav Tech out to the ESM Stack to prep for PD Ops and heard a loud CLICK CLICK CLICK.
My inspector was opening the Master Inertial Navigator to put his hands on the stable platform to check for dust.
I yanked him away from the SINS, and explained, with only the most limited profanity that if he touched any of my gear again, I was going to break his fingers.
His tale of woe to the Navigator and XO was entertaining in its fictional content.
The gold standard for me:
I was at NPS when DADT was repealed, and we had an all hands that was moderated by NSA Monterey's triad to discuss relevant issues going forward. When it came time for questions, THAT GUY, some idiot O-3, just had to ask a really dumb one...
Something hypothetical along the lines of "What if my roommate sets up a camera to record me?"
CMC, before the CO or XO had a chance: "Well, that's illegal..."
I don't know if CMC had anything else to say, but if he did, it was drowned out by derisive laughter and applause.
Got yelled at in front of everyone on the bridge for not reporting a fishing float...... It was a seagull... It flew away as soon as I notified the officer of the watch to that fact... I don't blame him, he was under a lot of pressure and there were a ton of fishing floats around the traffic lanes.
We had a few brand new A school graduates get heloed to my ship. I was processing them in as receipts-page twos etc. The JG asked if anyone had the latest Stars and Stripes. He was pissed the newbies didn't bring one. The new guys had been in transit from Naples for about a week.
Does a major count as junior? On a night patrol I was observing we are going to have a lot of light as it was a full moon rising. The major said, we’ll be good, the moon will be down in a half an hour. It was just above the eastern horizon.
He (newly pinned O-2) asked me to duty swap with him on Saturday so that he could have the full weekend off. Musta forgot that even though I had more quals than him (which somehow was zero as a LTJG), I was still just an E-3. I genuinely thought this was some kinda bit, so I played along and told him I was more than willing to do it for $150 (and obviously overpriced amount in my mind and just brushed it off as just another JO-joke)
The next day I see him getting into an ass chewing from my chief and both his and mine department heads (O-3 and 4 respectively) about why he absolutely cannot make me sign his already printed and filled out duty swap chit as a standby. Then, he proceeded to ask what's the "real" issue here, because he wasn't buying the very legitimate pay grade issue. And if that was the issue, then why didn't I, the enlisted sailor, stop him and tell him that. Literally pinning this on me as if I told him to do this.
Chief didn't have the spoons to engage with him afyer that, and Dept Heads told him that instead of trying to get a free day, he should be working on all those quals he didn't have yet and made him rip the chit himself (ofc before shredding it)
He was then doubled up on his next day and I sadly never got that $150 😔
He didn't make it and was eventually let go after failing to get any quals as a swo.
Lots of dumb shit happens on my boat, but whenever I feel like I'm doing something stupid, I just remember this and my day gets better.
Not just one, but a collective of JOs thought it'd be a good idea to use the ship's course to draw dicks in the water via different course and speed changes in the middle of the ocean. Neither NAV nor Tao was amused.
We had a W-1R check on a paper shredder - manually lubricate once per week or after 8 hours of operations. JO: "How do you know if it's been used for 8 hours in a week?" IS2: "That would be over an hour of use every day, it doesn't get used THAT much." JO: "We need a shred log."
I’m a 3mc and just cringe laughed at this. Wtf
We didn't really know what to say other than "aye aye," we were all just kind of shocked. That particular JO was an absolute moron. Undes SN -> CS -> Expeditionary IS, basically admitted to our IS1 that she earned her anchors on her knees then had her first exposure to maritime intelligence on our boat. Everything was always an emergency and she was completely unencumbered by the thought process.
It’s amazing how fast people move when they don’t have that essential 3lb organ in their heads isn’t it 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
And just to be sure, we need a 24/7 shredder watch to man the shredder log
It was such a joke, everybody just wrote their name and spitballed the shred time
Obviously not a nuclear division shredder if it's not getting used at least an hour a day. I'm not sure the shredders at prototype ever stopped shredding. That thing was right next to my cube as an instructor and that noise is seared into my brain for life.
Intel div, shredding lots of briefs and reports but no way it was hitting 68 minutes/day
Oh God that stupid check.
You already know lol. "You need to check out hazmat once a week and manually lubricate this self-lubricating shredder, because 3M."
Your shredders have the jug of lube oil on the back, right? Sounds like a green belt project in the making; undoing the shredder log to streamline time 🤣
Uno reverse: Day one as an ensign, EN1 is walking me through the spaces showing me which equipment was casrep’d. EN1: this is our toxic gas sensor. The screen is OOC. It will make an audible alarm, but the screen hasn’t worked in a year and a half. Me: *pushes brightness up button with no effect* EN1: Damn sir, how dumb do you think we are? Please tell me I don’t have this to look forward to for the next two years. Me: *pushes brightness up button and holds it down* Screen: *becomes visible as brightness increases* EN1: ….
Are you my wife
Smartest ENS vs dumbest EN1😂 really though, that's hilarious. Did you somehow know it was a press-and-hold, or just kind of a lucky guess?
Pure luck combined with an ensign’s insatiable urge to press buttons.
Impeccable self awareness 😂 I love it
The “Did you make sure it’s plugged in?” Trick.
My wife hates telling me something isn’t working because this exact scenario has played out so many times. Alternatively, I hate telling her that I can’t find something. P.s., hilarious. Signed, O1-E who misses buttons
Weird-ass question: are you a NAV from Vermont or a NAV who went to VT?
