Yep, been there. Also the part of being volunteered for special projects.
I remember a SGT. asking who can drive. Hands went up and he said, “Good! You gonna be driving a broom today!”
I had already learned to not respond unless directly addressed.
Pretty much the same thing happened to me, way back in the Royal Australian Air Force, 1979, I got ‘volunteered’ to do a 5 day course of how to drive a fork lift truck. Thing is, since then, I was the guy doing the driving, and the dumbshits who volunteered me to do the fork lift course became the fuckwits who loaded the stuff onto the pallets I LIFTED UP, MOVED AND PUT INTO POSITION. Bloody idiots.
Sometimes, things just work out for the best.
I once volunteered in a warehouse on Rota that I could drive a hilo so we could find our pallets of equipment instead of waiting for the Navy.
First thing I did was accidentally fork and slice a large carton on a pallet. Voila! Our stuff was inside it!
Don’t scratch an itch; don’t even twitch!
voluntold!
I never signed on the dotted line, and I accomplished my childhood goal of growing up to be a civilian…
And I still get a reflexive freeze-don’t-move-or-breathe at questions like that. And every now and then, realize that I know what needs doing, and actually volunteer. I hate that.
Then the kindly Sgt says, “PFC Cluster…., you need to learn how to volunteer. Now! Step forward”. Never happened to me, of course.
Hey Old NFO;
I learned the hard way, the E-4 mafia taught me how to “Go Gray” and that skill has paid off for me since.
Heh! No, of course we have never seen this, but have experienced it around AD 1970. 😉
Congratulations. You have another opportunity to Excell!
All- LOL, I see more than a ‘few’ of us have experienced that. Stuart, gotta admit YOU made out on that deal!
And of course once in a blue moon the volunteers either get rewarded for their work or simply get out of a platoon wide detail, rebating the whole hook for the next few months.
Seth- Not often… 🙂
Volunteering has mostly been beneficial in my experience. Best one was a regimental comm exercise without the rest of the company. Got to sit around for a week babysitting a sat uplink and drinking beer nights with a cool Sgt while everyone else froze their asses off in Grayling (or Ft Drum on another occasion. Volunteering for the first got me the nod for the second)
Voluntold is for shitheads.
I’ve been told that NAVY stands for Never Again Volunteer Yourself. There are exceptions to the rule. Very early in basic training, our DI asked us if there was anyone here who could type. I nearly sprained my shoulder getting my hand up. As a result, I got to be his “house mouse” and work in his office while everyone else scrubbed the barracks on hands and knees.
I remember a SGT. asking who can drive. Hands went up and he said, “Good! You gonna be driving a broom today!”
I had already learned to not respond unless directly addressed.
And then there’s the evil NCO who switches it around and says “last person to raise his hand…”
It’s not just the military. I was in in a meeting where a thoroughly f’ed up problem was being discussed. The guy who was largely responsible to resolve the issue was basically trying to say it wasn’t a problem (Note, the NRC was already asking questions so that approach was a non-starter). I made the mistake of pointing out things that indicated that I actually understood the problem, and voila, I’m now in charge of resolving the cluster.
Heath- Yep, but some folks never learn!
Greg- LOL, all I ever got was KP…
Francis- Oh,that would be interesting!
NRW- For your sins…LOL
I got voluntold once that turned out to be a really good deal. Our boat, one of the older boomers had newly arrived at Pearl Harbor after the transit from Charleston, through the canal, and via a missile load-out at the Polaris missile facility in Bremerton WA. I was on the Gold crew and we were handing the boat over to the Blue crew at Pearl so they could take it over to Guam and then the first post-overhaul patrol.
At that time there were two enlisted barracks for the sub crews at Pearl. One was a brand new modern barracks on the main side of sub base, and the other was way over on Ford Island. The barracks on Ford Island was a decrepit old building that I think had barely survived the attack on 12/7/41.
The COB (Chief of the Boat – the senior enlisted man on a submarine) grabbed me and two other PO2’s and told us we were going to be the barracks MAA over on Ford Island.
“Aw Chief, what did I do to piss you off. At least give me a chance to apologize.”
Nope. Nothing worked so I was stuck with it. To make matters worse, Ford Island in those days could only be accessed either by a small boat, or an auto ferry, both of which ran on a schedule and shut down for the night somewhere about midnight.
But… once we actually got over there and found out what the job was, it turned into a really good deal. You see, there was an assigned day crew that took care of the barracks during regular working hours and we only needed to actually be there during a scheduled watch after hours and on weekends. With the three of us plus three from every other boat there, we each had a an eight hour desk watch about every 6 days. The rest of the time was… Das Libertas!
That, my friends, was how I got a nearly all-expense paid vacation in Hawaii on uncle Sam.
