THE PHONES, THEY DON'T WORK

I read this article and the taste was right back in my mouth from the other days. I learned a lesson as a young LCDR on a 3 star staff and that was to never answer the phone. You don't answer yours, you sure as hell don't answer your bosses phone and you just don't answer the phone.

They can't task you if they can't talk to you.

Phones are bad. Very bad.

We took a phone to Failaka Island once. It was a desert isle, and no phone service, so we used INMARSAT and our radiomen were the only ones that used it and they used it to establish an HF Term with Guam, if I recall correctly. I answered that phone one day. It was the Chief of Staff on the other end, in San Diego, demanding that we stop using the INMARSAT since it was costing him something like $9/minute. He was pretty irate.

I didn't tell him that the radio dudes were calling Guam Tech Control and then putting them on hold while they ran back to fiddle with the HF radios in the surveillance system. It was too cruel. I just assured him that we were not calling our wives, sweethearts, girlfriends or significant others and put him on hold.

One really can get into all kinds of trouble on desert islands. Don't answer the phone.

Never before have so few been supervised by so many. Each time I went to the Middle East the staff had grown by a factor 10X. It was really sad. In the olden days the Middle East Force staff was the admiral and about 10 guys. In my days on the Sweeps it was a shipful. By the time I went back as a NAVCENT staffer dude we filled up a small building. When I was there last in 2005 it was 16 buildings of staff weenies.

When the COS used to call me at home, I stopped answering the phone. I'm not stupid.

I'm the guy between LT Ray Malskis and HMCS Canzionni on Failaka Island long ago