Reactors and Reality: Life During and After the Nuclear Navy

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of a couple of nukes as always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey and I am beyond excited for today's episode. So I'm going to go over a list of reasons why, first of all, not only is our guest an amazing guy. He is the walking embodiment right now, uh, take a hit and keep going because he, you know, he had some issues and we had to reschedule, but, um, he's here. He took a hit and he kept going. He, you know, practice breathing a square. He visualized, he did all his military bootcamp methods. I don't know if he went through those, you know, we'll talk about that in a minute, but yeah, we're here with Jason R. Thomas and you know, we've talked about it before on the show, Jason, and you can confirm with me nukes come from like. Five locations or so all nukes are either from California or Texas. The big two Ohio is the third biggest one in New Jersey and Florida. And, and I saw Ohio in your bio and I said, of course, what isn't from Ohio. Yeah, that's, that, that's about right. Uh, you sneak in a couple, uh, uh, Canadians from, uh, you know, Wisconsin, uh, Minnesota I got some, uh, some good buddies, uh, from up in those parts. Uh, so, you know those four nationals who make it into the new program right from Duluth. So, um, but no e extremely excited to be on, um. You know, we were talking, uh, just before this, it was interesting how we got connected, you know, you had, uh, one of, uh,  One of my business partners, um, Joseph Stetter, the resume whisperer on your show, and he's like, you know, Jason, you really should, uh, you know, we had a great experience. He's a veteran, you know, I think you'd hit it off and come to find out we're two fellow nukes. Um, you know, as soon as, as soon as I did the research and I saw the burning eyes of Rickover, I'm like, oh, this is going to be fun. This is, this is going to be a better  time than some of the other interviews. So. Um, really excited to be here, um, you know, open to talk about anything I can hopefully, you know, provide some insights to those still in, um, you know, transitioning out, um, you know, we've had, uh, as you said, some struggles recently, um, some struggles less recently since leaving and, uh, I've learned a lot of lessons. Sorry. Kind of like an intermediate level start up, supposed to be, like I'd love to be doing them without, because I've never done that before. And so, climbing up on top of a high, you're remembering that,  The nonprofit, uh, foundation, uh, for world impact mental health as a big, big part of it as well as veteran service. So, um, yeah, so, uh, uh, I'll let you take away with the initial questions. Uh, I will ramble, uh, when it comes to stories. So, all right. You haven't heard all my stories yet.  Everybody else. Right. This isn't just for, for veterans and active duty and transition members. This is for all you civilians out there to get a glimpse into the nuke world, you know, um, and, and Jason and I, we have a little bit of an age gap between us, so we'll see how much, uh, nukes change over time. I think it's pretty constant though. I think a lot of the stories I've heard are from his generation of nukes before me.  Furries having orgasms in the woods, no LARPing, you know, ARIs, LARPers. Yeah, uh, definitely had some LARPers, uh,  uh, one of my good friends from A School. I was very fortunate, and it's, it'd be interesting to, you know, from your perspective on the amount of nukes that you've talked with, is that I still have a good, uh, 8, 12, like solid friends from a school that we're, we still enter in a group chat, you know, giving each other shit just about every day. Um, you know, and I've got, oh, you know, my friends and mentors from, you know, the, the ships, you know, uh, that I've served on, but, uh, it caught me off guard.  You know, happily that I've had such a good connection with those from a school that,  you know, didn't end up serving with, uh, you know, out to sea. So I'm curious, uh, with some of the other guests, if you've kind of seen that or, or, or not. So there's a lot of new Kate nuke, uh, you know,  they say the nuclear community is one of the most toxic ones and I can definitely agree with that. You know, we've. There's a lot of radism. I'll call it a radism, you know, electricians versus mechanics versus ETS, you know, uh, so, well, I mean, at two o'clock in the morning, there is never ever a motor failure. It is always the pump. That is a known fact that's been established. Um, you know, there's just decades of documentation on that. So, uh, yes. Uh,  yeah. Yeah. Some definite racism, uh, is, is good. Uh, yeah, it's, it's good. But you know, so, so what's so interesting about you, Mr. Jason, is that, you know, all the nukes I've had on, you know, the highest ranking I've had is a starry enlistment. So a petty officer, second class. So you're the highest ranked nuke I've ever had on the show. And so that's why I'm so excited to have you here and see some of the differences.  Give us some advice and hopefully you don't seem like one of those senior chiefs who hates his family beats his wife and keeps everyone at work because he doesn't want to go home. You seem like Blessed husband and father of triplets. So you seem like you're actually one of the good ones. Yes, yes. So I, I did 10 years active duty. Um, I did five years reserve, was recalled to active duty, uh, which I had to halfway, man. You 20? Come on.  Uh, a a number of reasons and we'll, we'll, we'll get to that. One was the, the re covid, um,  uh, the, the Reserves got excited about doing that. Um, and you know, I mean, they were straightforward with it. I think they're actually doing a better change to the system, and I think it will be better than. You know, practically what it was before. Um, but I wasn't looking for something that's going to be deploying every year. So I would have just stayed in active duty. Yeah. Um, that along with, you know, the, the medical side, um, I was not in a deployable status anymore, which we'll go into. So it was, it really allowed me to keep my beard here, you know, as of August 27th of last year, you know, I got to, I got to keep this. Um, so.  But, uh, no, I had a good experience, uh, you know, surprisingly. Uh, I'm also, I spent over half my time as a first class, um, so, uh, it was, uh, I'm a little unique in that fashion. I showed up, so first, uh, I had the opportunity to serve on the George H. W. Bush, uh, the, the last Nimitz class carrier. Uh, I miss being a plank owner there by I think eight weeks. Um, I mean, but I did the home port move, uh, from Newport over to Norfolk, you know, all the workups did are made in deployment actually, I got to see trials. Yes. Oh, yes. Yes. So, so you got on it right as it was leaving refueling overhaul? Were you in the shipyard? No, no, no, no. Oh, oh yeah. We definitely were shipyard, but so newest carrier, so no overhaul. So this was initial commissioning, um, you know, probably nicer. Because I'll tell you that the ships that, the ships that come in, they've done multiple deployments, nothing works, you got a bunch of shipyard workers who are contractors, you know, not Navy people who are sitting on the phone talking about their divorce or their child support or their You know, it's funny this, this layer, uh, he's one of the nukes on the show. He, he says they call them bubbles. I never heard,  we never called them that, but that's funny. I learned that term recently and I was like, and there's two different levels. Right. Cause I spent  a fair amount of time at Norfolk, right. And a lot of time it Newport news when I was on the initial Manning for the new Ford. Right. So we moved in before, you know, We moved into a building because we couldn't even get on the ship yet, right? So a lot of time, uh, in Newport News did all her initial workups through christening. Um, uh, excuse me, uh, christening, commissioning, um, and make her that special deployment. Yeah. The reactor has never been on like this is the first time it's going on, right? Yes, and that was, yes, very much so. Um, and I'm very proud of what I did.  Not okay that I was the one doing it. So, um, some funny tidbits is So, the bush, as being the last Nimitz, Was supposed to be all the upgrades that they were going to take and then put out to the rest of the fleet, as far as, uh,  Jocelyn and Micah, which were, um,  I mean, Jocelyn was electric plant control. So instead of having your switchboard operators, you had it, but it literally was a windows 2000 because I didn't have that on my ship and my buddies on the bush are telling me about this. I'm like, hold on, hold on, hold on. So you have someone, you have this machine do your job for you, so what are y'all doing? And they're talking about some of the newer ships have valves. Some of the newer ships have like, even half the mechanics don't do their jobs because the valves are automatic. I'm like, well, come back on my ship. Where we do everything by hand, you know, um, every breaker, everything like it's crazy. Absolutely. Well, that was the big thing on the Ford, right? Is that, you know, everything got automated. So they got the Virginia's class submarine, right? So they had that automated. It's, it's so much just like the enterprise story, right? You know, they figured out a design that works. So we'll just make it eight of them, right? decommission there.  Um, I, I mean, as a good sailor, I do always complain, but I can never complain because he was on always on a worse schedule than me a hundred percent the entire time.  Yeah, but Jocelyn, uh, it's a Windows 2000 computer. It's not good. They use a bunch of transducers that aren't calibrated. So like Jocelyn is not going to the rest of the fleet. Yeah, right. Neither was Micah. Military computers don't work in general. I don't know if you ever went up to like the computer lab to get tags or WAFs or put stuff in or  Heaven forbid. I want to access my pay or, or navy. mil or NAVPERS. Heaven forbid. I want to log in and print my LES. It can't happen. Cannot do that. No, no, almost, almost never. So I will say the systems on the Ford were considerably better, um, because they use some more modern technology. They,  it was a nice idea for the 77, the, the idea that you could go in retrofit, but  they underestimated the, the, the necessity. Around the, especially on the, the, the electric plant, um, you know, when you talk about phase rotation, whatever it's a, it's a digital, uh, you know, synchroscope that's going through a 2000 computers. So you just kind of click there and  so you can see. It, it shuts whenever it magically thinks it's in the box, but because of the delays, like you can see in the arc sheets, all types of eaten away. And on the flip side, um, you know, the electrical operator on the Ford, right, you've got like a six panel touchscreen display and like, it's insane. The breakers are designed down to the microseconds of like how long the thing actually shuts. So much, much more effective, but had its own. A  lot of problems, you know, a unique experience because.  I got to spend a lot of time with the design engineers, which you don't normally get to do. Um, yeah, we had to take the confidential camera down because they didn't believe me that  I could  have the screen show me paralleling to MTG with two MTG. Um, so that was a fun bug. Um, you know, so really it was cool. We got to do a lot of testing. We broke a lot of stuff. Um, I fortunately, by the way, that part costs 500, 000 that you just broke. Okay. I'm, I'm curious if the Ford actually still has only three TGs. Uh, or not, because we, we melted a rotor,  um, that, that was impressive by the shipyard. They cut a hole up top, they cut out the rotor, they brought it down, they had a new rotor installed in like three months. Um, and these are, you know,  the spec for these generators, right, was make it as big as it fits in this space, right? It's like 26 meg, they're huge. Um, the other one, we melted a stator, um,  Not me, again. A stater. Did you say a stater or a stare? Stater. Like, okay, the whole stater wide, these, so you just one of stairs in the ladder wells. I was like, how did you do that? What the hell were you doing there, ? I, so that's, that would've been more impressive. But  that, that was on, that was on the, yeah, the bush. We hit a, a arking car, rogue wave or whale, we hadn't decided, but it, it knocked, literally dented the hall in, uh, in Wow. In the. Reactor library or whatever like where they had like all the books like you had to because we had to like check them out right, yeah,  and Yeah, like all the shells had like all the bolts and sheared and like fell down like we no one was in the room But yeah, well I'm pretty sure we had a whale going to that could have been but Yeah, no, it was, uh, it was a  lot of fun, um, in, in some ways, and absolute miserable in, in all the ways that all nukes experience, um,  but, you know, really thankful for the opportunities that I had, um,  to be part of the design team,  like for,  so with the You have  hundreds of pages just about that you can go through. You can see everything, um, when it's working, which is great for drills. That becomes a problem, right? Because anybody can go to any.  Page that they want to check indications on both plants and there's about four different pages that you can operate the same things from Yeah, so Early on, you know, I spent a lot of time  after setting up a new department and and the Some of the books in electrical, which we can go back to. Uh, I spent a lot of time in the drill team and I'll say, you know, one of my biggest professional mentors, um, you know, I first met him as commander Jason Lloyd. He was a enlisted who, uh, went EDO he's now we are Admiral, uh, Jason Lloyd, who is the, let's see if I can get this right. Cause this is the coolest title ever. Uh,  chief engineer.  