A few years ago, I was deployed in the U.S. Navy as a cook. For those unfamiliar, military cooks are often overworked (just like civilian cooks) and constantly deal with tedious sanitary inspections.
At the time, I was working the night shift, which meant it was just me and my small team of three—one cook and two attendants. Meanwhile, the day shift had over six cooks and nine attendants, significantly more manpower.
We were out at sea, and a major inspection was coming up. This meant we had to deep clean the entire galley. Here’s where things got interesting. The day shift supervisors assigned me and my team the task of deep cleaning the ovens, grills, and kettles—all the heavy-duty equipment used for cooking. Normally, night shift doesn’t handle these because our focus is prepping food for the next day. Given how much prep work we had to do, their demand was completely unreasonable, even if we skipped breaks.
When I asked if they could take on part of the cleaning, their response was dismissive: “Night shift never does anything anyway.” Oh, really? Bet.
Instead of starting the deep cleaning right away, I decided to prioritize our usual prep work. My team got everything prepped and handled our regular responsibilities first. Then, with just a little time left before breakfast service ended, I began the cleaning.
I took all the oven racks and threw them into the big kettles to boil off the baked-on grime. Next, I cleaned the grill. With the grill out of commission, the ovens without their racks, and the kettles occupied, there was no way they could prepare any meals. Breakfast service was delayed, and by the time lunch rolled around, the galley was still unusable. My supervisors were furious.
The executive officer of the ship eventually came down to see what was going on. My supervisors immediately blamed me, but when he asked for my side of the story, I explained everything. He turned to them, confirmed their version of events, and then let them have it. He called them “stupid,” cussed them out, and dismissed me from the situation.
That moment felt so good. Sometimes, you have to let people deal with the consequences of their own bad decisions.