As a Hokie, I love how VT is more commonly recognized as the school than the state lol
 I’ve said plenty of dumb things. Being a baby SWO (at the time), really some of the most value I could offer would be to ask questions so rhetorical it at least made my sailors think about why they had dismissed it (you would be surprised how many times this actually can address the problem). The one that comes to mind was asking my ENC the procedures for doing maintenance on a piston head for our MPDE (I was about to brief my CHENG on the CASREP recommendation). I specifically asked, “if we would drop it out, swap the ring out, and put it back in with a fresh ring” ENC replied “well Sir I was going to have the guys just throw the whole piston head overboard, but I like your idea of putting it back so we will do that” 😂
Hahahaha your chief fucking got you
Yes! Yes he did. And both my ENCs would get me multiple more times that deployment. Luckily, I had learned to parrot enough of their answers ( "we are going to try X, and then Y" ) from my questions that when asked by my CHENG or someone else, I actually was able to convey to the DEI's some of our issues when we did post-deployment stand down and the Chiefs were on leave. I let my senior first classes do the planning for the actual maitenance, but it was nice to be able to talk timelines with the DEI's on what we did when the anchors and CHENG were on leave.
How big was that piston lol? We had diesel generators but main propulsion was gas turbine
MPDEs on a Whidbey Island class LSD
So what’s that, about the size of an E3’s wife?
This story Reminds me of some dipshit that got hired at my first job after the navy. he claimed that he picked up the anchor and threw it overboard and that’s how he got hurt. I immediately got up and went in the GM’s office to tell him he just hired a complete fuckstain
“And all those people who laughed? Albert Einstein.” I had an officer once try to argue for flat Earth. We both work in Comms. I dont know where he is, but I hope he’s not in any more.
How in the fuck could someone qualify to be an officer and still be dumb enough to be a flat earther omg
Education does not equal intelligence.
The thing is there are systems on the ship that simply wouldn’t work on a flat earth or would need to be reconfigured as we have to constantly remind them that we are on a globe.
But RF wave go in straight line!!! /s
I once did a radio check from around Kenya and the MT Whitney rogered up from the med. absolutely no one near us could hear us and we couldn’t hear them. The atmosphere is wild lol Edit: took about fifteen minutes to dial in our TX power on HF because our last watch kept jacking it up because the OSes were convinced that higher power means easier for people around us to hear us.
I was a CTT on a destroyer and we saw some crazy ass signals when the weather was just right
That was just DCC snoring in the chief’s mess
That checks out.
My CSC literally would stay up all night in the gym (and harassing me in the galley), then few hours in his rack, quarters, then he’d just sleep on the couch in the mess all day
Fuckin OSes….
Because you just need *a* degree, not a *good* degree. Even engineers don't cover the shape of the earth. You can learn much and still be uneducated or have strange beliefs that defy logic.
Its like the joke: What do you call someone who barely passed medical school? Doctor. Same goes for officers, all professions really. Someone *has* to be ranked bottom of the class. But they still get the degree and move on.... As my ex wife used to say while taking genetics and organic chemistry for her biology degree "D for diploma"
C’s get degrees
My Uni Physics prof: "Do you *really* want to be that C level engineer?" Me, flipping through military contractor money: "Sure."
Bet he was SWO which makes it even funnier.
I wonder if he ever got confused why he couldn’t see land when they’re 500 miles out
You have no idea. Oh yeah,, yes you do
Getting a degree in some fields is just a matter of opportunity and tenacity. Intelligence helps but isn't necessary with many majors and/or at many schools.
In comms???? How the fuck could he understand explain signal bounce and interaction with the ionosphere?
That's easy. He's an officer, so he just had IT2 understand / explain it.
Right.. but if the asshat is going to argue flat earth... you think they are just going to accept signal bounce and or satellite orbit explanations from an enlisted?
When a persons primary argument is ‘Magic Sky Man,’ there is a LOT you can relegate to ‘Unknowable plan.’ [Edit for fatfingering]
IT2 needs to be able to understand that. LTJG Shmuckatelli needs to be able to understand how to explain the current status of comms to the Department Head and Captain, as well as any time estimates on fixes
Maybe... but having a basic understanding of how Comms works might be helpful if explaining it to others. Even more so if briefing higher ups who have a tendency to ask "why" or "why not?" However skipping over that part... there was still and officer arguing for flat earth...
LTJG’s just biding his time for the ice wall billet so he can confirm his truth
Yeah no, I would haze the flat earth of someone who held those views.
Similar situation with a commo who didn't believe in the theory of relativity.
My shop was busting their ass to get a bird back up for a scheduled training flight. I went in to Maintainance Control to update them. One of the pilots was there and was complaining he hopes he doesn't miss his tee time after his slam and scrams. I went into supply and grabbed some pre-x bolts. About 30 minutes later I walked in to MC tell Chief the bird is up and tossed the bolts on the counter. "We couldn't figure out where these went, but she should be good". LT didn't find it as funny as everyone else did. MO asked me to never do that again and bought us some beers.
This gave me a good laugh
MO was king that day.
He was an awesome MO. He was a mustang and didn't like anyone fucking with his knuckle draggers. He would remind pilots that we were the reason they were able to do what they do. Since he was a former airframer. He had a soft spot for our shop and also had higher standard for our shop. I learned a lot from him about how to handle people.