And deputy commandant of ship design. I think, I think is what his formal tie is. Right. Put some made up words in there. Yeah, exactly. Like, I mean, he, he, he, he, he was a good man and we worked on, we worked very hard, but we had a very good culture on the Ford, um, you know, cause the initial wave of all the initial manning were C returnees, and then we basically got two full loads from prototype, right? Cause reactors.  months before everybody else. I mean, the CEO actually don't even come on board for months after we've been there.  And, you know, that was one of the big things we tried to impart on our junior sailors was  don't take this for granted as far as the command culture goes. Um, right. Because this is not, this is what the standard should be through the fleet.  It's not,  but you have the opportunity to go and try to make it. Right, as most of them by the time they were leaving the, the Ford that they were, you know, first classes and, you know,  have the opportunity to, to make teeth and make impact elsewhere, you know, at least that's the hope  I do. So I didn't do, yeah, there's, there's,  so I, I've had some complaints with that because I had a mentor who was like,  you know, he was at his 10 year mark and he's like, I'm going to leave. And we were all like, why? He's like, well, the command climate sucks. It's awful. Like the whole Navy just sucks. And then someone wants to say, well, well, petty officer, why don't you stay in? And he goes and become the change I'd like to see. No, because you know why there's always a bigger dog who's going to just make everything I try to do not happen. And it's, it's definitely something I've seen, but you stayed in and you became, and correct me if I'm wrong. You were a senior chief. No, no, no, no. I was the first class. I was a first class forever. Um, I spent over half my time as a, as a first class. So most, most of my time,  uh,  no, so I made second off the exam, but I actually promoted off of the guy, smart guy, 1%, uh, but I still start re enlisted on deployment. So, you know, I actually got paid tax free zone, tax free zone. That's exactly right. Uh,  no. So I showed up to the Ford. Um,  and made first, my very first cycle there, which was great. That's good. Yeah. Although there was a, there's a problem now because we're not on a ship because in order to  qualify WatchSoup, you actually have to have a WatchSoup program and actually be able to do PracVacs, right? And then at the time there wasn't even, the FIDE wasn't built yet for this. Okay. And that's why I built.  With access and three laptop computers was the touchscreens. We had like 32 of them around the plant, but that's how we did our drills. Uh,  that's how we certified ourselves. The advanced tech help us.  You would have wished it was, um,  not really, uh, you know, it had, it was, it was funny because the only, the only program that you could. That had any coding capability on the confidential network was Microsoft access and VBA. Which is not designed to be a touchscreen program. It's a database program, right? I've made too many programs out of it before. But  yeah, no, that's what we built our simulators. So they got a good FID now so I don't think they have to use the program anymore, which which is good, but  Yeah, I, I had a  closet office, uh, for a while next to a big,  big steam tap because on the  Nimitz, or excuse me, on the Bush, the last Nimitz, they were supposed to have the EMOS, the electro mechanic catapults, right? Um, and they built,  they didn't build the steam system originally.  To support  having steam catapults, which it does. Um, so that's why the Bush has its own little section and a lot of the steam pipe manuals, because it was a little Frankenstein monster, um, the Ford, they got the emails, but just in case they had this big, huge tap, just in case they had to go back and install the SGS this time, it was going to be easier. Um, so. Yeah, that's where I parked and I built our drill program so,  uh,  yeah, but so, yeah, without, without a watsuit program by the time, uh, we actually had one going and they, uh, they did put me in quals against my will because I was getting out in a few months, like they thought that was going to change my mind. I'm like, look, I've got  yeah.  I mean, I was blessed with triplets. Um, you know, I was very fortunate. I actually got to fly off at the very end of the, uh, the deployment, main deployment. Um, you know, cause they were high risk to, to be home for their birth. And,  you know, so that was pretty defining. Okay.  Here's the big question,  are they all, are they all girls? No, I have two girls and a boy. Um,  I didn't grow up with any  sisters.  Really? So I'm in trouble.  So I was just asking because there, there was this rumor going around that I've heard in a nuclear program. I've been studying it because I was invited on another podcast to discuss it. But I had heard that nuclear operators in the Navy, especially ones who stay in for a long time, end up only having daughters because of radiation exposure. And I, you know, I've been researching it to see if this is just a nuke school rumor. You know, a fleet rumor, if this is true. So if you said you had three, three girl triplets, I was confirmed, confirmed that that's the database. Well, that, that, that's the thing though, is because I served on the newest Nimitz and the first Ford, the freshest radiation possible. Well, there's so little. Right, you know, it's the older ships who are coming doing the refuel that have all those, you know, poison My ship was at fukushima. Okay, there was parts of my ship that said, uh, this is still completely exposed It was crazy because you know, they give us our paperwork and it's like here's your annual exposure Here's your quarterly exposure and I was looking at our exposure and it was like people who had not even been in the reactor plant Yet  had I don't remember it was like a pretty high exposure just because the ship had been at fukushima I mean, that's, that's a whole different ball game. Yeah, yeah, of course. But so  I get what you're saying. There's no, like no old dusty. I had some of the smallest amount of radiation of all nukes. So, uh, but we did actually, um,  I had, I know, so my buddy from who was on the Montpelier, uh, he's got twin boys.  So that breaks it a little bit. And, uh, I had a watch officer who has,  I believe they are twin girls. I don't think it's a boy and a girl. Interesting. Um, so now are you going to gaslight your children into becoming a Navy nuke? Is that your, absolutely not. Uh, because  check out this story, this layer came on and he shared a story, you know, obviously we don't name drop on here, but one of his instructors during, uh, A school was like, yeah, I completely revoked internet access from my kids and stuff. And like, I'm training them to only be a nuke. Like I have set them up. So all they know is Navy nuke life. And I was like, man, I wouldn't do that to my worst enemy, you know, apps, absolutely not. Um, I mean, don't get me wrong, the, the benefits and pros and cons there, there, there are a lot of pros and cons, but  I really don't want them to have to do that.  Yeah, I think there's so many more opportunities, you know, that that are out there for them that they can make a bigger difference.  Outside of that. Um, now it does make sense that you have this nice, happy family because you were only a petty officer. Now, if you had in order to become a chief, you either need a alcohol related incident or a divorce. And so it seems like that's one of the things that held you up is, is having that clean, right. Actually,  you know, that may have been part of the reason they delayed, you know, getting the watch suit program done and then, you know, making a lot you could have requested to go. Onto a ship that was deployed in order to get those qualifications. Couldn't you  like, well, I could have, but here's the thing. I really didn't want to, I didn't really want, I will 100 percent admit that. That's definitely the case. Um, I.  Doubt  that they would have  let me go  just because I mean,  I mean, fiscally, it didn't make a lot of sense. You know, I was getting out by that time, you know, I had made the decision, you know, my kids were, you know, three, four. So I, I lined up, I lined up where getting out, I was able to get them into kindergarten and they've been able to stay in the same district. All the way. Okay. Yeah, that's awesome. Props to you. I will say, uh, uh, at the time, Captain Lloyd, uh, he, he pulled a hard, he pulled a hard one, um, that even my wife would have been on board. It, if, if the position had been approved ahead of time, because he was talking to me that they were going to be doing a technical rep out of the Navy yard for the new four class. Um, but the position hadn't been.  Approved via budget yet. So it's one of those if I know now and that doesn't come to be then Oh, you know going to shift work and down a prototype and then I'm stuck in for the hall. So  oh, yeah that was one of my hardest things was telling him no to that which I mean he took kindly but  Right. But yeah, it's a funny Jason. I'll share something with you that I don't know if they were doing this when So  my generation of nukes, the retention rate is at its lowest. The recruiting is at its lowest, you know,  out of like maybe  30 people that I had in my power school class, I was one of like five people who actually made it through the whole pipeline. Like the, the dropout rate, the re rate, the medical, the separation, the purposely smoking weed and reporting yourself rate was through the roof, right?  So bad that there was a rumor they were making the bonus 180, 000 to start re enlist because no one would do it. I mean, in, in, in, for, uh, no, in a tax free zone, that sounds pretty tempting, you know, that's a, a payment on the house, but. I saw 120 for, I think, ELTs and ETs, right? Yeah. But they get you, they get you on that beta, on that. Oh, of course. Because they give you the big second one, right? But there's like a 200k cap, right? So then you're like, your last one, right, is next to nothing.  Oh, yeah. Because you're so close to 20 years by that point, you're gonna do it. You gotta get to that. Yeah. Um, at the end of the day, you know, I've, I've found that funny. And in retrospect, if you step back, like everybody who does 20 years, pretty much makes amount a same of bonus. Okay. It's just whether you tax freed it or not. And then what,  what'd you bothered to blow it on? Um, you know,  if you're like big red, my buddy, big red, it's. Nerf guns and legos and now real firearms. At least he's upgraded his life from nerf. He had over 200 nerf guns to now he has too many real firearms. But, you know, we'll talk about that in a minute because I want to get back to your a school days. But before we do that, before we go all the way back there,  I'm just going to say we had It was, people would put a paperclip on their uniform and it stood for people against people ever re enlisting, civilian life is preferred. I don't know if you've heard of that, but it's pretty awesome. Uh, that's, that's an acronym. No, that, that was not around. In so many nukes, we're paperclips nowadays. I, I challenge you if you ever go back. I've seen, I've seen people with it. Uh, apparently I would just, uh, I missed the joke. Um, people against people ever re enlisting, civilian life is preferred.  I mean, a lot of it is, yeah, it, it, it, it, it is preferred. Um, you know, but yeah, it's, it's what you get out of it. Uh, I will say the biggest thing  that  I miss and I enjoyed and was a big, you know,  issue with the, the recall is the fact that maintenance, I really enjoyed building.  Helping build sailors, right? Like mentorship. Like that's what I really enjoyed. Um, and I, I really did have a, uh, particularly on the forward, a very good chief's mess. Um, you know, a number of them were chiefs ahead of time. It didn't hurt that a lot of them were, you know, first class watch soups who came over. So you made chief pretty much like right away. So, um, you know, uh,  I had some,  and they transitioned well, um, and,  they,  they were good, you could, behind closed doors, you could  go to bat, right, and, and have it out, right, because at the end of the day, as long as you went out there and wouldn't lose your draw, you go out there and do what you have to do, um, you know, but they allowed that type of, you know,  Back and forth. And that was, and that was part of the big command climate thing, is that there was the opportunity to take initiative that was,  it helped that nothing worked. Right. You know, as you initially tested it. So raising your hand and saying, Hey, I don't know what's going on here, or, I think I fucked up. Um,  that, that became. You know, all right. Now, I mean, we definitely had, you know, accountability, right? And that's the big thing that people, uh, sometimes miss is that you like the idea that if you have an empowered leadership, if you have extreme ownership, you know, sneaking the title of Jocko's book,  um, that somehow that that negates the accountability, um, which doesn't have to be the case, you know, but it's one of the most, you know, difficult parts of, of leadership. So that's.  That's my passion set. That's what I enjoy going around. Um, you know, I've had some opportunities to speak at a couple of events last year, falling into, um, you know, the, the coaching and the speaking space, which was entirely that in the entrepreneurship side, it was, is so. Was so foreign, right? It was outside the, the Venn diagram of experience. Um, you know, and I'm a big proponent  of wanting to expand that knowledge, right? Because  nukes, when you get out, I mean, the, the world's your oyster to a certain degree, right? If you want to stay in nuke power, you want to stay in power generation, or you want to go work for Amazon, right? Yeah. All right. You're going to make great money, You're going to stay in shift work and yeah, you never really have,  I mean, you don't, there goes Alexa. Um,  the, the idea of then like having a stability to go into entrepreneurship is just something that I don't think gets seen. Um, you know, cause I think, I think a perfect world, you know, you, you get out, you go do that for a while, which I did not. Um, right. And. You know, you have a foundation and then you shift away from something with ship work, right? You know, unless you, that's something you, that's kind of what I did. I, I was working 12 hour rotating shift work when mandatory overtime all the time. I'm like, well, one of the things I didn't like about the military was this, that the, the, the upside for everyone listening is the civilian world has holiday pay, overtime pay, night shift, differential pay. So it was nicer because I was doing the same thing. But getting paid so much more. The downside is, it's like, look, I really don't want to keep doing this.  