Harsher Measures to Follow

By lex, on December 20th, 2009

As the operations officer of the world’s finest warship, I had a number of fine young officers working for me. One of whom was an unusually fetching lass who  – prior to completing her degree and intelligence officer school – had taken a rather non-traditional route to commission as an aromatherapeutic massage technician. Late one night at the end of a seemingly endless number of days at sea I was sitting alone in my office hoping to noodle through the immensity of all that we were trying to accomplish when I looked up to see her standing at the door, having something or other official to report. I took her report, asked in an off-hand way how she was bearing up in her first deployment and – duties official and formulaic completed – looked back to my desk at the egregious load of 3M documentation requiring my review and signature, and myself an FA-18 pilot for  heaven’s sake.