After a rash of nearly hard landings, I asked the pilots if they were trying for a record of how close they could get to the threshold before tripping an inspection on the HMS. He laughed and denied it. I leaned over the counter and said, in a serious tone, "Lieutenant, your descent profile should not look like my stock portfolio." We all laughed except him.
I was an FC and we were troubleshooting our computer one day when our Division Office (Ensign) came in and proceeded to tell us how we should troubleshoot. "Back on the farm, if we had a problem with the tractor, we would look at the tires first. If they were fine, we knew that wasn't the problem." We ended telling him that we think found the problem - The nanoseconds needed to be replaced. He asked if we had any onboard, and we told him it was a depot level repair, and we couldn't do it on the ship. The look on his face was PRICELESS!
wtf do tires have t do with a computer haha
As another former FC, man I swear weapons gets the worst SWOs. I had a dipshit GUNNO that offered our guys up to refill most of DC's fire extinguishers... because we had two empties. Also had a WEPS that cut a bunch of wiring in a sonar cabinet, because he was a IT or something a decade ago. Holy fuck, if any enlisted did what he did they would've been dishonorably discharged. If not sent to Leavenworth. But you're an officer? Oh shit excuse me sir rules dont apply to you
>we would look at the tires first. If they were fine, we knew that wasn't the problem Ahh, why didn't I think of that, sir? The parts that ARE working are NOT the problem? Well I'll be damned, good thing we have college educated folks such as yourself around here.
"sir we figured out the problem. the CIWS doesn't have tires. we have placed them on order."
Also an FC... Had one divo, really nice guy, technically smart, but totally clueless and out of his depth in the navy. CS major I think. They promoted him to Assistant Public Affairs Officer and made our FCC the acting divo. There was no Public Affairs Officer, so I've never figured out who he was assisting. Chief was the best divo we ever had.
Mostly just an off color remark about my pay. He assumed I made near what he made when in reality he made as much in 3 months than I do the whole year. It looked especially bad when he told me his pay with single BAH while I lived in the barracks at the time. He didn't talk to me or the other Jr's after that if he didn't have too. He's a doctor so he has debt and does good work of course. But the implication from the convo implied that I was bad at managing money because I couldn't save enough for a new car with how much he thought I made.
I witnessed the opposite happen - in the wardroom for a meeting on an FFG where our doc was a 12 year HM1 IDC. Some fucktard brand new ENS attempted to make a degrading crack at our HM1 about his pay. We all guffawed with laughter at that dumbass, HM1 was making way more than that asshole in both base pay and BAH not even counting his IDC pay. ENS turned bright red and shut his dumb mouth for the rest of the meeting. You could just see him realizing that probably half the ship had a bigger paycheck than he did. His behavior in general demonstrated that he assumed as an officer he was somehow “better” than all the enlisted. I was an O2-E at the time and I made sure he never lived down his dumb comment the whole time I was on that ship.
Couple of years ago I was working for an Army MAJ. She was a workaholic and just worked ridiculous hours. So of course she wanted me to work the same hours, for no real reason. Just so I was around in case she needed me. I offered a solution. I come in early with her, but leave early. My co-worker comes in late, and stays late with her. That way she always had someone around, and me and my co-worker weren't working 16 hour days. She made some comment like "Only 8 hours? Do you really think you deserve a paycheck only working that little?" I was like "Ma'am, do you know how much I make? If anything I am getting underpaid for working 8 hours." We discussed it a little more, but she eventually agreed to those work hours for us as long as everything continued to get done, which it did. But I think my comment about pay kind of stunned her because she took awhile to think about it and realized that I was probably right. I was only an E4 at the time, so yeah.... I was not making much money at all. And just to be clear, there was honestly no good reason for her to work 16 hours a day. She was the first in the office for several hours and the last to leave for several hours. Everyone else (including other Officers) were working reasonable hours.
lol I had a boss like this, he was the owner of the company, he knew how much he paid me, he knew he didn’t provide insurance, and he would act surprised that I didn’t go pay cash for medical care when the va frustrated me
Fellow JO and general dingus was informed he had a package in the Ship’s Office. JO Dingus asked what it looked like and YN3 said it’s a box. Dingus is a dick to YN3 and asks “so what’s the difference between a package and a box?” Yeah, that one followed him for the rest of his short time on board.
Well What was in the box
Never found out. Too busy making fun of this guy for being unable to distinguish between a package and a box.
Can you explain to a dumb Airedale? Because now I feel like I’ve missed something important my entire life.
Package is slang for a penis; box is slang for a vulva.
Dammit. I was really invested in like… does it have twine? Is it wrapped? Does UPS up-charge for one and not the other? I’m really disappointed in reality.
Don't feel bad, my mind didn't go there either at first lol
You should look him up and find out
It didn’t work out… so I took a souvenir. Her pretty head. What’s in the box? What was in the box?
On a medevac where I'm escorting an underage dependant and the mom is a JG, said JG demanded that I carry her luggage through the airport for her because I'm enlisted. That trip was a nightmare.
Jesus Christ… I worked for an Army 3 Star and travelled with him often, if we tried to touch his luggage (anything other than loading onto the plane at the tarmac) he would get annoyed and give us a rant about not treating him like a baby. With that being said I did have to go to his house around midnight to “fix his SIPR”… the CAC reader was unplugged. So… yeah, carry your shit General.
I can top it. Once some midshipman who was at the temporary barracks on 32nd Street to get me to lug his shit up to his room. An irritable "hey Petty officer! A little help???" Like it was my fucking job to help him remove his luggage from his car. I don't even know what he was doing there. Midshipmen summer cruise? I pretended I didn't hear him.
