Petty Officer first class Fred Hardy chose the seven o'clock starting time in the flex hours at work because he liked the idea of quitting time at three-thirty instead of four, four-thirty or five. At five, the whole floor got spooky in dead silence although once in a while one who remained could hear a voice coming from a distance over the five-foot high moveable partitions that formed the small and big cubicles all over the place; a telephone ring, muffled by the acoustic ceiling tiles and the floor carpeting, which would go unanswered about ten times, or paper shufflings coming from some unknown work area that still contained a civilian or military government worker.
Also, he liked the privacy he experienced being alone in the Section for at least a whole half hour when he ate his scrambled eggs and sausage on toast and drank his coffee in peace and quiet with none of them around. 'Them' were the three other military personnel in the office and the four civilians who with him altogether comprised this whole Enlisted Section of the Data Audit and Analysis Branch of the Personnel Information Management and Processing Division (also known, discreetly, as P.I.M.P.) of the Naval Military Personnel Center here on the third floor of the fifth wing of the Arlington Navy Annex, a close ten-minute walk from the Pentagon.
Petty Officer Hardy was a big man, six-four and the last he looked weighed over two-twenty. But he wasn't one to throw his size around and bully anybody. In fact, he was a gentle person and sufficiently matured for his age of twenty-eight years which he celebrated only a week ago. He had ten years in the Navy and made E-6 two years ago. He had at first planned on putting in twenty so he could retire before he was forty and in the process work his way up to the top of the enlisted ranks the quickest way he could. He was a good sailor, he knew; so did the Navy, as his record and a few merit awards would show. He could be good at anything he wanted to be, maybe not excellent or the best but better than most.
Four years ago, however, he changed his rate from PN2 (Personnel 2nd class) to DP (Data Processing) after he got approved for some computer training. And now, with the rate of DP1 and four years of experience in computer programming and analysis, he had turned into one of the more productive military personnel the likes of whom the Navy would pay a bonus of as much as ten thousand dollars to re-enlist. But Fred Hardy had become aware of the commercial value of his work qualifications, as had many of the other good ones in his rate, and knew that he could be making a better living in the private industry with it than where he was now and the next three years if he took that bonus and signed away that many more years of his life to the service.
Also, he wanted to get married soon and settle down. He decided to leave the Navy at the end of his current enlistment which had ten months to go.
He was chewing on the last bite of the scrambled eggs and sausage when the phone rang. The call came in on the line, one of three in their Section, where Chief Petty Officer Tirso Marquez among two other people in the office usually received outside calls.
"D.A. and A. Enlisted Section, Petty Officer Hardy speaking. Good morning." He always spoke in an official tone of voice on the phone especially when he knew the call couldn't be for him.
"Paul Bennett, please?" The voice from the other end sounded with some authority. He recognized Commander Molloy immediately.
"He hasn't come in yet, Commander. May I take a message, sir?"
While Fred Hardy wrote down the message, Carla Dunn, a DP2 who sat at the desk next to him came in. Everyone in the office suspected that she was a lesbian and that she balled with Dorothy Coles, another DP2, a black, who sat next to the Chief away at the other end of the office from where they were. Right after her came DPC Tirso Marquez who saw him and motioned if the call was for him. Petty Officer Hardy shook his head sideways at the Chief and continued writing on the message pad and Chief Marquez proceeded into his office cubicle.
"I'll give him the message as soon as he comes in, sir," Petty Officer Hardy said on the phone. "You're welcome, sir." He hung up, turned to the partition which separated him from Carla Dunn and said good morning to her.
"Good morning, Fred," she replied from the other side, her voice a bit too deep and husky for a female coming over top and ends of the partition. Carla Dunn was the women's answer to a Fred Hardy in the Navy in many respects except perhaps in sexual preference.
"Who was that?" asked the CPO from the other side of him.
"It's Commander Molloy, Chief," replied Fred. "for Paul Bennett."
"What's he want--those damn data accuracy reports, again?" Chief Marquez spoke with an irrevocable chicano accent.
"Yeah," Fred Hardy chuckled at the way his Chief talked about the Commander.
