Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Trash, Inequality, and the Chain of Command

I had an easy morning making lanyards connecting all the trash lids to their corresponding cans.  How did this come about?  Well let me tell you!

Our illustrious delegate had been getting annoyed that the sanitary guys kept taking out the trash in the bridge head, putting in a new bag, and then replacing the trash can lid- apparently, it was an unacceptable amount of work for the delegate to wash his hands while on watch and then lift the lid to throw away his paper towels.  I get it.  Small things at sea can chafe like ill-fitting underwear and soon grow intolerable.  It's happened to me on more than one occasion.

And I really shouldn't laugh.

But each day he'd pull the lid off and stow it in increasingly less accessible locations, hoping they'd be "smart enough" to understand it was an unwanted lid and to leave the goddamned thing off, already, but they'd diligently find it and doggedly replace it back on the can where it belonged.  This battle of wills had been escalating for weeks.  It annoyed him so much that when he reached a certain point of frustration, the escalation came to a head, and he took drastic measures to maintain his sanity:  He threw the lid away.

In the CFR's (Code of Federal Regulations), however, it specifies that be in compliance with international treaty- being the law of the land as soon as the US became a ratified signatory- as set forth by the IMO (the International Maritime Organization) that we must have trash cans with lids in specific places on the ship- And that head is one of them (as is the galley, mess hall, laundry, etc.).  When the Old Man couldn't find the lid and he found out that the Delegate threw it away, he ordered him to find it.  Or he was fired.

Being a white dude from San Francisco, oblivious of his privileged American Equality and, therefore, unknowingly holding the entire concept of the chain of command in contempt, he went back to the Captain and asked him to clarify what he meant.  All he'd tell me of this conversation in its aftermath was the Old Man reiterated "Find that lid or you're fired."  Lucky for him he found it.

So today the crew is rolling their eyes and grinning about the kerfuffle (all but one crew member, of course), relishing saying the words "garbage can" as often as possible.  Which is why I spent 4 hours this morning putting lanyards on all trash cans, marrying them forever to their lids.  I would have been whistling, contentedly- but you never whistle on a ship (you'll whistle up a storm).

2 comments:

  1. This one was pretty trashy ... loved it! Momster (using DJ's email). :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. This one was pretty trashy ... loved it! Momster (using DJ's email). :)

    ReplyDelete