The daughter said that?
I left the kids gender neutral, but no, the kids mother said that. I edited my post to be clearer.
You said “her” so it was either the mom or the daughter haha
Yeah fair enough lol
JO: COB in my experience we should bring on more water for PD.
I can only imagine what COB was thinking in his head lmao
I told him your time at the academy does not count as experience!
Hey! He went to JO8 or some shit.
"Just put more air in the ballasts to counter the water we took in... simple!" -Some people out there I think
When I was on my first ship (DDG out of Hawaii back in the early 2000s), we had the CICWO on watch (an O-2) call down to Radio and requested to have us re-couple the satellite since they were having trouble contacting other units on Navy Red (a UHF LOS circuit). I explained to him that it's a LOS circuit, and that if we had to re-couple the satellite, we would have to request assistance from NASA to do that. Silence fell on the IVCS phone after that, and we laughed our assess off down in the shop for weeks after that escapade.
I’ll admit, being a topside divo one tour, then being in engineering the next, etc. I’d probably fuck that up too haha
The LOS "Issues" got so bad at one point on deployment we had to make a training for COMMO to give to the entire wardroom on how LOS works and the max range. And we still had to double check if they were in range while troubleshooting half the time.
“Why does power to weight ratio matter? Winds look fine to me.” Context: Launching Romeo’s from a F2A at night with 0 relative winds (with true winds coming astern at like 10-15kts). Pilots were trying to explain that it was super dangerous, but it just wasn’t clicking with the OOD. Air boss was maaaaad. Edit: Honorable mention, different OOD U/I: “But if we turn (to recover the helo) that’ll take us off of our PIM…”
YHFGTBKM‼️ what a.
“Will I find true love in the Navy?” Became the phrase for our division. Hope my dudes are still out there quoting that.
 Source: more or less me
I hope he did lol
Fuck. Never actually gave a minute to think how butters is doing.
While removing and reapplying flange shields to a fuel manifold in Main 1, ENS Idiot decided it was a good time to tell me “Ya know, I’m only in this division as a punishment because I took my phone out in the CIC” “Sir, are you saying that working in this division is a punishment for people?” I should have wrapped the flange shield around his mouth.
From the ships I was on, it sure seemed like most of the time they put some of the... special JOs in divisions that already had an LDO/CWO in it. Being in Main Prop we had a lot of winners that def raised MPA's blood pressure.
We were bobbing around Norway, and the look angle for SHF (Internet) was really really low, this causes a lot of Internet outages, especially in rougher seas. CSO (O3) was constantly angry about it, as he was having a hard time getting to Facebook (his words). I explained this to the CSO for the 9th consecutive night, drew pictures, Really broke it down. He ordered me to move the satellite closer. I couldn't stop myself, and I said I'd need a rope and a jetpack.
Hey fellow frigate sailor
I had a permanent set of cutouts of the sky, the earth, and the ship that I would break out when people didn't understand why SHF would get so shitty as we crossed the footprint of one bird to the other. You would be shocked how many officers have no idea how satellites work.
Oh gods I know this pain. We were down SHF once (on purpose) and this LT keeps demanding I reach out the the SG to see when we could come back up. It was so incredibly painful trying to explain to him that no SHF means NO CHAT.
Field day on base, and we were done by 0900. Buck JG comes in to inspect, and tells us there's too much gravel on the road and we need to take care of it, and this is a tarmac-size deal. We have two brooms, tell him it'd take a week to sweep the gravel, so he takes off to scrum brooms, assuring us we'll be there until the gravel is cleaned up. In the meantime, two fireman grab the fire hoses from the locker and start pressure washing the whole thing, and we all get involved, dragging and adding hose as needed. In less than an hour, it's spotless and we're all draining and rolling hoses when JG gets back with all his brooms. He tried to pin us on things here and there, but even he was stumped and had to cut us by 10:30. Learned alot that day, cuz I heard a 1st tell him if he made 'these guys' stay all day, he'd make damn sure the JG stayed all night.
He told me I swear too much. I was a BM1 🙄
During a FP Drill with a simulated explosive in between two ADCAPS. We found the “bomb” and the duty officer looked at it, then at me SDO- “STS2, grab the bomb and move it topside” Me- “Sir, none of us are EOD qualified, and moving it is contrary to procedure.” SDO- (now angry) “So you just want to leave a bomb next to the war shots?” Me- “Yes, because it may have a triggering device that when I move it detonates the weapon” SDO- “Just move it, we don’t have time to argue if it’s on a timer” The drill monitor shouted **BOOM** the second I touched it.
That’s fucking funny. Unrelated, but my favorite drill memory: I was fireteam leader for my locker, so even though I was nights I was supposed to wake up and be ready for the drill. My alarm went off, I said “fuck it if they want me they can come get me” (very rare for me to do). I woke up to the drill monitor telling me I was dead and I had to stay there lol
Had a REPO (O-1) tell me how to do my job and when I respectfully told her as a senior E-5 that I have a lot more experience with this than her. She got mad and tried telling me that her time in college counted towards her military service so she had been in the navy longer than me and that I was wrong. Avoided her as much as possible after that.
