Pessimistic Politics: A Tale of Military Efficiency

What follows is a tale of military efficiency.

To make things perfectly clear, I am not certain how that term ever became as popular as it is. When a complicated procedure is performed quickly, it is often referred to as being done with “military efficiency.”

Having been a member of said military for four years, I cannot say that I have seen any efficiency whatsoever. Oh, it’s impressive that they can deploy thousands of troops in a matter of hours, but if you only knew the hassle that goes into it, I think you'd agree that we’re really not as efficient in our day to day operations as we might like to be.

I digress. This is the story of how I threw something out.

It all started when the Fort Riley Public Affairs Office decided to make a secret room out of a room that had previously been used to put things in so that we could forget about them. Junk had been accumulating in this room for, I am not kidding, over thirty years. The need to install a secure computer terminal and safe for “secret information” outweighed the benefits of having a room to throw our junk in, so cleaning it became necessary.

I should mention, at this point, that clearing out this room would not normally be our responsibility. The senior officials from upstairs decided to take a look at this room on December 18th in order to decide what to do about it. Unfortunately, Sgt. Miller overheard them making their plans to clear out this room and helpfully offered his unit to help with the dirty work. Sgt. Miller’s contract was up December 19th, after which he could sit on his couch and eat Cheetos and not a soul in the world could make him clean the dirt out of an old junk room. The dilemma should be obvious.

So the burden was passed to me, as acting NCOIC of the 19th PAD, if only because there was nobody higher ranking than me that wanted it.

My work started immediately. Sgt. Miller sat on his couch and ate Cheetos.

As a most obvious first step, we knocked down the door. This may sound funny to you, but after decades of putting useless crap in this room, we seemed to have misplaced the key (all the better to forget about it). I then directed all of the soldiers under my command, Spc. Tim Hanson, to sort out all the stuff we could put in the dumpster while I carted it out little by little. Sgt. Miller sat on his couch and ate Cheetos, not that I am bitter.

It was only at this point that I discovered that the dumpster out front read, in all caps, “NO WOOD. NO METAL,” meaning essentially that there was nothing you were allowed to put in this dumpster. Presumably, it was just there to look pretty.

I got around this problem by performing stealth dumps, making sure that no one was watching before I sprinted out carrying an old cardboard box of picture frames and slamming it into the dumpster. I could finally say that my training paid off.

Around this time, Sgt. Miller phoned from Fort Living Room to see how we were doing and say “hey.” I informed him of our progress, and he said he really didn’t care because he was no longer in the Army. He continued eating Cheetos.

The room cleaned of minor debris and swept, we were left only with piles of chairs and cubical dividers that I would loved to have chucked into the dump. My Major, on the other hand, thought that the chairs and cubical dividers were perfectly good and that somebody else could probably use them. God damn, we were not going to slack off and do a half-assed job and just take these things to the dump. I should not be such a lazy sergeant and consider the needs of the army. He then returned to his office to, I don’t know, eat Cheetos.

I, being a good NCO, got right on this after returning to Toledo for a four day weekend to let Chris know how stupid everyone was being. Some part of my mind hoped the truckload of chairs and cubical dividers would go away, but alas, it was still there when I got back. It was now up to me to do something about it.

The truck, by the way, had been rented for the specific purpose of taking the materials to the Directorate of Reprocessing Materials Office, which I stupidly believed would take one day. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I showed up at DRMO with the truckload and asked what I should do with it, at which point they told me that I had to fill out the paperwork first. I left with a smile, failing to hear the sinister grin behind me.

The next day I returned with paperwork stating, basically, that we had a dozen chairs and cubicle dividers we wanted to drop off here. It was then that things began to get really disturbing.

UGLY WRINKLED GUY: “Where are the item numbers?”

ME: (sheepishly): “They… they don’t have item numbers. They’ve just been sitting around for thirty years”

UGLY WRINKLED GUY: “You have to get the items out of the property book.”

ME: “They… they aren’t on any property book. Nobody owns them. They’ve just been sitting around.”

UGLY WRIKLED GUY: “Sergeant! We don’t have the manpower to do your work for you. You have to get those item numbers. You have to!”

ME: “Ahh! They don’t HAVE item numbers.”

UGLY WRINKLED GUY: “Everything that exists is on paperwork somewhere! If it doesn’t have paperwork, we don’t believe in it. I don’t know what lies beyond the fence of this installation, but we suspect that you cease to exist. Paperwork!”

Sgt. Miller: “These Cheetos are really good.”

Maj. Ivey: “I agree (chomp chomp).”

So I was not getting anywhere that way. I did, however, get told multiple times that I was more or less useless because I couldn’t accomplish this simple task.

I looked everywhere, honestly. I even contacted some friends of mine in supply, but nobody had any clue what the mean, stupid, old and really ugly wrinkled guy was talking about.

I was honestly considering performing yet another stealth dump, where we visit DRMO in the middle of the night and toss the junk over the fence, then run away laughing because it’s no longer our problem.

I was becoming increasingly worried because the truck was already past due, and sooner or later some other unit was going to want it and I’d have to give it back, at which point all the chairs and cubicle dividers would become piles on the floor once again. There seemed to be only one thing I could do.

I took a day off to go skiing.

I have learned not to underestimate the value of my taking a day off work, because during this time all the soldiers working for me, Spc. Tim Hanson, called every phone number in DRMO until he found someone friendly, who let us in on the ultimate secret that there was a generic item number you could put on everything.

I’m not sure what trouble I will get in for telling you that. It is a secret.

So, anyway, we managed to take the junk down later that day where we were informed that the paperwork was supposed to be typed, but he was a nice guy so he would take it anyway. How nice of him.

But the punchline is yet to come, ladies and gentlemen. After carefully inspected all our junk, it was determined that we were just going to scrap everything and put it in the dumpster.

I am saying this now in my most strained and maniacal voice. That this is exactly what I wanted to do from the start. Exactly what I would have done, had Maj. Ivey not been full of good ideas and had DRMO not been such morons about doing the paperwork.

So, as I stated at the beginning, this is the story of how I threw something out. I threw it out in the dumpster, and it only took me two weeks and a forest’s worth of paperwork to do. I returned the truck with a sigh of relief that it was over.

I’m going to go eat some Cheetos.