Oct 22 2008
Adjusting to Pentagon Life
About two weeks ago, I attended a 1-day Staff Officer Orientation for personnel recently assigned to the Pentagon. The briefers included many senior officers and civilians from the Department of the Army, including Secretary of the Army Pete Geren and Chief of Staff of the Army General George Casey. One of the first speakers, LTG David Huntoon, the Director of the Army Staff, talked about adjusting to life at the Pentagon. He remarked that most of us in the audience were coming from assignments with a lot of responsibilities to new jobs where we are only responsible for our little computer cubicle. He cautioned that we may have a difficult time adjusting to this change and lamenting about our fate in life. His sage advice was “Get over it”. Honestly, this transition has been much more difficult than I anticipated. My attitude wasn’t helped by the state of the cubicle I inherited (thanks, Espo).
I should have known what to expect. I replaced a very good friend, Espo. One of his online monikers is TrashMan. He is a hoarder. For some reason, though, I wasn’t mentally prepared for the piles of files, documents and folders on the desk. I have spent countless hours going through each document to identify what needs to be saved and what can be trashed. He promised he would organize everything before he left, and in his own way, he did. The morning after Espo moved to his new assignment (also in the DC area), I arrived to find the piles shifted around and labeled with yellow post-it notes saying:
- Look at 1st (But keep together… I will take some of it)
- Misc Classified Read Browse 2nd (or as time permits)
- Read when time
- Misc Stuff Peruse at Leisure
- Was Mostly Here
- Mostly Old, But I did Put some Here
- Real Old
After six weeks of work, I have almost finished the purge. Because I work in a secure facility, to discard any document, I have to review each page, tear it into small pieces and place the pieces in a burn bag for disposal. The burn bags are basically brown paper grocery bags for collecting classified materials for destruction. To date, I have filled twenty (20) burn bags! Espo has stopped by a couple of times in the midst of the purge. Although he hasn’t said anything, I can tell he is emotionally troubled by the amount of things I’ve sent away in burn bags. Oh well. As LTG Huntoon would say, he just needs to “Get over it”!
Dale,
What a coincidence. I thought I would settle in easily to my new job also, but it has taken longer than I thought. I owe it to having to leave my precious reference files behind, and I feel naked without them. I would have loved to have sorted better, and have packaged up the critical items for subsequent retrieval, but after running out of sugar and filling up 5 burn bags (and ditching some stuff in a vacant cubicle) I finally had to leave at 11pm on my last day.
I was speechless the last time I came by the Pentagon and saw all the bare spaces with my files nowhere to be found !!!
But since I didn’t take (or make) the time to properly mark and store them before I left, then the only choice I have is to “get over it”.
Now as far as being a “hoarder” or the “Trash man”, I was an Eagle Scout, and firmly believe in “being prepared”. A year ago my house looked similar to my cubicle, which is OK if you’re a single guy who’s hobbies are dumpster diving, fixing computers, fixing cars and fixing anything else. I promised my fiancée at the time that I wasn’t attached to anything in my house (except my tools), and I would clean things out prior to our marriage. Unfortunately I ran out of time then as well (after multiple trips to the dump, with truckloads of computers, furniture, lawnmowers and other stuff). So today, with our 10 month wedding anniversary looming around the corner, I feel compelled to re-double my efforts to organize my treasures, and rid my house of useful items, retained under the umbrella of “just in case” (as if clearing out one bay in the carport wasn’t enough). In the spirit of marital harmony, I’m afraid “get over it” just won’t cut it.
That being said, I’m grateful Dale agreed to accept his current position. He was the only person in the Army who could have taken my old job and carried on the many initiatives to improve the Army geospatial way-ahead. (And since he can do it without all those papers, he’ll do a much better job).
Espo
I would like to take a moment to thank all of the Service Members and their families who read this. Thanks to the Combat Engineer Nuts, the Infantrymen (real nuts), the nutty DA Civilians In A Combat Zone, and everyone else who daily puts their nuts on the line in the armed defense of Freedom and Democracy, both American hanging-chad style and Iraqi ink-stained thumb style.
Nobody in Florida builds a homemade raft and floats it across 90 miles of shark-infested waters to reach a Communist Dictatorship. And Tuesday over a hundred million Americans will go to the polls to prove that your sacrifices are not in vain. And nuts to anyone nutty enough to tell you differently.
I am the Army Mule and I approved this message.