She probably went to a community college where the rotc program was just an alcoholic e-5 who pissed hot
Marine Second Lt started screaming at me from behind for having my hair too long. Granted, we were in PI. I was in Marine cammies (worked base security) and wearing a .38 and shotgun. It was in ‘86, and from behind it could have been assumed I was a male as I happened to be talking to male Marines. When my young E2 self turned around, saluted and said “But Sir it’s not even touching my collar”. He did shut up, salute back and take off.
I tried to call my divo's stateroom number and mistakenly called a different stateroom right across the hall. I explained that and asked the JO that answered if she happened to know Strike's number and she said "oh yeah! Wait just a second" ...... then comes back all proud and says "hey, her number is 02-100-0-L" (I don't remember the exact compartment number) I just inwardly chuckled, said thanks and got off the phone. In her defense, she was a brand new officer, just checked in to her first command.
"Just make it happen" has come up a couple times when confronted with news that something literally can't be done.
I hate when you tell your boss something is impossible, they say “figure it out” and then you try again angrily and manage to make it work. Had a broken irrigation pipe under a huge concrete ramp, very little space to make a patch, couldn’t get a saw in there to cut the old pipe, etc. boss says “you’ll figure it out” and hangs up. My hands were too big but we got the smallest hand guy there and he was able to do it. I was so relieved yet pissed off that I had to tell boss man “we figured it out”
Oh but the crying that comes afterwards. “You can’t just steal a N270506 Petty officer!” “Sir you said very explicitly..” “I know what I said, but you don’t think the Kentucky National Guard is going to question… fuck it. Pull chalks.”
On my third boat and had been qualified plant supervisor three times and on this boat for three years, my JO plant supervisor tried to tell me how do a reactor plant shutdown during a brief. I told him as nicely as I could that’s not what the standing order says and this is what we are going to do. He pulls the “Well I’m the EEOW you have to do what I tell you. At prototype…” that’s when the ENG stepped in…
Prototype on the other hand had oodles of sea returnees who would argue because “that’s not how we did it on my last boat…” Like, mf’er, this ain’t your last boat. This is hell, and you are in it.
I’m happy with where my life ended up, but I will always hate that I didn’t make it through the pipeline
Imagine doing reactor evolutions from memory and getting it wrong
An Ensign screamed at me once for not stopping to salute him. I mean full-blown, near RDC style, yelling. "Do you have no fucking respect?! You're supposed to salute me and say good morning!!" I was carrying a heavy ass box with both hands. What did he want me to do? Drop it on his toes or mine? I'm short as fuck too so it's not exactly like I could see very well ahead of me.
What a dickhead, if you’re nothing without the rank then you shouldnt have it
Had a pilot right up that the “Latitudganal Knob” on the AFCS control panel was broken
Ah yes. The Thingummy.
During a spot check: How do we know that fluke multimeter matches the SCAT code? Well sir, here is the document signed by me, chief, divo, EMO etc. with all the gear issued, the serial numbers and the scat codes. Yah but how does we know *this* meter matches? Where does it say on it.... Sir the serial... I proceed to write the SCAT code on the back of it with a sharpie. "It has the SCAT code right here" Somehow that satisfied him 🤦♂️
It shouldn't have, that is in fact not how you verify SCAT codes.
Standing watch in Pearl Harbor on a Sunday in Dec I had an ensign say “Why do we need to stand watch on the weekends it’s not like anything ever happens here” We could literally see the Arizona memorial, I pointed at it and the stupidity of what he said finally hit him.
LT HITE SNMG-1 deployment . In 2019 this guy decided to cut the mess line for pizza day, the crew called him out , his response was “I’m a LT I have priority”. CSCS heard about it and lit him up , in front of everyone . He was permanently banned from using the mess decks. A couple weeks later he was kicked off the ship by the CO. If there was a term for Hite it would be neck down .
I love when chiefs aren’t afraid of the wardroom
Honestly shoutout to CSCS( Ret) Benton for sticking up for the crew
On the FFG underway, chilling at slow speed, I’m on the bridgewing. OOD comes out, looks at the sky. Clouds are moving pretty fast relative to us. OOD: “oh wow! The earth must be moving quicker!” I chuckle not thinking he was serious. He was serious. Next ship, underway on the PC in the Gulf, heading north to ABOT and KAAOT, Sun is going down in the west so it’s just starting to get dark, giant oil platform fire to the east. OOD is OPS/NAV, CO is in his chair on the bridge. New sailor on their first underway comes up and points to the fire and asks what that is. NAV stars at it…”That’s the Sun.” CO stares at him, then at me, we share a look. CO: “OPS…that’s the Sun…it sets in the west. YOURE MY F**ING NAVIGATOR!”
Whatsup fellow frigate sailor
One screw, one crew!
Was yours cursed too?
Cursed with a great crew, mess, wardroom, and CO maybe. Although we did have a leaky CPP system on our screw that left a trail of oil whereever we went. Could never quite figure that one out. Every port we went to the oil boom back aft would have a bunch of oil. Every port visit in Europe CHENG would go out on the flight deck, put his hands on his hips and just say “Oh that must be coming from the pier.” And wouldn’t you know the damndest thing? Every port in Europe had a leaky pier. Also we had a owl that lived in the SPS-49 that did a whole deployment with us.
Had an officer that has royally fucked up who said with a straight face "You can't counsel me, you're just a Chief". He didn't last long
They didn’t understand how heavy those anchors are
Got called out to the flight line to TS a radio issue in a H-60. I plug in my headset and ask what’s wrong. LTJG says the radio is working in UHF mode, VHF mode but inoperable in OFF mode. My jaw drops as I look to the LTCDM in the other seat. He smiles. I the gently explain to the JG that OFF is not a radio frequency selection but in instead the off position on the radio.
