... and it hits the fan

So Saturday was the first Duty Day with me in charge. I have to make sure everyone get's to their watches on time, in the proper uniform, and that they are standing their watch properly (the big three that our SDCs worry about, being on time, doing your job, and being 'half-assed' squared away).

Unfortunately with a lot of our duty section moving to the 'nights' building, and the resulting data base crash (they reverted to a week old backup) in the office our alpha roster (list of people who are here and their status; if they are qualified for certain watches, if they have medical orders not to stand certain watches, etc.) is in shambles, we have people listed as being in the ship who have since moved out, people listed in our duty section who have since been moved to non-duty status (usually people who live 'ashore' in town with their family), and we're missing some of the people who recently moved in from bootcamp (not a big deal since they are exempt from their first duty day), lastly since it's a holiday weekend people have been hustling for any (legitimate) way to get out of duty (duty swaps, duty day off, special liberty, etc.) mostly at the last possible minute (and since the staff just changed WE weren't the ones to sign off on them so they come as a surprise). All this adds up to the best efforts of my Watch Bill Coordinator (the person who arranges the schedule of watches and makes sure someone is assigned to each one), still resulting in people not available (since their gone), or lots of double watches (two 4 hour shifts, or more) for the people that are around.

All of that rearranging and cajoling people into standing extra watches wasn't so bad. Those types of problems are common enough on duty days (people wanting to trade watches etc.) and both the rest of the staff and the people in the duty section were able to cope VERY well. I only had to ask, I never had to tell.

Then the proverbial feces hit the oscillating air mover. Another ship on base sprung a gas leak so the Commanding Officer of the base wanted them all (147 of them; minus those who were gone for the weekend) to move into our ship. On paper not much of a problem since we have the room what with people moving out to the 'night' schedule ship. The big problem was 35 or so are female, and we only had 11 empty racks on our female deck. The CO also authorized integrating decks as long as a physical barrier was there between males and females. So we could have mixed decks but not mixed rooms. This meant we had to post EXTRA watches, specifically 2 people on each deck to make sure no one was using the fire escape ladderwells to get to a deck they weren't supposed to be on (we had alarmed the ones on the 2nd deck when we knew in advance that females were moving in, but didn't have the equipment to do it for other decks on short notice), and one more person on the uppermost mixed deck to ensure that females didn't go any higher than that deck. Luckily the student staff (who were on duty) from the other ship were willing to work with us to staff those extra watches, but it still meant 2 and 3 watches for many people from both duty sections. Note: the ships SDC staff came in to plan the move but they were open to ideas from the student staff, once the plan was in place they left again to have us carry it out.

So at 6pm we started getting people from the other ship, they brought a hastily packed seabag and we had to do check ins and room assignments for them in waves. We also had to move some of our people around on some of our decks to make empty rooms for females; if we had a room with only 1 male in it (and 3 empty racks) we'd move him to another room to make a female room. The people from the other ship came in waves since most of them were on liberty, we had a two big waves when Phase I liberty expired (be back on ship by 9:30pm, and have a mandatory 9:45pm muster; which we had to run and track for both ships), and Phase II liberty expried (be back on ship by midnight, no mandatory muster); and a smaller wave when Phase III folks (don't have to back at any certain time on weekends) who were coming back for the night arrived. Phase IIIs were the most interesting though since most of them had been drinking. We had no problems with underage people being caught drunk, or with people being too drunk to get back on base (or with police escort); but people who had been drinking and away from the ship all day were surprised to find females on their previously all male decks. We had a few shouting matches but most situations were resolved without needing to escalate it to a higher level (the roving SDC, a chief, had me on speed dial and was making more frequent and through visits to our ship).

The roving Chief was pleased with how well we responded and was very accommodating about the 'little' things (the visiting OOD was taking a cat nap in uniform around 1 am, but she was on an 8 hour shift and we had our OOD on shift at the same time; the Chief was more concerned that she was someone without a room, which she wasn't), some of the folks standing the extra watches (27 extra watches total, three 4 hours shifts of 9 people) were in coveralls instead of utilities (mostly from me or the visiting section leader saying "get there now I don't care what you're wearing").

I went to bed around 3am, with instruction to have someone call or come pound on my door BEFORE anyone was being yelled at to come get me (ie. before someone is yelling, "get me whoever is in charge NOW!"). At 6:30am it was time to make sure sweepers (cleaning the ship) was happening and get ready for the 7am muster and handover to the next duty section. The oncoming dayshift SDC (not one of the regular ship SDC staff), was VERY critical about our (mine and the visiting section leader) choices from the number of extra watches to how they were sitting instead of roving. Being criticized first thing in the morning for being (debatabley) over cautious is not fun, but "aye, aye Petty Officer" was pretty much the range of available responses. I gave a detailed handover to the oncoming section leader and chuckled internally at her and her watchbill coordinator's mouth hanging open. Of course, an hour after the new section took over the other ship was declared safe and all the visitors were off the ship by the time I had showered, cleaned the room and was on the way out for liberty.

I bumped into the section leader and his assistant on the way out. "It's been a pleasure working with you," I said, "Now get the hell of my ship!" A laugh and a handshake later, I took my own advice.

I was amazed at how well the duty section responded. They did a phenomenal job, I was worried I would have to be yelling and threatening to get them to do all the extra work but they just stepped up. The visiting duty section also understood. The only real problems were with slightly drunk guys being silly around females. It hit me when people from my section were telling me to get some sleep, and trying to think ahead for me, that I might actually be doing a good job. When the people who work for you are concerned about you that's a good sign.

That's all for now, I'll probably have to give a rundown to FC1 (our ships Leading Petty Officer) when everyone is back on Tuesday) but it should be mostly positive.

That's all for now, time for a nap.

J