Does it matter? No. The nuclear program messes up your sleep for life, pretty much. You know, I don't know, Jason, if you can confirm that. One hundred percent. And actually, that's where a lot of my  That's where a lot of my issues started from, um, you know, after I got out of the service, um, I, I will, there was a couple of major plugs that I will make  here is one, make sure that you are prepared and you do your VA. Disability, um, you have everything documented first and then use the organizations, whether it's DAV or another nonprofit that is designed specifically for, um,  your VA care and submissions.  I didn't do it after my initial deployment. I lost a lot of money waiting, trying to do it myself. When I got recalled to active duty, that was about the only benefit is I went back, made sure everything was documented. And that made the VA experience, uh, when I got, uh, demobilized, uh, a lot easier. Um, but yeah, sleep is sleep is where it started, you know, for years, um, you know, working with doctors, trying to get that under control and, and, uh, If you don't, it can lead into a lot other issues. Um, you go back a couple of years for me, um, after the demobilization, um, right.  Had started having like the first time it happened I thought I had a heart attack like I wake up in the middle of the night. My blood pressure is over 200 You know, I'm sweating come to find out that not having my heart attack, right? It's nocturnal panic attack  turns into like daytime panic attacks all just rooting from my sleep,  you know So, you know spent a year um You know, going through the, the steps, fortunately, the VA here was immediately to VA community care, um, you know, so got the, the help that I needed there and got that under control. So, and I was good to go coming into this year. Um, and then we have new fun.  Uh,  Well, I'm glad you had that command climate where you could ask questions and not know stuff because there's a lot of commands where it's like, you don't know this, you know, you're stupid. And it'll be like, you know, and I've had this in the civilian world too, where the higher ups and the people who have been there longer, you know, it's all second nature to them. So they just expect you to know stuff that you've never done before. You have, you know, this is your first time. They're like, well, didn't you read about this? Brother reading about it in the manual and actually performing these things like the DTS they're like, you know I won't get into detail, but they're like we need you to operate this motor and do all these valves in five minutes I've never seen any one of these valves. I've never touched this motor Took me like an hour and they're like, you failed, you know, the, the submarine sank, you need to do this in five minutes, five minutes. I've never seen a single one of these vows. They're like, well, you should just know where it is. Read the manual. I was like,  I can't, I can't do this at all,  but yeah,  you mentioned the glowing eyes of Rick over. So for those of you who don't know, animal Rick over daddy, Rick over, as we call him, you know, father of the nuclear Navy. Eccentric madman has some stupid quotes. I'm sure I don't know if my ship had posters of him all over with stupid quotes that he said I don't know if you had that too  Not so much around the ship. I am I am sporting the  Uh, the rickover, uh, socks, uh, from nice, um, uh, half-life.  Yeah. Okay. I think that's the clothing line. Um, they do a lot of fun, nuke, um, oh yeah, memorabilia. So, and, and so, um, what, what you were referring was on my website, I have a picture of Rickover with a little poem, a little owed, a little sailor's creed to him. And, um, you know, I think some people might find it disrespectful, especially the last line, but I'm telling you, if you're a nuke, you appreciate it. So, you know, there's like a, some nuke humor, but.  You know, you mentioned that and it's funny.  Uh, I, you know, in a school you share, we call them the head, the bathroom, you know, we share them between two rooms with two people per room, right? So you got four people, four grown military men or women, you know,  women, separate men, separate sharing, sharing the bathroom. And I had this one roommate and he was like taking forever. I'm about to piss myself. So I go next door. I'm like, Hey, can I use your head? They're like, sure. I get in there. They've got this giant poster of Admiral Rick over in front of the toilet and it's like, nice cock. It's like, bro. What kind of bathroom is this? It's better than, uh Man, I'll tell you a gross story. I don't know if I've shared this on the podcast before. I think I have. It's so gross. You know, we moved out of the A School barracks to the Power School barracks. Now, you know, it's an upgrade or whatever. It was supposed to be. But the Indoc people had taken all the  dual bed bedrooms in the Nautilus. So we got stuck with bunk beds again. They actually just moved us further away from everything and didn't give us more room, so it kind of was like pointless to move us, but,  uh, this was, I had got rolled back into this class because of COVID stuff, whatever, and so they, the new kids come up to us, they're like, hey, was so and, was Petty Officer so and so in this barracks room with your class? We're like, yeah, why? They're like, the top railing of the bunk is just lined with boogers, like layers and layers of boogers across the top railing. And in the bathroom,  above the toilet, they said he had to be pissing like this, flicking boogers out of his nose, while he was pissing, and there was just a splatter, like a splatter. On the on the on the wall about the toilet. So when he was we we we definitely had the the stink pack Um, there was an individual that went through um the pipeline with me and was on my first ship and  Uh, definitely had to had some learned some hygiene issues. He's actually one of the only  There was only a handful of times in the Navy that I ever actually yelled at someone. You know, especially that's just not my leadership style. Right, right. Um,  but, uh, the irony is, is that even,  even those  who, at the time,  you, you just, you can't deal with, you, you have trouble standing. They're, they're the, uh, brotherhood. Um, you know, just because. I was surprised, you know, regrettably, uh, one team, one fight,  he, he can, you know, the individual that, that I went through the pipeline, uh, just recently passed away from, um,  some like rare, uh, form of cancer or something. So unrelated to his job.  Yes. Unrelated to his job. Um,  and it was. It was surprising how much it, it, it impacted me, um, you know, because it wasn't like, this is not somebody I'm picking up and calling, right. You know, it was, it was not, but you know, the, the level of service, the same amount of work and pain I had to go through and honestly, you know, more difficult for him, you know, trying to adjust inside that social norm that, um,  You know, just it really, fortunately, this was not a,  if there is such a thing as fortunately, you know, this wasn't due to a mental health issue. Um, you know, that was  avertable, but, um,  it started to bring us down the notch there a little bit, right? You gotta have the ebb and flows, but it's. It's one of those that everybody has a, a connection. All service members have a connection. Nukes have their own unique connection. Right. Submariners have you guys have your own and highly level of community? Um,  so I mean, 'cause I'm on two aircraft carriers, right? Yeah. We park right off the side of Irad and, you know. We sit there, but if I'm having a bad day, okay, everybody's having a bad day in the world. Okay. So, um,  because if someone's shooting at a carrier, it's not a good thing. Probably geopolitically.  Um,  but yeah, um.  So, I'm, I'm open, and you got questions for, I've got plenty of work to do in the service, uh, after service. Yeah, I got a couple of things I want to cover, so I'll give you the list now so you can kind of mentally prepare. But, some things we have to cover is, um,  A school is probably some of the wildest stuff that happens. Maybe prototype, but typically A school, power school is the wild stuff, you know, I don't know. Uh, uh, Later on, we got to get to your fleet life. Some of the craziest casualties. I remember I was leaving the ship one day and they're like, there's five feet of JP fuel flooded the entire room. Like, like how did, like, they've got a bunch of sailors just soaked in JP fuel. And I remember my one buddy was like, Mr. Wishy, we gotta go grab some matches right now. I'm sick of this place. Like we gotta, we gotta light her up, you know? Um, and you know, so I like to start with the A school stuff. Yeah.  You know, but when I went to a school, we're an in doc and, and, and tell me if you've got the same presentation, they're like things you cannot have in the barracks room and it's a slideshow and there's batarangs, nunchucks. And I remember I made Marcus Hart on his show laugh so much. I told him I was like, yeah, they had a size and quantity limit. For, for sex toys at nuke school. He was like, wait, what do you mean a size limit? What do you mean a quantity limit? I was like, they, they made a rule book just for nukes. So when I went was probably, you know, between you and I, there's a whole waves and waves of, uh, of nukes.  That had this  weird interest. What, what year, what years  did you do a school? 20.  So I also had the weird experience of Covid, right? I went peak covid. So it was, everything was different. The whole military was changed. I mean, we were locked down to base for a, for a while we weren't even allowed to leave. But, you know, between you and I, there was just the waves of, of weirdness, you know, the El Diablo parties and stuff like that.  Women with butt plugs that going into the Rickover setting off the metal detectors, you know, there was this rumor the chief ripped it out of her and there was blood, you know, all kinds of weird stuff. Like, we had a chief, he was driving a truck. I would say that we did not have that brief. Like, I would have tuned out most of that, but, you know, the, the housing brief, because, uh, uh, you know, I got, I was married before, you know, and still married. Smoke pit wedding? Hard to believe, right? Uh, no, just before I joined the, the, the service, cause I wanted to make sure I was done with all the paperwork. She was in the Air National Guard. She outranked me for a little bit, um,  and so anyway, so I, I never had to live with the barracks. I had like one week in the barracks, right? So, but everybody, so I've got, I've got a lot of good stories because everybody was at my house. Every. Okay. Day, weekend, I mean, yes. Were you the typical alcoholic nukes? You know, because  when you went, did they have, when I went, they had this giant sign outside the Rickover that counted days since last alcohol related incident. And if it reached 50, we got a day off. And it never got past like 5 or 10. And when it was at 49, they owed us that free day. The next day, it magically reset.  Yeah, that happens on, uh, I think they took it down because nukes drink so much. We have so many ARIs. They were like, forget this counter. It's not doing anything. So, so we managed,  we had a very good group. Um, you know, so, cause I went in a little bit older and I had a number of older groups. So originally,  um, I had a full ride ROTC scholarship to Ohio state, um, and I was actually going to go Marines. And then like two weeks in, I tore my hamstring and it was on. Crutches for a couple years. So left that came back into the nuke world pretty much right as I was turning 21 Um, I turned 21 with a red badge on right, but I was in base housing. So yeah, it's okay um Yeah, it was a little bit older. We had a uh  It's a wonderful day We always had our our designated drivers and uh, we took care of them And yeah, so we managed with all our shenanigans, um, uh, not to have any ARIs, um,  somehow, um,  plenty of opportunities where they could have been, but, uh, yeah,  I was gonna say we had a My old roommate, we call him King, he called them the Friday Funnies. Every Friday they would read the um, recent mastings. Um, they stacked it like a couple weeks, so not to dox the person necessarily. I don't know if you ever had any really, did y'all have that? The Friday Funnies, as we called it? Not, not in a school. I mean, definitely have been some to public mastings out to sea, right? Where you're just, Oh, really? Okay. Oh yeah. You know, yeah. You gotta tell us about that. Rocking back and forth. We'll get to that. There is some weird,  some weird stuff that happens. I mean, like I just got a call recently. They're like, Mr. Whiskey, you should have never left the ship. There's some wild stuff happening. I'm like, what's going on? And they're like two dudes who are doing this snake, eat snake, you know, 69 out on the fan tail. And the captain is just like. What the hell? I really don't have time for this. Our ship is seven years in the shipyard. We had all these suicides, a murder, like we were trying to get out to sea and you guys are out here sucking each other off on the fantail. Like why can't you just we're in shipyard go home. Well, you know what