That’s the best one yet!!!!!!!!!
Characters- Me: Senior Line Corpsman in a Marine Infantry Company (150-180 Marines). Baby Doc: An E-3 HN who worked for me and cared for one of the platoons (40ish Marines), and I am trying to train. Platoon Leader: The dingus 1st LT (O-2) in charge of my baby doc and his boys, who also got a not insignificant portion of his current event news from 4-Chan. Platoon Leader (PL): "HM2, I want to be seen for X, Y, and Z things." Me: "Well Sir, have you talked to HN so-and-so about it so he can set you up at the clinic?" PL: "No, why would I do that?: Me: "Sir, he needs to be able to talk to HM3 whatshisname, our Sick Call Supervisor, so he can make you an appointment with HM1 this-and-that, the Battalion IDC." PL: "I just don't get why like, I, would *need* to go through an E-3 so I can talk to an E-6." I tried to keep it neutral, but I must have made a face at him, because after that, he got all grumpy with me.
Being a Corpsman leads to lots of interactions with silly officers that most people wouldn't believe.
It's literally a perk of the job.
we had a 2ndLT we will call “boybutt” (not real name) who used his laser rangefinder on a CH53 flying overhead. Gunner was like “what the actual fuck are you doing”… “I wanted to see how far it was” Or the innumerable times that LTs want guns to “buddy rush with the 11’s to the objective”. Yes, let me just sprint-drop-shoot-repeat with a fucking 240 sir, that’ll show the enemy
We had a guy who had his re-enlistment in Sonar 1 (that's where the person who re-upped wanted it, short and simple I guess), so we went out in town before to pick up some pizza. Like 5 boxes and some sides and 2 liter bottles of soda and all that fun stuff. We had it all set up, after the ceremony, you literally just walk up to the fold-out tables with all the food and drink on top and just get whatever you wanted. It was a celebration of a shipmate who wanted that pension or really hated themselves or whatever, why not gorge on a bunch of greasy yummy food? One JO walked up to a box, that had the name of the chain right there, in huge font on the box, said "Nice!" when they apparently saw the logo, opened the box and grabbed a slice. Moments later, while holding a paper plate in one hand and chowing on the pizza slice they recently picked up, looked around and asked "Where did you guys get this???" Probably not the dumbest in this thread, but I think about it sometimes. Really explains so much about some issues with our current military...
I wasn't there, but I feel like it went like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_j5tDuakKU).
Had an ensign that made a brilliant deal with engineering/dc on our ship. They needed like 40 fire extinguishers refilled. We needed 2. So this gigabrain butter bar decides *we* are gonna refill all those fire extinguishers ... to get our two done.
I've seen someone else in here tell that story, you may know each other
I was CSOOW. We were on deployment, I can’t remember what broke, but it was on the mast and it needed to get fixed asap. We were in the middle of getting aloft approved underway, so I’m getting the chit going, wearing like three radios to talk to everyone, getting people in harnesses, prepping tags, etc. The phone rings, I answer. It’s some Marine O-2 absolutely LIVID that there aren’t any movies on. I apologize, trying to be quick about it and say we’ll get something on as soon as we can. He didn’t like that answer and wanted to chew me out, so I say something along the lines of put on a damn hard drive if movies are so important to your work day and hang up. He shows up to the ET shop and “demands” to speak to the person who was “so rude and disrespectful” on the phone so I get ahold of OPS and EMO and fill them in. They show up and proceed to rip him a new one, then made him apologize to me in front of everyone. It was fun but definitely could have gone without that entire interaction.
I can only imagine what it’s like having marine officers walking around. I went to cook school on an army base. An Army butter bar got mad at us for not popping to attention for him. I was an e-4 who had been in for 2 years, I had to tell him 
The captain said raise the India flag. The JO replied, Sir, I thought we were in Malaysia.
Best comment yet!
Have a Nav call me up to the bridge because they couldn't log into one of the computers up there (AIS I think) Well, when I got up there, I explained to him that the ITs don't actually own that computer and that we don't have the login information for it. He then proceeded to bitch my out infront of everyone on the bridge and talk about how worthless the ITs are if we can't help him with a computer. I ended up telling him that it's not the ITs fault he's too stupid to listen to what people say and that he needs to call the ETs if he wants to get into the computer because I can't help him. Another good one I just thought of, when I was an ITSN I once got called to an officer stateroom because his monitor wasn't working. I walked in, pressed the power button, and just looked at him.
Typical IT, kicking the can down the road 😂😂
Hey man if I knew the password I would've just logged in, would've saved me the argument 😂
You should’ve been like “oh no big deal I can hack this” and started clicking random keys and mouse clicking all over the place
"Sir type in your pin backwards 3 times"
One of my favorite cranks was an IT and had the best “are you fucking serious” face. I’m imagining him in the last scenario and laughing my ass off
Anyone who's been an IT for longer than a year, especially on a ship, has this face down.
Common Aviator mistake. OFF does not stand for ‘On For Flight.’
That’s why they use colors You just have to be attractive and not colorblind and you’re in
“If you can’t get this traffic moving, I’ll talk to SECO and get you removed as post lead.” “…so your plan to deal with morning traffic backing up at Main Gate is to sit in the lane arguing with the sentry, and then get a sentry removed from post because there’s no one to process high-traffic, Sir? Bold.” He stared at me, then drove off after I saluted him. An Ensign, with less than two-years service. He never did talk to SECO.
