In my previous blog entry, I wrote how my very good friend was personally insulted by his military supervisor during his performance review, when his “Exceeds Expectations” work was rewarded with a “Satisfactory” rating.
Unfortunately, this blog entry is pretty much the same. My good friend’s positive work ethic was not always the blessing that outsiders might think it is. In fact, my good friend’s positive work ethic has gotten him into trouble, or at the very least, caused him more trouble than worth.
Before being supervised by Sergeant M, my very good friend attended a military technical training school.
In classic military fashion, students were assigned work details, usually lasting one week. There were many details one could be assigned to: latrine queen (cleaning the bathrooms), sweeping and mopping, trash duty, and nighttime guard duty, to name a few.
My good friend was assigned the duty of buffing the dormitory floors with an industrial buffer.
There was one slight problem and this had to do with the head games that often come with being in basic military training. Everyone in the dormitory was required to have their dorm room floor buffed. And there was only one buffer for everyone.
No problem for my good friend. He could survive one week.
And he made a plan. He chose not to do a substandard job buffing the floor since that could result in a “do over” – another week of buffing assigned so that one could learn to perform the job correctly.
My good friend was not going to have a “do over” week because his first and only week was going to have the most amazingly buffed floors.
But I’m sure the reader knows where this blog entry is going. The outcome is certainly most predictable.
After one week of the most amazingly buffed floors, the sergeant in charge not only noticed how amazingly buffed the floors were, but she wanted to know who buffed them.
Sergeant G was told that my good friend was responsible for buffing the most amazingly buffed floors.
And Sergeant G wanted the floors to be amazingly buffed all the time.
If you guessed that my good friend was now assigned permanent floor buffing duty, you are right. His attempt to have only one week of floor buffing detail by doing an amazingly good job resulted in him being permanently assigned floor buffing detail because he did an amazing good job.
But the story doesn’t get better. I’m sure you guessed that it didn’t.
Because my good friend had to make sure the dormitory floors were buffed, his dorm room because increasingly neglected. But he wasn’t too worried about it because room inspections were always announced in advance and he would have time to clean up his room.
Except that the next room inspection was not announced.
My good friend failed his dorm room inspection spectacularly.
If you’re wondering how spectacularly my good friend failed his room inspection, what happened next is almost as predictable as last time.
Sergeant G wanted to make an example of my good friend.
He was reassigned from permanent floor buffing detail to permanent latrine queen detail. Sergeant G was probably smiling smugly.
The next morning my good friend reported for permanent latrine queen detail and discovered that the latrine queen detail already had a permanently assigned crew. It seems that earlier, the crew assigned for their one week’s latrine queen duty did such an amazingly great job themselves, they got themselves permanently assigned to latrine queen duty so that they can continue to clean the latrine in their most amazingly great way.
My good friend reported to the leader of the work detail and informed him that Sergeant G had assigned him to permanent latrine queen duty.
The leader of the work detail looked a little annoyed. His crew had a system and they cleaned the latrine efficiently with their system. The leader of the work detail told my good friend that he’d be in the way.
My good friend insisted and was given a small task, but that didn’t stop the leader of the work detail from being annoyed.
The next morning my good friend again reported for latrine queen duty and was greeted by the same attitude. There was simply no room in the latrine queen detail for my good friend to be the example that Sergeant G wanted him to be.
My good friend showed up for latrine queen duty on the third day, but he was completely ignored by the work detail crew. He left without trying to help. He did not report to latrine queen duty again.
It seems that the Work Detail Gods were smiling upon my good friend. The latrine was still being cleaned by the permanent latrine queen duty crew. The buffing detail was again reassigned as a weekly detail for everyone on a rotating basic, and Sergeant G seemed to have forgotten that my good friend was going to be made an example of how not to be.