you have to do on the ship But I think it was it was during a freaking sea trials. They were underway for like five days ten days They're like we need to get our nukes, you know Oh, man, it could have been topside. Oh, man, probably topsiders, but topside. Oh, yeah yeah, so so and we have a series on my channel called topsiders versus nukes and um  How have your now I was known as the nuke You Who was friends with all the top siders. I was super friendly with them. I didn't, I was never a hateful person. Like so many nukes are like, we hate top siders. Yeah, sure. I'm a little salty. They get off every holiday, every weekend. They don't work ever. They're in eight day duty section just to name some benefits. Um, they're getting pretty much the same benefits as me as well. Military wise for the most part for doing hey, you got that extra hundred fifty dollars The mailman the mailman at nuke school was was like a first class and I was like dude He's get he got the same medical when it's the same dental benefits and he's getting so much more pay for doing He had the mill divers. He got in trouble for this Eventually, he had the mill divers all the all the these sailors on restriction in mildew doing the mail for him So he was just sitting there on his phone all day I was like, dude, why did I become a nuke? You could have been chillin as the mailman. That's effective delegation. I'm just gonna say that. Until the Mildivers, because there are a bunch of pissed off Mildiv kids in nuke school, fresh out of high school. Oh, Mildiv. Who lose someone's package. And then you have an angry mom calling the command. And then, you know, the mailman has to explain that a mail div lost the package, and then the captain's not happy. Because the last thing he needs is an angry mom. The last thing he needs is the ombudsman saying, There's an angry mom on the line. The captain doesn't want to hear it, you know. I remember I was standing watch. We, we had, there's so many stupid watches. I don't know if you had to deal with any of these, but like, I was just. Sitting in the reactor admin office in case anyone called in case there was no one in the office of someone. Oh, yeah Oh, yeah, you had You had the you know  The admin watches, uh, you know, we had, when we were in the building, we had like security watches over like the vault and stuff and, uh, you know, before being qualified and yeah. So, so that being said, uh,  this, this woman called and she's like, I'm, I'm the wife of, of, of the RO or whatever, and she was like, so pissed off. And there's some officer and I went in the back room and I was like, sir, there's a woman on the phone for you. She's pretty unhappy. He goes, that's my wife. I'm staying late. She's called three times today. Like, tell her, tell her I'm busy. Tell her I'm doing stuff. There's a reactor on this shit. You know, I'm like, Oh man, I see. I see why you're high ranked. He's busy right now. He does not want to talk to you. So that's like the only call I got. Like we would sit there for hours. Some person, okay. Got, um, a phone call. I was like, yeah, I'm trying to, they were trying to order a pizza. We're like, we don't know how you got the reactor admin office phone number, but this is a wrong number, man. Like you let it go. You take the order first and then you let them know. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or don't. And yeah, it depends how, uh, how your day's been. I guess if it was a busy night, uh, I'll show you Jason when it was.  React admin office, how can I help you sir, ma'am, chief, or shipmate? Oh, the RO? Yeah, he's not here. No, I don't know when he'll be back. Yeah, and then they would call back like half an hour. Is the RO there yet? No, he's still not here. He's still in the plane. He's doing, he's doing stuff. Then they would call back like an hour later. And he, no, he's not here. And then when he was there, no one ever called for him. Yeah, that's how it was. No one ever called unless they needed him. And then they started having walkie talkies so they could just communicate to each other. I'm like, So, so why am I here? Why am I here at 4 a. m. I haven't slept in days and I am sitting here. You're not allowed to have a phone, you know,  then there became a point. They're like, well, you can't study in here. This isn't a confidential space.  So you're just sitting now. Now that's getting, that's getting, yeah, you can't even study. And then there was times like,  Hmm, it was stupid. I asked her this watch called Paul patrol plant access watch standard. When we first went in critical. They're like, Hey, everyone. Um, we know these doors say you can't get past this without a certain radiation measuring device. And, you know, people can read, but topsiders are kind of stupid and the shipyard workers are stupid and they haven't had to wear one for the past six years. So you have to stand this watch and they're like, it's going to just maybe a week or two. Months later, we're still standing in this watch. I stood it sometimes 8 to 12 hours a day, sometimes in the middle of the night, just standing in front of this door. They wouldn't let us have a chair at first. They're like, it's watch standing guys, not watch sitting. So I'm standing in front of this door for eight hours saying,  Oh, look, I see you. You have your radiation measuring device. Thank goodness.  And eventually you weren't even like the actual seapaw actually like the, no, no, no. This is just to get through the Allison doors. This is like, you're in the galley, standing in the galley. Stupid. And, um, eventually, luckily we had an officer. He was like, I'll see about getting you a chair. I was like, thank you. This is ridiculous. I'm supposed to stay in here for eight hours. And then when it was holiday,  how many people did I stop trying to get in without a radiation measuring device? None.  Oh, a shipyard worker. Guess what? They had their own set of rules. They don't have to follow our rules for radiation measurements. They had their own system.  There was a giant seat on, I'm sorry, this sign posted everywhere,  signs like that. We had rope across. We had times you cannot enter here without your device.  If you went through the door, you still had a, a while before you got to the radiation area, which was also posted. Uh, but that was great. That was great. I was senior and rate, uh, paw patrol and we called it paw patrol. So people started coming. If you've ever seen that show, I know you've got daughters, you know, we had the hats and the stickers of these dogs with hearts and they're wearing, you know, worker clothes and that was dumb. I mean, what, what, what was the dumbest watch you had to stand? I don't know if you ever had to deal with, uh, MTT or anything like that. You know, stupid stuff. Oh, plenty. Plenty of those, and Orish, and all kinds of fun things. We had a parking lot watch. To make sure no one parked in the reserved spots that have a sign that say MTT parking only.  Uh, I will say, I don't know, so much as a watch, but my very first underway was at a school, and it was in a dinghy to, uh, get all the moss off, like, one of the, like, collection ponds up front, and, which there were definitely, like, two alligators that I could see, right, I'm not an alligator fan, right, but dinosaurs that lived, they would eat people. I have no idea what you're talking, are you saying when you were in, uh, The nukes.  Yes. It was before it was, it was like, I had very little time in between any of my stuff. So I think this was like before my classes actually like started, but yeah, I was like track.  Yeah, yeah, it was T Check. Um, you know, and You had to go collect them. Yeah, no, I was literally like cleaning the skim off this pond in this dinghy around the alligator, you know. I know, I know where you're talking about. That's why. Like, hey, yeah, he's in the water. So don't fall in. I'm like, thanks.  I'll keep that in mind. Um, so not, not necessarily a true watch there. I mean,  I lucked out of having to do those watch, the, the access watches. Bravo Rove, Bravo Point Watch, Golf Point Watch, Rickover, Watch standard RPI, RPI, and we loved it because we will yell random penis inspection, you know, we're nukes, so RPI, then we would say MPI, mandatory penis inspection, take it out right now And there was, you know, but you know, that's kind of dangerous game because we had a guy  before my time He was like, let me see your CAC, you know, your, your, uh, whatever it stands for, common access card, whatever the hell it is And, um, he got mastered for that, but we would do it all the time. We'd be like, Oh, nice, nice CAC. And that's a pretty good length CAC. You got there. I like, I like the width. See, and that's comes down to right place. Right. Go into mass for shit like that. That's what happens in,  you can have accountability if you want to have accountability around those things. But when. You establish that that's the level of masting. You intrinsically make your sailors not come to you with problems.  Jason, they tried to mast mast Big Red because he had sunburn.  First off, he's always red. That's why we call him Big Red. He's just like, his complexion, that's just who he is as a human being. We went to the beach, he got a little sunburnt.  Shit, man, are you sunburnt? You're a government property! Destruction of government property! I can send you to mass for that! And then, you know, they start doing other random crap. Oh, you got your hands in your pockets because it's cold out? Oh, oh, you didn't shave today all the way because it's Saturday? Like, all the BS stuff. They, there is so much nitpicky BS in the military. I'm sure it's across all the branches. And like you said,  It's like highlighting in a textbook. If you highlight everything, then nothing's important, right? Like, you want to set an example with masks. Like, this is what we don't tolerate. If you don't tolerate anything, you create that I don't care, complacency. They can't mask us all. That's that's, have you heard that one before? They can't mask all of us. Yeah. Oh, they can. I've, I've seen some large public massings. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us about that, Jason. Is it, this is some serious stuff, huh? So  I think both were on the bush. Uh, we have,  uh, we had one where  it was up in the folks. So it was pretty much just reactor department.  Um, Fox castle.  Um,  Foxcat. I love it. Um, you know, so anyway, it's funny because everybody's bobbing back and forth, right? You know, as, as you're having to sit at attention. You know, one of the, I won't drop names here, one of the electricians who was on, uh, SG Watch, uh, had the misfortune of being sitting on one of the steam pipes, uh, and not paying attention when they're giving a tour to some topside commander, While she's playing smurf village. Um, so that was one of the funniest things of the ceo like going up into her is like so explain to me About this important thing called smurf village  During the mass right so that was a little awkward and then he had a yeah, I mean he had a pretty bad gun decking Uh set out engineering where we had like well, you're not allowed to have Phones in the plant. I mean, we had some people go to that for that. Oh yeah. You, you, you, that, that one, that one will get you pretty quick. Um, that's a pretty basic one. Um,  or leaving, leaving too many monster cans at your watch station. Unfortunately, clean up your watch station, please. I've never seen every mast. No, we've had, we've had a lot of talks for that, but yeah, some people will be a fed about it. I'll tell you. Yeah. Yeah, the, the engineering one was bad enough. So, because we had the,  what was that? The OWS space, um, that they had to go do logs every so many hours and  they hydroed the room. Like, there was, uh, you know, luckily it was just water, you know, and it's not a very big space, right? But when the next watch came, took over and like tried to open up the door, like, Oh, it's, it's, it's a high growth condition. So, um, that, that went on for a while, but,  um, and then, and then there was just like a, a big one, um, like on deployment, like a bunch of, you know, different tag out violations from, you know, those that were  small and insignificant to those that were like blatant, you know, I had a guy,  it's funny cause he was like,  Not second checking, like, like just not double checking tags or so. Well, some of them down.  So we had one guy like who actually,  it was funny cause he had just reenlisted and he was right on the front of the, in the big picture that they took, uh, of all the people getting frocked and he had some, I mean, it was like stupid maintenance too, it was like really simple. It was like cleaning out, uh, whatever. Right. But you had to tag it out. He basically.  One of the watch officers had like JJ as like a password or something in eSomps and he knew it and so he, but he didn't realize is that it was printing stuff to EOS, right? The record sheets. So, yeah, so he's entirely just 100 percent blazing the maintenance. Um, you know, that's bad. Uh, but we also had conditions where we had, you know, somebody go up for just like, Anonymous stake that they brought forward and because of that we had a really bad incident where we had  Someone go and hang tags and then the second checker went and was like, oh shit They put these on the wrong plant. I don't want them to get fucked. I don't do it I'll take it where it's supposed to go  Things he's ended up. Putting it on the wrong limb because it was cross plant. So on some of the holy crap Yeah, like the fill ventilation valves to actuate right? So there are indications everywhere  You know and that's yeah, that's the type of stuff that happens when you don't  have a mechanism for people to bring up an issue Right. Doesn't mean that that first person could have been held accountable if they were wrong, right? But having the fear of  screwing someone and sending them to MAST  Yeah, because he could have just been like, Hey man, you hung these in the wrong spot. Yeah,  and, but because they were out and signed that, that, you know, would have been enough to, to go to mass  instead of actually having other forms of accountability up through, you know,  recalls. I mean, you have to have accountability, but it can't always be the.  