It used to be in the prison system here that they never told an inmate when he was getting out. They could estimate within a few months, but the exact date was a surprise. The inmate would be woken up at about 0300 and told to pack his stuff while a guard watched. Within minutes he was shutoff from his cellmate and the rest of the population and would be on his way out of the system, usually arriving home on a bus in less than 24 hours.
They did it that way because when other inmates knew an inmate's release date they would give him a good beating as a bon voyage present.
I had to read this three times before I realized it was a factual description, not a metaphor.
Oddly enough the prison story reminds me of my last submarine. We'd just finished a huge drydocking and were catching up on training for our next deployment in six months. Everyone was heartily glad to be out of shipyard-- life had sucked so badly that we were really looking forward to deploying. The CO's relief was in the pipeline and would arrive in about six weeks, enough time to finish getting ready for the deployment and taking us out there. So we knew we'd have a change of command in about eight or nine weeks.
But until then our current CO was still in charge of pre-deployment training. He was a John Wayne character with big brass ones that clanked together whenever he swaggered down the passageway, and it was clear that he was really getting into the training. He sort of knew that he wouldn't be accompanying us but it was his last pre-deployment training as a CO. He wanted everything to be perfect and ready to go before the new guy had a chance to screw it all up. He didn't let anyone wander a millimeter off the path that he felt he'd carefully charted to get the crew where they needed to be, and he jumped in as soon as he detected any sign of trouble... whether trouble was actually there or not. It was tiresome but you could tell that he really wanted to inculcate us all with the last iota of all his warfighting experience before he had to hand over the boat.
One day we were getting the wardroom brief on the special deployment equipment that would be installed soon. It included a bunch of whiz-bang stuff guaranteed to help us track the heck out of everything and shoot magic weapons at it-- the usual marketing festival before reality set in. After hearing about one piece of especially cool equipment that promised to solve a bunch of traditional problems, our CO burst out enthusiastically "Goddamn we're going to have a great bunch of gear for this deployment!"
As we were enjoying the moment of warm anticipation that followed this cheerleading, the XO quietly dropped his own little burst: "No sir.
We're going to have a great bunch of gear for this deployment.
You're going to be sitting in that building over there next to the admiral's office pushing a bunch of paperwork."
The CO froze, his eyes got big and round, his moustache bristled, and he snapped his head around to look at the man who'd had the audacity to throw cold water on his excitement. He uttered the traditional CO's feedback ("f#@% you too, XO"), leaped up out of his chair, and stomped out of the wardroom.
We didn't see much of the CO after that. He pretty much let the XO run the show right up through the change of command. As the XO had gently reminded him that he should have been doing all along...
The rationale is that it could take months to replace you via the civil service list, so why not! The slackers never leave, and of course they can't be expected to shoulder any additional duties even in the short term. I also think there could be some underpinnings of jealousy in regards to your retirement plans.
) in order to encourage participation by my soon-to-be successor and supervisor. If/when they needed help, or if/when things got too intense and upper management required my input, I was there.