Neither of them liked the officer especially the Chief who was handling that data accuracy system project until for some reason he suspected was more personal than anything else, the Commander requested for his services on some other piddly-shit assignment, took the project off his hands and had it turned over to Paul Bennett, a civilian staff.
Well, that wasn't so bad turning it over to a civilian. But it would have made him look awful bad if it had been to another military guy, another CPO or worse yet a subordinate rank.
He didn't think it was the fact that he was a Hispanic and one who had done well for himself in the service for the last eighteen and a half years, built an exceptional track record in both his sea and shore duties and made Chief in better than average time it took in the service; better even than those of many Anglos some of whom, therefore, like Fred Hardy had to answer to his authority, a Hispanic, these past several years.
But CPO Marquez didn't really care that much anymore. Even if any or all that were true and there had been plenty enough occasions in his years in the Navy when they were he only had a year and a half to stretch out in this shore duty. He's forty-one and he's tired of being a sailor, tired of moving his family around and his kids were growing up. His wife who was almost thirty-five and wanted to have another child to add to their two before it was too late was tired of it too and wanted for them to stay put either in his hometown of San Antonio where he would have a job waiting when he got out or anywhere he preferred where he could get a job to add to his pension.
Fred Hardy took the message slip to Paul Bennett's desk and on his way back ran into Sam Green, a black GS-9 computer programmer who was as tall as he was but only about half his weight. Sam Green sat next to Paul Bennett, the office area adjacent to Carla Dunn's. With him was Dorothy Coles who came in her dress blue and was looking noticeably cute under that lily-white-topped navy head cap. Her shoes shone like a newly cooked puddle of sparkling black asphalt. Dorothy Coles was a well-built female specimen. Her dark-bronze complexion was smooth and without a crease even where it normally should be. She's the type of beauty that made you overlook skin color.
"What?" Fred Hardy half-cried when he saw her in uniform. This was only Monday. They were required to dress in uniform only on Wednesdays. He realized there'd been talks about making it Monday thru Friday but the order hadn't come down yet. "Am I out of uniform?"
"No, you're not," replied Petty Officer Coles. "I'm going to a ten o'clock award ceremony at the Pentagon."
"You're getting an award? Congratulations." Fred Hardy suddenly looked excited.
"Wrong again," she said, proceeding to her office area next to Chief Marquez and acknowledging a wave of a hand and an almost inaudible 'Hi' by Carla Dunn whose head rose above the top of the partition upon hearing Dorothy's arrival. "I had been picked to assist along with a few others and everybody's required to be in uniform with some top brass who will be attending."
"Who's getting an award?" asked Fred Hardy.
"Good morning, Chief," Dorothy said first to the CPO who said the same. "Some old solid gold or captain who's going to be retiring soon anyway but needs to feel good about what he did with his life."
The two enlisted men laughed merrily. For some reason, most of the navy enlisted didn't have an exceptionally high regard for their officers. And when asked wouldn't you rather work to get a commission than plod along in the enlisted rank for a military career, they'd say: "Get commissioned and then what--kiss a bunch of fat asses? Wipe some birdbrain's boots and laugh at his jokes too even if they're not funny? No, sir. Uh-uh."
Too much politics, some would say. It's a showbiz. You got to know how to bullshit more than do the work.
The rest of the civilian staff after Sam Green came in one after another within three minutes. Paul Bennett first who felt a little annoyed at himself that Sam Green whom he was supervising beat him to work especially on a Monday. Then came Gerry Mueller, the ex-army man. Ex-staff sergeant Mueller, ten years military plus eight civil service who was now a GS-13 Section Chief, at forty-eight. Not bad for a high school dropout, a juvenile case, and then later a high school graduate at twenty-seven.
It seemed like nine out of ten civilian workers in the mid-level positions (GS-9 and up) here and most other defense agencies were ex-enlisted. That five to ten-point veterans preference was sure making its mark in putting these fellows to work. A majority of them of course were double-dippers. Gerry Mueller wasn't, though, for he already got all what those ten years in uniform was worth to him. But outside of that, he was a run-of-the-mill ex-military.