The end, right? Otherwise you never have developed trust, right? Um, you know, cause I had, uh,  actually this may, no, this, I  think it was on the Ford. Um,  whatever it was, I was, you know, I have my own process for hanging tags, right? And I go up and I'm with a shipyard worker and not paying great attention, you know, read, operate and do it. Circo X. Yeah. No, this actually was on the bush. Um,  and.  So, I, I went and I tied it, and before I signed it, I always would give it a good tug, you know, right? It was just part of my routine to make sure it wouldn't fall off. Well,  I hung it,  above,  Turning gear breaker that I was supposed to do which killed like all the lights in You know on the second deck once again cause you know derailing valves and stuff and the big difference was is that I just like Immediately ran into switch gear and was like that was me. I did this Wait, so when you  you tug down on the tag, you accidentally like hit some switches  Or you tagged out the wrong breaker. I had two breakers, right? Yeah, you know Open the right one. Okay. And then talking to the shipyard, I hung the tag on the, that was right above it. So when I plugged it, you know, I turned off the wrong section, but because  I mean, they did go to bat for me here because I hadn't actually signed the tag.  And I called it in immediately. Um, there was enough PA  pow wow on, you know, directions to untie and to read. So, and I  didn't get mastered for that, but I mean, even that first incident you mentioned is like, Hey. If it's Cecilia's first time making a mistake like that,  Yeah, you don't have to send a message, you should be like, Hey, bud, you messed up, like, you know, This is what we're gonna do to not do this in the future, Make sure you're paying attention, blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, if it's a reoccurring situation, Then you step it up. You know, you talk about a tier system. A tier system. The truth of the matter is, is that, We forget what  leadership is about, you know, uh, yeah. Jock Willis, um, you know, wrote a number of books on these that, uh, I read, particularly after I got out. Um, uh, extreme Ownership Dichotomy of Leadership. Um, you know, when there's a failure, the first question of leader should be asking is, what did I do wrong?  What tool did I not provide? How did I not properly communicate this? And if I did those things, how have I allowed this lack of accountability?  That's the sequence of events.  And you have to go through those. And like you said, it has to be progressive.  Because that's how you get people to learn.  From their mistakes. That's what we want  is not  to keep these things hidden, right? It's we learn great from mistakes. It it's better to learn from other people's mistakes. You know, Rick over had a quote about that. Um, you know, I don't have time to make all the mistakes. I might as well, you know, learn from others, you know, I know that's not exactly it, but he had to that effect. I could  show you some of his other quotes there. They're not much better, but, uh, one thing I want to address that you're talking about is  You know, one I want to ask you, um, worst leadership you've seen in the military, uh, personally, and then two, I'll, I'll relate my story to that, but three,  you talked about luckily you had a good command climate on, on the Ford, the Bush, not as good, but not the worst, you know, did you see a lot of praise in public, uh, punish in private, or did you see, I mean, what are your opinions on that? Because I've seen it where In good, in good commands,  I am, I am a fervent believer that  Unless it is a safety issue, right? Like everyone is in the civilian sector, right? Um, to where something needs to be stopped right now. Okay. And then on the nuke side, that's, you know, a lot of the time. That's a lot of times I gave it like, no, wrong valve, whatever. Okay. Um, hands off.  It's yeah. Hands off. Stop. Create the safe condition. All right.  You can explain to the group on the why, but the  real reprimand should be done offline.  Yeah,  that's fine.  It's  It's the only way to get,  in my opinion, a consistent effective return. It's always going to come down to the individual. Um, you know, I've worked obviously with the high tier in the nuke world. I worked for GE Aviation with, you know, uh,  Some very high end, most of them were veterans, you know, doing all the design for the FAT generators and components, you know, then I also worked for, you know, unskilled labor at a manufacturing plant and like there is a, there is a difference in just the.  Like I had great people there who cared and wanted to do the work. And then you have some people who didn't, um, you know, and for a leader, for me personally, that was one of the things I struggled with was I was used to a very  quick and positive return on my investment. As far as developing someone, right? You can see the changes. They would come back with questions, right? Then you would see this progress, um, you know, along the way. In the civilian sector, not always the case.  Yeah, and you know you can pour out everything to them and  you know, sometimes you don't care You're forced to care to some degree in the Navy. They'll get you  Yes, how many like look this up for me going to get? Yes, the nukes are trained They're like, oh, this is a lookup and they want to get as soon as possible You know in the civilian world, you don't really have a liberty dependent items Yes. Oh, well, I left the livery car right as they were  Issuing out the, uh, the Liberty cards. Um,  I did get a 24 hour Liberty slip once for, um,  just being cool. No, this, this was the X, the ship. They did this thing for a while where first off it was, you had to have a special request to leave before three o'clock and the nuke side action guys. We were on like,  we were on a  kind of three section, less than that. Um,  You know, set up so when you actually did have the ability to get up, it was special questions like crazy. So they stopped doing that. Um, and then it became every person on the ship got a serialized Liberty card that you had to write your chief at the beginning of the day. And you couldn't exit the ship unless you had that little issue to you walking in clocking out for real. Oh, yeah So I mean because they things things were starting to get bad there. I mean and you know So the bush is freedom at work, right and then you know, we're terrible that you know And it was work will set you free Okay, you know that There  was too many times that we would change those words because it got excessive. It's an incentive for shortcuts on some level. It's an incentive for shortcuts and blazing because you're like, Hey, I want to get this done.  And, you know, you end up rushing certain maintenance or stuff, taking shortcuts because, yeah, you want to go home. But I think part of that is,  The Navy can rework its schedule to be better. And this is where my example of bad leadership comes in. I went to my LPO, we called him Slenderman. You know, tall, lanky guy and kind of a jerk. And we don't know if he was a, he was a kiss up. I mean, that's, that's, he was just trying to rank up. But he was getting out in a few months. But he was still trying to like get every brownie point he could.  And I went up to him and I said, look, we've got the manning, uh, for like maybe a six day duty section. Cause we were on like two or three, most of reactor, most of reactor across the fleet is on two or three day duty section topside. Typically like six or eight.  I, we recently went out, me, the Slayer and some friends went out for dinner and this topside, I was like, dude. I'm so like depressed man, like we're starting this thing called duty day and like I might have to come in on the weekends Now it's like this 24 hour shift thing. I was like brother. We've been doing that for what do you mean? What do you mean? The slayer was like bro  Across the face. We in twoset port and starboard and but basically  I'm, sorry. Go ahead. Apologize. Yeah, I just want to finish real quick I I went to my my you know, lpo slenderman as we call him and i'm like, hey We could do six day duty sessions. We have the manning These are the watches. We could do this rotation and we could either have slightly longer watches or we can have more shorter watches, whatever. He's like, Nope,  y'all don't have it worse than me.  And unless you have it worse than me, I don't care. I had a watch paint dry when I was on watch, when I was, you know, at your rank. So I really don't care what you have to do. I don't care how boring it is. I don't care how much it sucks, unless you have it worse for me, then I might feel a little bit bad.  I'm like, well, don't you want it  part of leadership? You know, we talked about the parts of leadership is leaving things better than when you came. It is empowering the people after you with a spirit of, we like this place. We want to make it better. Our leaders strive to make it better. We're going to try to make it better. Instead you get this mentality and I'm sure you've seen it. Where's like  We were hazed by power schoolers. So now when we're in power school, we're going to haze the in doctors. You create this cycle of, you know, it sucked. The, the higher ups kind of bullied us. Now we're the higher ups. It's time to have our fun. It's our turn. And in high school too, you know, with the seniors, like the good old boys club and you know, you have.  You have some that's good natured, right? And that's the important part is when it stays inside of that when it's just  to be  Vengeful if when the the true point is to actually make people miserable All right, then.  Oh, yeah a little cocaine. There's a there's a there's I always say that there's uh, You know, I always say that there's a an interesting bell curve. Um, you know when you compare not a bell curve, uh, like so if you compare the maturity rate of  Service members, right? They go who are just high schoolers, fresh out of high school. They, they come, you know, much steeper curve. All right. Of maturity compared to their counterparts in the civilian sector. However, a lot of times around 48  ish. All right. There's a lot of them that stop and hit the ceiling. All right, because there's.  This turn of  young individuals underneath at their maturity level stops at like 28 and then, you know, and they're putting into the civilian sector. Yeah, it's yeah, it doesn't it. It's not a good fit. Um, so it  you'll get past that a certain point. So if you're not, if you're not actively growing, you know, Right. Intentionally trying to grow as a leader by the time you're 26, 28 in the service, you're a problem and you're falling behind your peers now in the civilian sector. So you end up with people younger than you who now are in charge of you, you know, and this is the thing that was kind of weird with bootcamp is you got our RDC was only like,  21 or 22. Like he was a young guy, but he had went green side with the Marines and he had been through some stuff. And so they were like, we're going to let you chill out for a little bit. So he was hitting his cotton candy vaping in the middle of the compartment, playing music. He's like, look, y'all are a bunch of clowns. I don't want to be here. I just got back from Korea on the border. I had a stitch this guy's stomach shut. I had a, this guy's eyeball got blown out onto me. Like I slept in a tank. All right. I'm relaxing. I don't want no trouble. All right. I want a smart division. I don't want to be one of those guys that had to make a strong division because y'all are stupid. Uh, we were not a smart division. We, uh, by far, um, but he was, you know, it was interesting. Cause we had people, a lot of, half our division was older than him. Some, some people, we had like a 36 year old, you know, and it's crazy seeing, you know, How that affects people being young and charged. And I don't know if you felt this way, uh, with the ma's on your ship or the gate security guards, but we've talked a lot on the show, how a lot of them were bullied in high school and now they get power. And I've got a lot of, I had this one, one guy, he shaved his head, completely bald, walk around, say the sailor's creed, say it louder, louder, stand attention, I'm a Marine. No, you're not. You are an MA on a ship, alright? You, first off, you're, you're an upgrade from, from the gate guard. The gate guard, we call them cross guards with guns, you know, is what we call them. And because some of them will be complete dicks for no reason. They're like, you know, I can't get your cactus scan. I mean, not a lot on base. I'm like, brother, just, you know, I've, I've had ones, I've talked before on the show, so I won't go into it, but like South Carolina ran out of the materials to make the new decals, uh, so my tags expired and I was waiting in the mail for them and I had paperwork proving that. So half the gate guards were like, yeah, you had the paperwork.  Nope, not that one guy. You're not allowed on base. Nope. I don't care if you can't get to your job, but have someone from your chain of command come pick you up. It's not my problem. And like, won't let me do my job there. They they're standing there. I'm trying to go work on the reactor and they're just standing there. You know, they're sitting in the booth with, with two heaters on them, playing angry birds or Smurf village, whatever the hell it is, you know, this is that NOB or, or, or the, this was at, um, the Portsmouth base, um, whatever that. Oh, okay. Portsmouth. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Again, no, I've had the ones at Norfolk have been pretty cool. Um, and then Newport News,  those guys didn't do their job to the point that, uh, we had an incident,  you know, so what you were, when you went to Newport News, would you park on like wherever it is? It was like a mile and a half away from the shipyard. We had to park and walk. We didn't have to do that because we were initial manning. We actually, actually had the, the, That tiny little parking garage at the top of the hill. Must be nice. Um, yeah. I had to walk. In 90 degree weather, three layers of clothes. That's right. Uphill both ways. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For real. There was like nine of us getting in that shitty elevator and one of the girls was a little claustrophobic. And so of course we all thought it would be funny to like all jump up at the same time. Well, the elevator stopped and just started like buzzing and then like, you know, Kind of like jolted down to like, we were trying to go to like level three, like level one, the doors opened. We just like jumped out and then the elevator was like broken for like six months. Um,  yeah, so we, we, we did that, but yeah, even on that little trip at one point in time, we had to have a buddy system. Cause somebody got stabbed.  Um, yeah, it's a dangerous area.  We had civilian cops that would guard the parking lot. So, so just so you're aware, maybe you saw this. So let's say this, this represents the shipyard. Here's the parking lot. All right. It's like we had to park all the way across the city, Newport news, which is, is the ghetto, the hood, whatever you want to call it, not a nice area. Right. Anytime you walk there, people will ask you for money. People will stab you. I mean, and Portsmouth was bad too. They're like, don't go to the 7 Eleven gas station off a base. It was like a minute walk. We're like, why not? Well, they shot a Marine 12 times to take his wallet. 12 times! Just take the wallet. You ain't got to shoot me 12 times. Like, come on.  That is the unique thing about Hampton Roads, is you could go literally one street to the other and go from like, nice to not. To somewhere in between like from downtown beautiful and then suddenly you're in like  waffle house strip clubs Used rims and military bases, you know, virginia beach even is like nice touristy And this hold on this is any military base in the world that I have been to I'm, sure that you've been to is is like you've got this big tourist town military bases The hood is just like, Oh, absolutely. Every, every single one, right. Cause nobody wants to live around neighborhood, Mart, Walmart, you know, if, if you're lucky, um,  this will make you feel somewhat better. So when I was on the Ford and we moved over to NOB, uh, I had to park. It was literally two miles. All right. Yep. Like, it was a straight line, but I knew for two miles I was going to be walking in the rain to get to the ship to do a duty day that I didn't want to do. Why can't you just park where the um, nowadays, you know, they got the McDonald's, the Pizza Hut, and you park right there. You park right at the turnstiles and then the ships are all lined up right there. I don't know, because they had, first off, we didn't have, we only had the McDonald's when I was there. Now there's Pizza Hut. So there was no Pizza Hut yet. Um, No, because they had them all like reserved. They had like an officer area, and then like a chief area, and then like overflow. Because we also had like four carriers in or something ridiculous. Like somebody was waiting in line. I think the Lincoln was waiting in line for refuel. Oh, we should see it right now. There's at least four carriers there. They got British carriers there and everything now.  See, that's where you go because you could get drinks. They had a  I had a buddy. Oh, yeah, I forgot that. I've heard rumors. I've heard rumors that there are bars on the on the british ships Is that true jason, you know about that? So I personally never got to have this but my uh, my friend elliot Who was uh on the pilier? Uh, he definitely got invited on to like a  I'm pretty sure it was British, not Australian, uh, destroyer. And yeah, um, he, he was off hours, of course, everything was kosher, but yeah, they got him good sloshed right there on ship because they could.  You ever attend one of the, uh, the steel beach picnics as they call them? Yes. Uh, we were supposed to have one beer.  Um, you got, you got two cards, and I swear to God, you got two little tickets, and I swear to God the beer said beer on it. Like  that white can that said beer, um, cause you're supposed to get one if you went over like  30 days. Yeah. Um, the food was actually like, for the one time, cause I actually had a grill up there and they had, you know, actual meat. So like the cheeseburgers were good. I mean, it's a bazillion degrees. You're on the flight deck. Every Wednesday is burger day. But yeah. Yeah.  You know, actually being cooked up on the, a real grill. Uh, but yeah, so we were, we, we had gone.  I think it was like 69 days or something, so we could have had a second beer day, but because we were pulling in,  we didn't have to. Like, you know, so we didn't. Which is too bad. Just we, we haven't even touched your pork calls. I mean, now I know a lot of nukes that, uh, pork calls were, uh, Hey buddy, you got duty day and maintenance and uh, we need you to stay behind So I know a lot of nukes have been been screwed over, but did you have some fun times? Oh God,  I did have some fun times. We did get screwed over real bad. Um, on, on on the 11 deployment because I knew it. I knew it. We knew we were getting the.  We knew we were going to be getting the  surprise oars, like as soon as we got over there. So we had, we had an MTT and like the test scores weren't great. They, I mean, they weren't horrific, but so here's your port call surprise. It was between, cause we hit all. So we came across and because it was the main deployment, we did Portsmouth, England, um, for, I think four or five days. And then it was, uh, Marseille, Spain for three days. And then we hit, uh, Naples for a couple days. Naples, yeah, that's always nice. And then it was  Dubai, Bahrain, and then I missed Dubai too on the way home and Marseille, France when I flew off. Um, so I made the mistake of buying or, uh, you know,  buying one of the days, uh, duty day because we were there for five days in England and we had only been We had just left. It wasn't a big deal. Right. So, but of course I had like the restow and a whole TGE, like it was miserable, like never again.  And then we had MTT between that and Spain. And we had people who had villas rented. They had people flying out. They had approved leave. They canceled it all. And you had mandatory training and you had to take a test. If you didn't pass the test, you had to train  again and try again at like four o'clock. Y'all got months at sea to do this. Come on now.  No, so yeah, and  so spain I only got one day because Uh, I went off the first day after the training crap. Um Recruiter won't tell you any duty. Yeah. Um  Was going to be the worst part of your career. No, it's cool. It's great. Are you kidding? The fleet's not real though. I just want to re establish that the fleet's not real but you know  You know, yeah, that's right. That's that's my issue is You  Cause I had this layer in Big Red and my nuke buddies come on the show. And I was like, well, how were the port calls? And they were like, well, we're going to be honest with you, Mr. Whiskey.  If you were not a chief or hire, or like a first class or hire, you weren't allowed to stay overnight, you weren't allowed to have a hotel, you weren't allowed to drink because our commanding officer made the decision, like, we have too many stupid sailors, you know.  It is, your recruiter will never tell you this, it is restrictive. And it's like three days, and you're working one of them.  It's not like, you know, it's hyped up as, dude, we're going to Spain, we're gonna party, like, no, you're not. You're not partying.  I did definitely have some fun. You made the most of it. Um, you know, and we did, they did allow Overnight, um,  in England, because that was before MTT, which I didn't have. Um, it was funny when I, we, we left, there was a big group of us that left, and we were like, okay, we want to get away from the ship. You're on a carrier, five bazillion people, right? And we went about a mile down and like the first place we, we walked into, like, I'm not kidding, like the Top Gun music was blaring and I'm like, nope, this isn't it. So we ended up walking like another mile and a half down to like the perfect bar name ever. It was called the Honest Politician. It was just this little guy  and we had a blast. Also had the greatest Indian food ever in England, in Spain. That is strange. The best Indian food in England. Yeah. Well, if you think about it, You know,  we've got a lot of generation movement over there. So yeah. Um, really good. And so Spain on my one day, I will say that.  I had a great time. I don't remember a lot. So, right, because my wife's pregnant with triplets, okay? Yeah, I forgot. You were married and expecting, so  Not the wildest nuke story that could happen.  True. I won't have any of the wildest nuke stories that have happened. But I did,  when we were walking down, somebody was literally pushing a triplet stroller.  I'm like, all right, that's it. I turned to my right. I am not leaving this bar  . I went out and got like 150 Euros and they get a big table. I had like all the PA and  Oh yeah. And I got, I just got destroyed. And the thing is, I bought all my money back in my pocket. So somebody else paid for buying higher night. Um, yeah. But on the Liberty boat back, um, you know, my, my senior chief comes up to me and he's like, Jason.  You're not going to fuck me, are you? And I'm like,  no, I'm good. I mean, I'm, I'm good. Don't worry. He's like, yeah. What about, uh, I won't drop names here. My, my Liberty buddy who  I always thought was older than me. Cause he looked older than me. He was considerably younger than me. There are some young nukes that look like double the age they are. Yeah. And so he's like  doubled over on the Liberty bow getting sick and I get him in there and then I get up and, you know, go down and I've got, you know, You know, because we got one plan up and I've got whatever watch and thank God it was an EDO, uh, who is the EO. And I get, I get paid to troll and all of a sudden EO is like, deal with this. I'm using the head. Right. Which is not supposed to be leaving anyway. And I go over and I see, cause like we talked about Jocelyn, like you have the one panel and the guy is just like.  Out on the panel. So I spent that watch, I was qualified Lotus Badger. Um, but yeah, so I spent that watch, uh, keeping him upright in his chair and making sure that no plant evolution, the electric led ship. Yeah. Uh, I don't know how, so I didn't have Jocelyn on my ship, so I don't know how that works with the. Because one of the things they always like hype up is the EPCP on a ship. They're like, dude, there's little secret stuff in it. There's dildos back there. There's drawings and you open it up and there's like secret compartments. I don't know how that works for Jocelyn. So, if you can do stuff like that. I mean, it's just computers. I mean, like literally you open it up and it's a Windows 2000 computer. Like we found like the one in Switchgear. Because actually they have in Switchgear, they actually have like Two setups where one's supposed to be able to take over like a drill simulator mode because there's two in central Nobody taught anybody how to use that so nobody know like so no it doesn't get used You know millions of dollars well spent there.  Oh, yeah. I mean you had you know, you're green army men everywhere Jason can you neither confirm or deny some of the things you have found in the reactor plant that maybe shouldn't be there You  Um,  neither confirm or  deny, you know, definitely the army man, um, some very well made, uh,  it was like a crab sculpture out of like Pepsi cans that was like hidden away. Um. That's pretty funny. Of course, I mean, you've got the low toad, right, uh, which is expected, in fact, uh, We had, uh, we had an empty tea and they had us take it away.  And so the MTT guy is down in Central looking around for it and he's like, Alright, you guys did a good job. Where's, where's the low toad? And I'm like, Oh, they, they made us take it away for MTT. He's like, Go get it now. Go get the  low toad and bring it here right now. All right. MTT does not allow the low toad not to be present, so. You brought back a memory from power school. We had someone observing the class. I don't know if it was like, I think it was NR, you know, Naval Reactors. Um,  funny thing, uh, Ms. Whitney, my co host for David Jones Locker, she went to a parade in Pittsburgh. It was like a pride parade. And Naval Reactor Laboratories was there, giving out candy, saying, We. We were prideful, you know, it was like pride. I was like, non naval reactors, like she sent me a picture. She got like a mint in a ratchet, says naval nuclear reactor laboratories. I was like, no way. These are the same dudes coming on the ship.  In power school, they came into observer class. And we had a substitute teacher for um,  or in rate for electricians, whatever the hell it's called, SI, Specialized Instructor, whatever it is. And um, he called himself, he's like, I'm actually one of those autistic nukes and I'm really like bad at this stuff. And he's sweating, he's like, and ours in here.  