WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO BAD OFFICERS

Matty O'Blackfive has an interesting post about whether enlisted men make better officers than the pure Academy types. Interesting discussion ensues in the comments.

But no matter how a guy manages to make officer, it's important that he treat his men well if he wants to win their loyalty.

If he's a complete jag who treats them like crap... let's just say that being outranked isn't the same as being helpless.

4 years of my Naval service were aboard the USS Enterprise in the Reactor Department. I served from 1987-1991. Recently I came across a discussion board full of the reminiscings of various Reactor & Engineering Department members. One of their tales [no permalink, so CTRL+F "A Sad True Story" - about 1/4 the way down the page] seems particularly appropriate to the discussion. Here's the meat of it [I've added comments in brackets for non-Navy folk]:

Lt. R. was impossible to work for and was hated by just about everyone (officer and enlisted, alike).

[...]

The insanity campaign actually began serendipitously with a simple phone call to 4 EOS [Enclosed Operating Station - the Engineering Control Room - think of it as the place where Scotty always answered Kirk's pages from]. Lt. R. never allowed his LRPT [Log Recorder/Phone Talker - think of him as the Watch Officer's secretary] to answer the phone (as was the LRPT’s job) and always answered the EOS desk phone himself (so that he could scream at whoever dared to call the plant if the call wasn’t for official business). Whoever phoned 4 EOS that day knew Lt. R. answered and just didn’t want to deal with him and so hung up. Lt. R. slammed the phone down and the two ROs [Reactor Operators - the guys who monitor reactor temperature & pressure, and shut the reactor down if readings are too far out of spec] turned around and stared at him (and gave him their usual, "you’re such a retard" look). Lt. R. then said something like, "What? You didn’t hear the phone ring?" They both said no (even though they had). Then Lt. R. asked the throttleman if he heard the phone ring and the trottleman said that he didn’t (even though he had). The LRPT also told the watch officer that he didn’t hear the phone ring.

Everyone in EOS knew that Lt. R. was troubled since the phone really did ring. An evil plan was then launched on the spot. One of the ROs was on headphones with Control Equipment [CE monitors current & voltage readings for the electricity that runs all heavy equipment in the engineering spaces](he and the CR operator were doing trip and cals [basically making sure breakers tripped at the right points - routine scheduled maintenance]) and the CR operator [forget the actual name of the watchstation, but basically the guy sitting in the Control Equipment room] was quietly instructed to call 4 EOS and hang up. Everyone in EOS looked straight ahead until Lt. R actually picked up the phone and then they all gave him a sad look, like they felt sorry for him for thinking that the phone was actually ringing. The phone rang again a few minutes later and the same thing happened. This continued until the end of the watch. Then it began all over again the very next watch. And then again the next. Lt. R. was convinced that his phone was ringing (because it was) and placed dozens of trouble calls to the aft IC shack [forget what that stands for, but IC basically did repairs on small electrical equipment] to look into the matter. At least once during each watch an IC guy would be forced to come down to 4 EOS and checkout the phone circuit. (And every time the phone was found to be working properly.)

The boys in 4 plant just couldn’t be satisfied with ringing the EOS phone after a while. They soon got really creative and began synchronizing phones, alarms, buzzers, growlers and just about anything else that could make a noise in EOS. Pretty soon the EOS sounded like a clock shop at noon (Ring-bzzzt-grrrrr-wrrrr-ding-weeeet, etc.). While all this commotion was going on the ROs, throttleman and LRPT just sat there straight faced while Lt. R. ran around EOS trying to answer all the things that were buzzing, growling and ringing. The saddest part of the story really was that pretty soon everyone in Reactor Dept knew that this was going on and everyone, including other watch officers, wanted to be in on it. So towards the end (before Lt. R. actually went insane) just about everyone felt the need to call 4 EOS or R's stateroom and hang up on him.

If an officer wants respect, he has to earn it. If he doesn't earn it...

His men can make him wish he had.

Quality Control isn't always top-down.