Hehehe.
Yep, been there. Also the part of being volunteered for special projects.
I remember a SGT. asking who can drive. Hands went up and he said, “Good! You gonna be driving a broom today!”
I had already learned to not respond unless directly addressed.
Pretty much the same thing happened to me, way back in the Royal Australian Air Force, 1979, I got ‘volunteered’ to do a 5 day course of how to drive a fork lift truck. Thing is, since then, I was the guy doing the driving, and the dumbshits who volunteered me to do the fork lift course became the fuckwits who loaded the stuff onto the pallets I LIFTED UP, MOVED AND PUT INTO POSITION. Bloody idiots.
Sometimes, things just work out for the best.
I once volunteered in a warehouse on Rota that I could drive a hilo so we could find our pallets of equipment instead of waiting for the Navy.
First thing I did was accidentally fork and slice a large carton on a pallet. Voila! Our stuff was inside it!
Don’t scratch an itch; don’t even twitch!
voluntold!
I never signed on the dotted line, and I accomplished my childhood goal of growing up to be a civilian…
And I still get a reflexive freeze-don’t-move-or-breathe at questions like that. And every now and then, realize that I know what needs doing, and actually volunteer. I hate that.
Then the kindly Sgt says, “PFC Cluster…., you need to learn how to volunteer. Now! Step forward”. Never happened to me, of course.
Hey Old NFO;
I learned the hard way, the E-4 mafia taught me how to “Go Gray” and that skill has paid off for me since.
Heh! No, of course we have never seen this, but have experienced it around AD 1970. 😉
Congratulations. You have another opportunity to Excell!
All- LOL, I see more than a ‘few’ of us have experienced that. Stuart, gotta admit YOU made out on that deal!
And of course once in a blue moon the volunteers either get rewarded for their work or simply get out of a platoon wide detail, rebating the whole hook for the next few months.
Seth- Not often… 🙂
Volunteering has mostly been beneficial in my experience. Best one was a regimental comm exercise without the rest of the company. Got to sit around for a week babysitting a sat uplink and drinking beer nights with a cool Sgt while everyone else froze their asses off in Grayling (or Ft Drum on another occasion. Volunteering for the first got me the nod for the second)
Voluntold is for shitheads.
I’ve been told that NAVY stands for Never Again Volunteer Yourself. There are exceptions to the rule. Very early in basic training, our DI asked us if there was anyone here who could type. I nearly sprained my shoulder getting my hand up. As a result, I got to be his “house mouse” and work in his office while everyone else scrubbed the barracks on hands and knees.
I remember a SGT. asking who can drive. Hands went up and he said, “Good! You gonna be driving a broom today!”
I had already learned to not respond unless directly addressed.
And then there’s the evil NCO who switches it around and says “last person to raise his hand…”
It’s not just the military. I was in in a meeting where a thoroughly f’ed up problem was being discussed. The guy who was largely responsible to resolve the issue was basically trying to say it wasn’t a problem (Note, the NRC was already asking questions so that approach was a non-starter). I made the mistake of pointing out things that indicated that I actually understood the problem, and voila, I’m now in charge of resolving the cluster.
Heath- Yep, but some folks never learn!
Greg- LOL, all I ever got was KP…
Francis- Oh,that would be interesting!
NRW- For your sins…LOL
I got voluntold once that turned out to be a really good deal. Our boat, one of the older boomers had newly arrived at Pearl Harbor after the transit from Charleston, through the canal, and via a missile load-out at the Polaris missile facility in Bremerton WA. I was on the Gold crew and we were handing the boat over to the Blue crew at Pearl so they could take it over to Guam and then the first post-overhaul patrol.
At that time there were two enlisted barracks for the sub crews at Pearl. One was a brand new modern barracks on the main side of sub base, and the other was way over on Ford Island. The barracks on Ford Island was a decrepit old building that I think had barely survived the attack on 12/7/41.
The COB (Chief of the Boat – the senior enlisted man on a submarine) grabbed me and two other PO2’s and told us we were going to be the barracks MAA over on Ford Island.
“Aw Chief, what did I do to piss you off. At least give me a chance to apologize.”
Nope. Nothing worked so I was stuck with it. To make matters worse, Ford Island in those days could only be accessed either by a small boat, or an auto ferry, both of which ran on a schedule and shut down for the night somewhere about midnight.
But… once we actually got over there and found out what the job was, it turned into a really good deal. You see, there was an assigned day crew that took care of the barracks during regular working hours and we only needed to actually be there during a scheduled watch after hours and on weekends. With the three of us plus three from every other boat there, we each had a an eight hour desk watch about every 6 days. The rest of the time was… Das Libertas!
That, my friends, was how I got a nearly all-expense paid vacation in Hawaii on uncle Sam.