He gets called out into the hallway at the end of it. And uh, NR's talking for a while, we're all like nervous, like oh man, this dude was already nervous, what's going on, he comes back in the classroom,  he's like, he sends one of us, he's like, go, go, go, scout the hallway, make sure NR is gone, we come back in, he's like, dude,  the NR guy stood at the podium in the back,  and uh, this was just our substitute teacher, so he had no idea about the classroom, like he hadn't inspected it, the NR guy's like, how come there's all these teachers? Messages, you know, written into the podium on the back. Help me, please help me, I'm gonna kill myself. Like, help me, Rickover, please stop, you know, anally  raping me. You know,  sorry, it just reminded me of that, like, when, you know, the big dogs come in and inspect. We had, um,  someone had printed a meme and taped it all the way back somewhere in NPS I mean, way back there, and some chief found it, and it was like a picture of an angry chief yelling at a You shouldn't be hanging these around in the plant or something. Um, we had all kinds of stuff like that. The Roman shared a story about a, I think it was a chief or something who had hung ghosts. He like cut out pictures of ghosts and put them all around the plant and stuff. You know, um, but the biggest thing was the army men and rubber ducks and we had, um,  or go ahead. I'm sorry, we had, it was one cool weekend.  Okay.  Because it was like a playoff weekend or whatever. Yeah. And the The R. O. gave permission that you could wear either a Oh, like a casual day. A hat, a hat, or you could make your own, right? So, it had to be like three days or something, because I was out to sea, because I had a couple watches on it. And, like, because we had, my watch scene, we had a pretty intricate set, right? Because I was Throttleman at the time, right? And for us, it's Lucas. Um, you know, so I've got like a little conductor pat and a little, like, you know, paper watch thingy, you know, the watch officers got this big, intricate, like paper Pope hat, um, you know,  the  watch would come in with like, you know, antennas, other stuff. So we had fun for like two days and then they're like, absolutely not. No more of this. Interesting. Yeah, we, we did that. We'd had casual hat Friday on our ship. And. One guy came in with a Burger King crown. Um,  our, our rule was, um, like ball cap covers only. Right. And that's how we would wear the paw patrol ones. The Roman used to get the red sweat band, like from Rambo. And he would walk around like that, you know, with the end of sleeves rolled up and it was like, It's some, some, some, you know, salty upper class got pissed at him. They're like, that's not a ball cap cover. And then he was pissed because people were in Burger King crowns. You know, I never, I never got over it. Yeah. I never participated in casual hat Friday. I, you know, I just.  So, uh,  One of the great a rows, um,  on, on the forward. He, he had definitely had the cowboy, uh, you know, safety hat. Right. Um, he was like the only one on the ship allowed to, to, to, to wear it. Yeah. That's how that works. So he, he had, I mean, he had been around forever. He had, uh, he had served with, um, a mentor for years back when, you know, on a cruiser back in that day. Hmm. So.  Yeah, no, that's,  it's funny how the stories.  ebb and flow, right? Uh, you know, across the, the past, everybody has about the same stuff. There's a, there's a great picture of me, uh, in a whole group of us, but I was in an outstanding condition, uh, in the sandbox, um, in, in, uh, Bahrain, right. And, you know, It's in, you know, August, right? Everyone's there, you know, doing the drinking. I was, I was gone. I also had this terrible little mustache, right? Because it was going to be Suez to Suez and it was so bad that when I got back to the ship that night Thank God I didn't like cut my lip off because in in my current state, I shaved off my terrible, terrible mustache because I couldn't take it.  So this is ridiculous. This is a type of military BS that pisses me off in my my shipmates Saturday. And they're like, emergency muster, emergency muster. It's 1000 on Saturday morning. My buddy  within the bounds of the Liberty radius was out of state and, um, had already drove four hours, drove four hours back for this emergency meeting. We all, we all muster in the Rickover. Oh, we're doing a safe check.  A shave check? A shave check on Saturday morning.  Homie drove, drove four hours back from, from Georgia to, to do this. A bunch of people were out of state. A bunch of people were off base trying to, because this was after they had released COVID restrictions. So we're trying to get off base now. We've been trapped in nuke school with all this nuke cess and all this stupid stuff happening. You know, we're like, we want to get out, explore Charleston, whatever. Shave check. I didn't shave it Saturday morning. Come on. I mean, let's be honest here. Let's integrity check. Most sailors don't shave on the weekends when they're not actively on duty. Or or on leave. All right, I don't shave on leave. Um in it, you know, and I think every Then you'll have those higher ups who are like I I shave every single day. I am I have integrity outstanding integrity Unwavering integrity it is are my military duty and obligation to shape, you know So yeah get out of town I the amount like you always see all the pictures of like the ads with like the v neck white t shirts And like, you know complete crazy hairdos The top does whatever they want, right No, we didn't have anything for that because that's that's yeah, and they're threatening to face just an attempt to  So it sounds like i'm assuming this was Back in a school or whatever. So I was in power school. They must have everyone All of an nptc, right? So it's stupid I didn't shave. So my, my buddy who came back, he drove four hours from Georgia. He gets there. He was shaved. He had these little metal razors, like this big, like, like blades for cutting people in his pockets. Like, dude, I have to, he's like, you can't Mr. Wishy, you can't shave with these. These are for like cutting boxes and stuff. I came back blood and cuts all over my face. Shave check. That's so stupid. That was the single stupidest thing of my Rick over experience was 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning, mandatory shave check.  Even dumber was the day they did, um, urinalysis for all of, all of NNPTC.  The line was wrapped around the building several times and everyone kept having to get out of line to piss because they had been drinking all day. Go to the back of the line. It took hours. We, we had that on dip. We had that on the bush. 'cause some people had tested positive for something you can't do everyone at once.  It's way too much. Oh my God. It was, it was the worst experience. Miserable uh, miserable. It was terrible. Yeah. 'cause I having to get out and my buddy like it took, it took us bypassing the one Divo who was too passive to go get a warrant to go get the XO to manually walk him up there. 'cause his wife was in labor. All right, and they wouldn't let him go up to do the piss test so he could get off the ship. I could, like, they raised the brow. Okay, they had to put the brow back on for him so he could get off. Like, they were,  yeah, that, that one was, yeah. Another stupid thing, shipyard,  uh, you know, they're sitting around all day. I see shipyard workers sitting around playing beanbag toss for half the day in the shipyard. Um, those years they were playing. We would walk past and they're playing beanbag toss, you know, cornhole, whatever you want to call it. They're sitting on their phones.  Liberty call. They decide they're going to do maintenance and they secure the brow and like they have a crane lifted up. They're like, we're going to do maintenance on the brow now. We know what time y'all get off every day. We know that we should have done this all day. I mean, now you've got every cocksucker in the world standing in the hangar bay, like pissy, anxious to go. You've got an  Most of us lived on Portsmouth side, right? So we're in Newport News. So now you got the bridge. And tunnel, which is just like a 40 minute drive is three hours. Cause there's five, five merge lanes that hit all into one. You've got some jerk crashes. Now the tunnel secured. Did you have to deal with that? Did you have to commute? Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, Hampton roads is always the worst. The top. Like the top five is like worst traffic and it's nowhere near that in population. It's because yeah, the bridges tunnels. It's just all terrible. I lived not even the worst. Go ahead Not even the worst jason. I don't know if you ever did this But where I came from port smith, I would I would drive  and then my I would come up an entrance ramp Then my exit ramp was immediately over here and I had to cut across two entrance ramps to get to my exit ramp. It's this like the most dangerous drive ever. Norfolk in general, they've got all these HOV lanes. They got these lanes. They, these lanes are shut down. Now they got this now that merge, merge, merge. We had a bad snow  before they bought  snow pods. They actually had to like bring them down from like, um,  and, but we're central personnel,  right? So trying to get through these roads, okay. Can't get through like. Forget like plowing or anything actually on the base, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah all the time and you know  I finally get there and I'm like trucking through and I finally get a call They're like, all right, we decided it was too dangerous for people to come in. So the douche sticks are just gonna stay So are you through the gate yet? Absolutely not  I am stuck and I'll see you guys tomorrow  Bye  Hey, we're actually going to come into work today. I started drinking already. I can't come into work. I already started drinking. I taken medication that impairs my ability to drive.  You know, they used to say that all the time. It was like. As soon as it's after hours, I already started drinking. I can't come back and nope, nope, I can't, I am wasted.  Yeah, that was, well, the art that their answer was just, just to hold us for, you know, ever, but it was really frustrating. So when I got recalled,  so this is a whole mess story. That's the frustrating part right there. You got recalled, reactivated from, from, you know, I'm supposed to be getting out. So they told everybody back in May, right? So surge main is where I ended up, right? There's no nukes in the reserves. Now I also, that's the other reason I missed chief was, so if I was going to ever make one in the reserves, it was going to be my first year where I had all of my active duty stuff, but they brought me into the reserves as a nuke.  And they couldn't issue me an exam. So I missed my exam that cycle. So, um, that was the start of my reserve experience and you would have leveled up off of it, right? Miss Jason,  you already ranked up once off of an exam. You're so smart. My, my buddy, uh, he had made chief right before he got out, but hadn't actually like gone through season, um, or anything, so he just like sent that letter in to the board. So he, he made chief as soon as he went. Well, the exams aren't so special anymore. Like, um, non nuke side, at least. Every single conventional on my shit, from what I heard when I left, they all pat like the, and for a con. And, uh, my buddy, he, he was a nuke. He got a 2, 4, 9, or he was 0.01 off on, on his like, oh yeah, prototype exam. And they were like, you wanna stay a nuke? And he was like, hell no, I don't wanna be a nuke,  like f all this. So he's a conventional or just a regular electrician now. And it, it sucks 'cause they're like, oh, you're a nuke. You should know this. But he was like a dummy nuke, like. When I say his prototype experience was, I wasn't even on the same crew as him. I stayed four hours late. I did 16 hour days. I got in trouble for, I got counseled for that, but I would stay  partner up with him. He wouldn't say a word for any of the checkouts. I just did everything. Uh, so when it came to the exam, he knew crap. He knew nothing, but you know,  he, he, he called me recently. The X, the, the rank up rate  for the, the E4 E5 exam for regular electricians, a hundred.  And 10 percent plus or minus five or something like that. Everyone ranked up and people who didn't rank up and had a low score ranked up. And then homewrecker called me, Mr. Whiskey on our ship that we just left, like conventional mechanics,  95 percent of them all just hit it off the exam. Like they just started ranking everyone up because guess what? The retention crisis is to the point that, you know, there's no one left. And it was so funny. I remember being on my ship. And we want to award for best retention.  I knew more people getting out. Like the retention rate was 95 percent leaving 5 percent staying. I was like, if we're the best in the fleet, I'd hate to see the worst. When I tell you everyone on mill on restriction was, yeah, we smoked weed to get out of the military because it was so bad when I left, they were, there was a rumor. They were changing the no drug tolerance policy to the CO's discretion, whether you get masked or not, because we were losing so many people to, to weed, they, it was a general discharge, upgraded honorable if you didn't get anything. I mean, that's a new way to get out of the military. And there's pushes for this.  Hey, we want read weed is legal in some states So why can't it be a you know after hours activity just like alcohol is you know, and I don't know I know the navy did already I saw um As far as like coming in like you can be positive and get sent to boot camp now All right, because you you also by the time you get there guess what? You know, I davy jones locker my satirical news channel with ms. Whitney on my show Guess what, Jason? You no longer need a GED, you no longer need a high school diploma, as long as you get a 50 on the ASVAB. And I told Ms. Whitney on my show, I said, guess what? You don't need a 50. You need a 30 with a waiver. That's it. Yeah, it's 30 and a waiver. Remember, this is a percentile based score, okay? Even our exams are percentile based. Hey, not everyone knows that, Jason. I had an army guy come on my show. He said he got 118 on the ASVAB, okay? He said he could have been a nuclear operator. Yeah.  Yeah, that doesn't worry me so much. He was  118 percent better than anyone who ever took the exam, I guess. I was explaining this to my daughter and telling her like, Oh, you wrecked the curve. And she's like, what does that mean? And I'm like, well, if you have a percentile set, Behind the curve, on the curve. Now you're talking prototype terms.  