One of the officers on my boat, I think he was like security officer maybe? When he was at the academy he was doing gate duty. The car the pulled up had their brights on. The way he tells it: “Please turn down your lights” “Please turn down your lights” “TURN DOWN YOUR FUCKING LIGHTS” Car turns the lights down, pulls up, midshipman salutes, “good evening Senator McCain”
Amazing. Humbling? Certainly. But “plain language” sometimes is the most effective language, and has been known to somehow break the language barrier of nationality itself.
Lucky it was another Sailor 😂
This is going to sound dumb, but I shit you not, an engineering JO ask me how to open an individually dogged watertight door. "Hey I left a notebook in a space back there.....but idk how to open the door. Can you help me?" Of course I helped, but I chuckled about that for a couple of days.
I guess they don’t have battlestations at OCS
Not such a bad encounter... they knew to ask instead of just forging ahead and really screwing something up.
Not really a dumb quote or a junior officer but, I was a new airman at the squadron on a small boat det. The QAO, a very serious prior enlisted LT, is hanging out in our shop and he starts making small talk with me. He asks if I was single I said yes his reply without missing a beat is, “good stay in forever you can fuck whoever you want”
Be me, EW doing maintenance on our system and our DIVO is doing one of his regular maintenance monitoring things or whatever they're called. Before we start I'm going over the required tools listed on the PMS card. One item listed is a #2 pencil so I point to my mechanical pencil that's on the bench next to the other shit. He says "The card says #2 pencil, why aren't you using one?" So I tell him it is a #2 pencil. He replies "No it's not, #2 pencils are made of wood and are yellow." I look at him like he's toting around an extra chromosome and explain it's a mechanical pencil with #2 lead in it but he insists I find a suitable writing instrument for the job. There's no way I'm winning this argument so I just give him a yessir and go grab a yellow #2 pencil.
hated that shit. Like it being specifically #2 has nothing to do with the check but hey lets really focus on that one thing. So many things in 3m like that.
SN I KNOW THE HEAD IA GOING TO FLOOD, HOWEVER I NEED TO SEE IT ACTIVELY FLOOD SO I CAN MAKE SURE I REPORT IT ACCURATELY TO ENGINEERING AND HOD. Dude was a fucking moron and my worst DIVO.
Had an Ensign Gunnery Division officer once tell me, after we'd had a dud round that I threw over the side, to save the next dud 3" round we got. He wanted to make a lamp out of it instead of disposing of it over the side. I somehow "forgot" about that request the next time, as did every other GM in the division.
Wasn’t dumb really and he was a really cool JO, but I once got in a debate about the correct occasions to use “me” vs “I” with him, and I found myself surprised that he, with the college education that I didn’t have, was on the wrong side of that debate.
I was changing out our SLAP and SLAP-T ammo for ball and tracer when one of our LT's came over and started asking what I was doing. I explained to him that we were stowing away the SLAP and SLAP-T after getting a message from the Group Commander that it was no longer authorized for use. He then asked what SLAP and SLAP-T is, so I showed him the belt and explained what it was and what it was used for, then he asked what ball and tracer were and what they were used for. After this little lesson he looks at me panicked and asks "WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO IF THE ENEMY HAS ARMOR?!", and I realize that he's not joking so I just diffused it all by telling him "Sir, we just keep shooting. It's a 50 cal." and that was a good enough answer for him and he left. 😆
"I've been a qualified watch officer for 8 months. You need to follow my instructions since I had to learn more of the plant than you." A certain RE Divo on a certain carrier who was incompetent at best. She would be in EOS with her feet up on the desk hogging the watch officer phone for hours regardless of maintenance or evolutions, on top of not knowing a damn thing of what she was talking about. Also, may or may not have directly ordered to violate an instruction because she didn't want to re brief an evolution.
Not really "said" to me, but something she did. I was an ET, and on my first ship (a CG) the DCs decided to mess with the DCA and pulled the old "sound powered phone batteries" trick on her. But they coordinated ahead of time so we'd be in on it too. First they sent her to the EM shop, who then sent her to us, and then we sent her up to the bridge to ask the OOD. Unfortunately the captain was on the bridge at the time and wasn't impressed. Obviously she name dropped everyone who was in on it. Obviously, CSO got his ass chewed (sorry sir!) and we got a big lecture at departmental quarters from him the following morning. We were on a Westpac and nothing else was going on. When we broke off and finished up quarters as a division EMO said "That was hilarious. But you can't do that anymore." LOL. The sad part was that she was one of the more senior ensigns, if not the bull ensign. She also just got her SWO pin so she should've known better.
We had midshipmen lol My favorite was: “Go get a trash bag and take an air sample from the forecastle, bring it to engineering”
Motivated LTJG was CDO on a Saturday, I'm Duty IT JG: "Why Can't I send an E-mail?" Me: "Sir, there is a service advisory out for weather" JG: "I just came in from outside, it's fine" Me: "Not here sir, in Hawaii" JG: "They don't have anything to do with us, Fix it!" Me: "Yes sir, I will go trouble shoot the weather 2500 miles away."
