Tales of Naval Stupidity

This was actually part of a post I made in a customers suck thread over on a rather large forum. As I am quite fond of how it turned out. As usual its long and meandering. But I like it so there. Not really gaming related, though there are a few gamer and nerd stories loosely connected I may bring up in the future.

(BORING BACKGROUND BIT)
In the early-mid 90s my just out of High School ass had the misfortune of having to go almost straight into the Navy. I think I had 2-3 weeks off beforehand. A job trade class I wanted opened up and I had like under a week knowledge of it. I endure a year of myself slowly going somewhat crazy and end up booted to the fleet. A year later we have our first cruise, to the Mediterranean Sea. 6 months of underway fun. Now as an unintended member of Deck Department many bits of stupid were to be had. However, I sort of lucked out/got screwed early on. You see, on board ship everyone had to do a good 3-4 months galley duty. Mess hall hell. Now, underway it meant LOTS more work as people ate on board ship pretty much constantly. But it also meant I was out of the overworked utterly mismanaged deck department and actually had a bit more free time than I would otherwise.
(BACKGROUND BIT OVER)

I ended up doing my mess tour as a server on the regular line. Officers had their own mess and servers who tended to be better looking or whatever silliness officers got. Which meant on our 1000 or so peopled boat, about 800 of them went through me to get fed. Some of them were morons. The most notable was this E5. Some red haired motherfucker who was infamous for always complaining the portions were too small. He was not alone in general, but was the loudest. After my tour his reign of terror continued, though being a ship mostly in port as our Destroyer Tender could do Tendery things for any other ship in port. Now he LOVED to complain. In many cases I actually agreed with what some of the other people said. He was a douche and from time to time I would actually fuck with him.

"What? You want more cheese?" Then I would give him like a string's worth. Because when the cooks gave me orders I tended to follow what the people above me said. Cuz its my job. Even being jokingly mouthy to them wasn't a good idea. (I found this out the hard way to some kid in the Navy 9 months sometime during this tour of dumb.) Well, one day about 5 minutes before the line closed for dinner an E6 comes into the line. We are out of quite a bit of stuff, it being underway and almost closing time. This E6 DEMANDS we cook him more of some Roast Beef or whatever the fuck it was. The ginger haired E5 complainer is in line too and joins him in being an ass. The low ranking cooks that were present were confused as to what to do. The E6 is now POUNDING on the metal shield that covers the line when not in use. Me being on the other side and it being closed now, I go talk to one of the higher ranking cooks in hopes of someone being able to shut this butthole and his enabling pal up. She pretty much tells me to go away and not bother her.

Fantastic.

One of the cooks gets a clue and says to just have the remaining people go around these two douchebags and then to close it up. Ok. Rock on. I go out there and hope that maybe if I try explaining we are all out nicely maybe it will help. It does not. I've been dealing with all sorts of shit just doing my job AS I AM TOLD BECAUSE ITS WHAT YOU DO IN THE FUCKING MILITARY and I am rather tired of it all. I pretty much tell the E6 now that he is acting childish and is utterly lacking in military bearing. Which he was. I close the line down then go find the galley Master At Arms because these fracksticks aren't responding to logic or reason.

The MaA was an E5 from Deck so I knew the guy. I start explaining what has happened and the E6 and the E5 come trotting along. The E6 goes into this spiel about how he has never written anyone up before yet is very close to writing me up. The MaA handles it and mysteriously no write up ever arrives. I'm sure that Captain's Mast (basically where mid level military infractions are handled on ship) would have been fun.

Mainly because that E6 would have been TOAST. Being a complete butt and acting like you own the joint doesn't really work in the service. Unless you are an officer with nobody paying attention to your antics anyhow.

It was probably before my ONE genuine attempt at being nice to the whiners in line. Folks are complaining they aren't getting enough Chicken Nuggets. I agree. It was early lunch for people who had duty stations to go to. After serving the early folks the servers ate then the regular line opened up. Well, we served ourselves. (Until this situation anyhow.) To be a nice guy, I pile a good 30 nuggets to hook my fellow shipmates up on the sly. Because I agreed with them and I want to help people till they frack me over. Before I could even walk the tray over to them, this one guy starts flipping out about how I am a hypocrite and blah blah. I try to explain and he and now a few others are having none of it. I shrug, and take the food where a few people from my department are and they get hooked up.

Oddly enough some complaints were lodged and we never directly served ourselves again. No good deed goes unpunished.

See its not just RETAIL customer service that is borked. Any time you have to do anything for any other human being they will do their best to make you hate them.

I guess the whole concept of "Do unto others as you would have done to you" is foreign to most people.

And that's the biggest problem right there.

Don't worry too much about the E5 complainer though. One of my fellow deck apes had some fun with him during the tour. Or at least frightened him into never bothering him again. He was out dumping garbage in the aft smoking area and the E5 spotted him and started getting onto him about the horribly low food portions (this guy DID NOT GET IT did he?). So this guy tells him "While you are out here at sea, someone is at your home killing your family". So he was one of the few servers the E5 never EVER complained to from then on.