Gerry Mueller wasn't a hard man to get along with. In fact, he was so easy-going at work that he hadn't earned and this was really out of a personal indifference his crew's respect as a leader, a Section Chief which was his official position classification. Oh, every now and then he'd remind a member of his staff about this job's second target due date coming up soon, and to another he'd inquire in the middle of a ten o'clock coffee conversation about that report some Lieutenant Commander wanted yesterday. And every now and then the Section actually beat a deadline on a project.
Some of the crew liked him as much as they liked not having a tyrant around and wouldn't see to any change in the office situation; others thought he wasn't worth ten cents of every dollar Uncle Sam paid him and that he was the type of government worker who gave the bureaucrat a really bad name. There were even a handful both from his own Section and the other Sections of the Branch who considered him not only totally useless but a freeloading bum; an ex-army enlisted bum.
Of course he didn't think of himself any of that. And if he thought, heard or knew anybody did, it didn't trouble him at all. Those who did think of him that way and knew that Gerry Mueller knew they did was the more belligerent and appalled because of the man's indifference. It was like he was laughing at their faces and didn't respect any of them at all. One time he actually verbalized this indifference and, in the presence of some in his Section and several of his peers in the Branch, said: "Who gives a damn? Let them try and fire me. If they can nail me on something, I can nail them on something too."
Nobody had dared try anything at all and this was because with better than half the people he knew in the entire Branch, what he said was true.
The last to show up was Ernie Clampet, a fifty-eight-year old GS-12 double-dipper: twenty years Navy, again another ex-enlisted, and going on eighteen civil service. Ernie was a lot like Gerry Mueller in terms of personal background. But his attitude at work wasn't of the nature of indifference but of passivity. And everyone in the office understood this in him very easily. The man was just there finishing up his last couple of years in the government as a warm body. In fact, if it were done, the government might just as well retire him now and get a brand new GS-5 or 7 entry level worker to take his place and the taxpayers would probably get more out of their money that way.
Ernie had a shot a year ago at the Section Chief position but didn't bother competing for it. He was too old for that type of shit anymore--politics, competition, ambition, he said, so that Gerry Mueller ended up getting promoted to it with hardly any challenge at all. For one thing, Ernie Clampet pointed out to some other GS-12's who were just dying to get their 13 but didn't qualify, he wouldn't be making any more money significantly for he was already at the highest step of his grade and therefore to get promoted to GS-13 would only mean getting a salary at that grade plus a minimum of two or three percent increase. Big deal. And for what? More responsibility, more worry, more trouble, more politics and more bullshit. No, sir. Thank you, sir. You go on ahead and help yourself to it.
Hardly anybody bothered with him. He brown-bagged it to work most of the time and ate alone. Once in a while he'd go with the group to a luncheon at Henderson Hall and would be the first to leave. The only one in the Section who had any kind of a rapport with him was Gerry Mueller and this was mostly by way of a ten-minute social conversation once or twice a week, and of course their need to communicate when it came to work which happened just as infrequently.
Paul Bennett talked to him too once in a while for nothing more, one might think, than a token of respect for one's human existence. But Paul did so for more than that. Something disturbed him rather deeply about Ernie Clampet: the place Ernie filled in society, the role if it could be called that he played at a stage of life under personal circumstances which wasn't a unique one at all if not a model example of a near-retirement government worker.
Just being near him sometimes, the old man made Paul think 'is that what's ahead of me?' People had discovered Ernie snoozing in his cubicle several times. When Paul himself found him that way once, he laughed at first just like the others did, then he had that sick feeling sink in gradually and began to choke with it.
Fifty-eight isn't that old, even sixty, he thought. What could have happened to him in those twenty years in the Navy and almost that much more in civil service to cause him to veg out now. Could it be his personal life, at home? Perhaps it was his wife who's doing it to him. Or could this be on course to a Washington burnout?
Goddamn! Whatever it is, Paul argued to himself, I'm not going to be an Ernie Clampet when I reach fifty-eight. Not for as long as I live!