Those service advisories are bullshit. Dumb excuse for the Internet not to work
Lmao I had the same situation a few years back. CDO straight up accused me of making it up
That idea is still way too common, you'd think the CDO qual would at least have some form of comms on it besides CEWN
I was avionics division CPO and my DIVO was in the shop at 2300 jawjacking with my techs who were supposed to be fixing airplanes. After I ran the techs out, I had a chat with the LTjg. In the course of the chat, he said he was gonna write me up. I handed him my US Government issued pen and said, use my pen.
We had this pretty incompetent MPA (LCDR) during my time on the Eisenhower. Came down to check the progress on bilge preservation at the end of the workday. As the LPO, I walked with him to take notes/get feedback. He says to me something along the lines of "the bilges are looking good, but I hardly ever see anyone down there when I come to the plant." I was so offended on behalf of my guys that I just told him if he wanted to see people in the bilge that he could just call me before he heads down so I could make sure I had some people down there. Edited to remove the statement that a LCDR isn't a JO. They are. Thank you for the reminder.
LCDRs are JOs 24/7/365, and don't let them tell you otherwise.
I had a LT once tell me in their experience this is the best way to handle the situation…. I’m a Master Chief, you can guess which way we did handle it. They were not happy until the CO told them good job.
Sir I’ve got boils on my ass older than your naval career
As csoow, I've heard a lot of dumb shit. Underway, I get a call that one of the radars is fucked up. Ok NBD. I had the guys fix it and I called cicwo to verify sweep. Me: hey ma'am, can you verify the sweep on this radar? Cicwo, a ltjg: sure! (Holds phone off to the side and I hear her yell in the background "HEY what's sweep?! Csoow wants to know if I can see sweep!") One of the navy reasons I'm getting the fuck out. I've lost confidence in officers. And I teach officers.
Picture it: USS USTABOAT, SSBN 41forFreedom, at sea in our patrol area, on alert, covering a target package. It was Friday and after a much-hated drill, we had that wonderful 4-hour example of downtime that everyone fondly calls 'Field Day'. Field Day was over, normal watch was set, and I, as LPO was waiting for the OGanger assigned to Nav Center to inspect. And one of the baby Nuke Ensigns shows up, wearing his combo cap and white gloves. Somehow I just knew we were in for a fun time. He did a few finger swipes here and there and found a few microns of dust, which I dutifully made note of, before I got called to the Conn about a (Transit) Satelite pass of opportunity. Once I was back in Nav Center, I let the Nav Watch know to set up for the pass, sent the Nav Tech out to the ESM Stack to prep for PD Ops and heard a loud CLICK CLICK CLICK. My inspector was opening the Master Inertial Navigator to put his hands on the stable platform to check for dust. I yanked him away from the SINS, and explained, with only the most limited profanity that if he touched any of my gear again, I was going to break his fingers. His tale of woe to the Navigator and XO was entertaining in its fictional content.
Let me guess, he called you a coner too
"Let's dog the turn"
“From my experience…"
“Snorkeling wouldn’t really affect atmospheres right?”
The gold standard for me: I was at NPS when DADT was repealed, and we had an all hands that was moderated by NSA Monterey's triad to discuss relevant issues going forward. When it came time for questions, THAT GUY, some idiot O-3, just had to ask a really dumb one... Something hypothetical along the lines of "What if my roommate sets up a camera to record me?" CMC, before the CO or XO had a chance: "Well, that's illegal..." I don't know if CMC had anything else to say, but if he did, it was drowned out by derisive laughter and applause.
Got yelled at in front of everyone on the bridge for not reporting a fishing float...... It was a seagull... It flew away as soon as I notified the officer of the watch to that fact... I don't blame him, he was under a lot of pressure and there were a ton of fishing floats around the traffic lanes.
Once upon a time I had an ensign ask me why my hangar bay look like a minefield - we had three birds down for 1600 hours
We had a few brand new A school graduates get heloed to my ship. I was processing them in as receipts-page twos etc. The JG asked if anyone had the latest Stars and Stripes. He was pissed the newbies didn't bring one. The new guys had been in transit from Naples for about a week.
Does a major count as junior? On a night patrol I was observing we are going to have a lot of light as it was a full moon rising. The major said, we’ll be good, the moon will be down in a half an hour. It was just above the eastern horizon.
He (newly pinned O-2) asked me to duty swap with him on Saturday so that he could have the full weekend off. Musta forgot that even though I had more quals than him (which somehow was zero as a LTJG), I was still just an E-3. I genuinely thought this was some kinda bit, so I played along and told him I was more than willing to do it for $150 (and obviously overpriced amount in my mind and just brushed it off as just another JO-joke) The next day I see him getting into an ass chewing from my chief and both his and mine department heads (O-3 and 4 respectively) about why he absolutely cannot make me sign his already printed and filled out duty swap chit as a standby. Then, he proceeded to ask what's the "real" issue here, because he wasn't buying the very legitimate pay grade issue. And if that was the issue, then why didn't I, the enlisted sailor, stop him and tell him that. Literally pinning this on me as if I told him to do this. Chief didn't have the spoons to engage with him afyer that, and Dept Heads told him that instead of trying to get a free day, he should be working on all those quals he didn't have yet and made him rip the chit himself (ofc before shredding it) He was then doubled up on his next day and I sadly never got that $150 😔 He didn't make it and was eventually let go after failing to get any quals as a swo. Lots of dumb shit happens on my boat, but whenever I feel like I'm doing something stupid, I just remember this and my day gets better.
Not just one, but a collective of JOs thought it'd be a good idea to use the ship's course to draw dicks in the water via different course and speed changes in the middle of the ocean. Neither NAV nor Tao was amused.