Exactly, right? You just, you set, set the curve. Yeah,  you know, I, yeah, I have my, my, my dinkus hook, uh, shirt upstairs. For a while on the, on the four, there was a thing that you weren't allowed to call people dink. They got on that. I called everyone dink dummies, dinkers. We had this term, banana dancers. I don't know if you know what that stands for.  Have you heard of that one? No, no, I'm afraid yet intrigued. Uh, to find out. So, I'll say, I don't curse. Um, but I'll recite this.  Um, I think, I don't remember.  I, I, like I said, I don't curse, so I never said it, but my, my buddy came on the show once. I think he said it stands for  bitch ass nub ass nub ass dink ass nub. Can't even read  nub. We weren't allowed to say, dude, I hated being people using the word nub. I mean, they'd be like, you're a nub. And this would be people who got to the ship like two weeks before us, like, shut up. Like actually, like it was so stupid. Yeah, don't, don't, don't do that. You're, you, you are a  fellow nub. You're qa  uh, qualified. And that's it, buddy. All right. Like, shut up all you know. Triple, you're a 3M qualified. All right, I got all those done in a single day. That happens on, yeah, you go into your first training and they're like, give me these papers and then you come back and you leave your first training and, oh good, now you can go say phone watch,  right? Oh, oh, okay. Yeah. Banana Dan is  bitch ass, nub ass, um,  dink ass nub. And then if it's, if you're a banana dancer, the last part is can't even read. That's what it is. Can't even read. But, um, it's funny, my, my wife will use the term nub, uh, not to her, uh, you know, individual, but in conversation we're like, oh, that's funny. I love it. We got, um, when you went to prototype, did they have a sandwich shop there?  The subway? It wasn't a subway, well now it's called Blimpes and it says America's number one sub shop or something. Uh, it's stupid. It's some off-brand thing there.  Gli run by,  I mean, yeah, no, I call it, it was just subway. You know why I called it dinky? Look at all these dink dummies eating instead of qualifying dinky. I, I used to call it dinky. It's so funny, we had a guy get hurt down there because like the chair that he was sitting on, like, it's like on a metal pole, like broke. So like fucking. It didn't like impale him, but like, you know, ripped up the backside of him or whatever. So yeah, it was, uh, I'm not surprised to hear that it's no longer a subway. Um, yeah, it's quite, I'm sure that it made it so much better now, but Wow. No, they have, um, it was cool when, first off, they had the good when, so you didn't go to the refueling complex, AKA, the galley on base. 'cause you had a home.  Yeah, yeah, only, only every once in a while, like a handful of times I ever went there with the buddies. You didn't get the, so you don't have the funny galley stories like I have, but they're, they're goodwill workers now. They're like, um, they're all disabled. And some of them are really disabled. And, uh, it leads to some funny stories. They fight with each other. There's a hierarchy of most disabled to least disabled. And the least disabled will fight with each other. And then the most disabled will show up and give commands, not in English, none of them like actually speak words, but it's funny, you know, those same goodwill workers worked at the new grill and um, prototype, and they were just, oh man, but one of them was cool, uh, they were gonna throw out all the cookies for the week at Dinkies, and they gave us all the cookies for free or whatever, and I was like, awesome, but, Yeah, we had ones, the one guy had a glass eye and it fell out and he was chasing it around the galley. You know, we had, um,  I want to sit down with these two complete idiots. I'm talking about rolled back like five times. Like they just, I don't know. They got waivers to even be a nuke because their scores were so low. And I'm like, dude, I think there's a standard for a reason. I, they were great people. Don't get me wrong, but they were actually like. They didn't want to be news, like they edited it. The pipeline,  the pipeline could be restructured better. has plenty of problems. Oh, gosh. Well, first off, the pipeline is different when you went through.  Because  you're from the generation we call red text. Right.  When I went through the pipeline, we had actual instructors teach with us and work with us all day. There was no PowerPoints before us. It was a PowerPoint and, uh, anything in red you would write down. Were you part of the red text generation? No, no. I, we had instructors, like, did, did they, they heavily interact with you or they just had like a PowerPoint on  in, in prototype.  No, in like, A School, PowerSchool. Well, A School, PowerSchool, every class had an instructor, and Interesting. Yeah, absolutely. Um,  but God, if they didn't have instructors for this stuff, then They, they didn't. What the hell? So, they used to teach us about how there was, um, red text, and maybe they tried it in between you and I. But there was a phase at one point in New School where  An instructor would just put on a PowerPoint and click through it, and anything that was in red text, he would write down. Like, those were the important points. That sounds like an individual who's,  uh, too lazy to stomp on the floor. No, they tried it across the whole board, and you know, um, They said it was, it was, it was bad. It was bad, trust me. It was boring. You're not teaching anybody. Yeah, you gotta be able to ask questions Oh, but anyway, yeah, I was in the galley with these dummies and I went to sit down And my chocolate milk like fell off and spill all over the floor and one of the disabled ladies came over and I don't mean to be disrespectful disabled people like they're they're amazing, but She comes over. She's like  She didn't speak english. So she just starts like screaming at us like pointing at the floor  And I was like, I don't know what to do Because i'm trying to communicate with her like i'll clean it up or whatever but she's just like You Having a tantrum. And so we just walk away and then she gets like one of the other ones. But one of the ones I always tell is, you know, I would, I have a blue eyes, white dragon, ultimate Yu Gi Oh t shirt. And I'm just walking through the galley and I'm not, I don't even realize I'm wearing it, right. I'm just wearing it.  I'm like, yeah, let me get the eggs, you know, they're they're all death. So you have to yell You're like the eggs no, and i've had them I think some of them are smarter than they they act they act disabled because i'll be like No, I don't want any eggs and they're like looking at me like  no eggs And they're just dumping eggs on my plate. Like I know I know you understand me you understand a revenge Yeah, yeah, and i'm walking through and this one guy just starts yelling  dark magician dark magician And i'm like, he just starts yelling at me. I'm like what the hell is going on? like I didn't realize I'm wearing a Blue Eyes White Dragons shirt and that fights the Dark Magician in Yu Gi Oh, which I didn't know they had TV, I didn't know they watched Yu Gi Oh, and he just keeps yelling that and I'm like,  can I get some of the, like, carrots or something? You know, like,  it was hilarious. We've had some great stories. We had a, we had a conflict with a chief, Big Red and I, because we were in the galley line and cockroaches crawled across the eggs and we complained to the chief and chief was like,  we're in the South. There are bugs everywhere. We can't get rid of bugs in the South. It's impossible. Just deal with it. And Big Red's from, like, the woods of Georgia. He's like, look, look, Chief. I worked in a restaurant. We ain't never have no bugs on the food, all right? It has nothing to do with the South. And this chief who's not from the south, you know, is trying to talk.  But yeah, luckily you had that BAS, you know, yeah, that's right. And uh, so I got to you know, eat at home most of the time. So that's good.  Yeah, it was uh, Yeah, I mean, that's what I think would help make the the group that we had so tight knit Is that so I had the base housing so everybody would go over to the base housing. Um,  so my wife  Random story, uh, my wife loves Christmas, right? And so is, uh, It's most wives. It's most wives. It's like a thing. Yeah,  it is. She's a little crazy on it. Um, but, so it was our first Christmas, and like, I refused, like, to let Christmas stuff come up until after Thanksgiving. So like, day after Thanksgiving, tree up, right? Yeah, I respect that. We're,  we have no money. We don't have, you know, normal things. So she goes and they had like this sale for like garlands. She wanted me to put up this garland. Well, we don't, don't have a ladder.  I'm not to that point in my life yet, right? So I had like this outdoor bar set we got for our, our, uh,  our wedding,  right? One of those real flimsy ones. And I'm up there like trying to go behind the tree and I just eat it like full out, just fly off the thing into the tree tree comes down, I break an ornament and for like three weeks, she's still mad at me. She admits she shouldn't be mad at me, but she's still mad at me. All right. Regardless, you can't help. That's how it works. Gentlemen, gentlemen, take notes, take notes. 100%. So she's in the Air National Guard. So she had to go off for her weekend. And, uh, uh, I won't forget cause this was a Manny Pacquiao fight and my buddies came over and we started drinking and we're like, I know what we'll do. We'll just make the whole roof a big American flag. Alright, I don't like this. Hell yeah. So, we, we, we pull a truck up, we put that same flimsy chair, okay, and then we get on to the roof. And, um,  we do it and we, of course we give like the ETs like, all right, you figure out, we didn't want to like, like how many white bulbs if we need to swap out to get us to like 50 stars. I think we had like 13 stars when we were done. There's some videos of dancing on the roof. 13 colonies. Yes, you know. Make it work. So. Yeah, so when she got back, she's like, what the hell did you do? We, we almost made it to the 4th of July. Um, like we, we turned them on on Memorial Day. I kept getting nasty grams from, uh, base housing and I'm like, it's an American flag.  I'm a service member. You can't tell me to lay down. And then like on July 1st, they're like, you have until tomorrow to take it down or we're going to your command. And I'm like, okay, there's. Absolutely no good positive coming from this if they take it to my command. So I yeah I came to the band  Yeah, so As we wrap things up here jason What would be your so the new community is dying out really badly. Uh, they're suffering pretty badly What can you be a beacon of light for them in any way? You know give them any advice for the nukes who are especially for the ones who start re enlisted I mean, what is your message for them?  First and foremost, and I'm not going to be able to pull it out very well, but there is A non profit, uh, there's some rebranding of Stop Soldier Suicide. Um, it's called go roger. org. Okay. I tell every service member  about this, spread the word as leaders. Uh,  it is a complete non profit. It does not report to the DOD. It does not report to the VA. It is a completely anonymous  Hotline for veterans and particularly active duty service members. All right, you know, who are like nukes or in you know flight status or you know, especially those career paths where  I've there's a recorded tangent on LinkedIn of  me going off on how We as leaders in the new community are culpable for non combat deaths because of how we've structured our bonuses and the lack of mental health resources. Go roger. org is an entirely safe resource to go to. If you, one would hope that you would feel comfortable enough to be able to bring this up to your command. I have seen commands where these issues have been brought up. They've been dealt with and. You know, people have been able to return. Um, you know, I've seen it go the other way as well, but at the end of the day, you got to get help. Um, that's the biggest thing. We just had a loss here in local community. Um, you know, the, there was a local air squadron. We have right pat here near Dayton. Um, where everybody got basically two day notice, have Thanksgiving and Christmas. You're. Going over to sit by Israel, right?  And, uh, one of the majors, or excuse me, um, yeah, it was a, uh, a major who, um, you know, so came to his demons and, like, it was a great example for my kids because I talk about how all these people, you know, were affected and then let them know that that's how that happened, so, um, there are definitely resources out there. Do not,  do not take any, uh, any signs, jokes, uh,  It's hard in the new community not to, right? Because we have a dark sense of humor and those jokes will be there, but particularly as leaders, I don't know if they still use the term, but for a while there was intrusive leadership, know your people, um, I spoke on stage about this recently,  get them the help they need, right? The, it's their, the healthcare system sucks in the civilian world. Tricare might be a pain in the ass. Um, you know, but that was one of the biggest things coming out is making sure that. You have the right resources. You can get the right resources through the VA when you get out and while you're in,  there is,  there are resources for you and if you need help, get help. All right. Yeah.  No,  the misery of the new community is not worth your life. It's that simple. Okay. Keeping your job and keeping your bonus. Okay. Is not worth it. All right. Otherwise you won't be so much. Um, so I don't want to leave on a sour note, but that is, that is the most important thing that I can depart on anybody active duty is that there is a lifeline out there. Um, and please take it.  Yeah. And like I always say on the show, BB checking in on each other, you know, because Some of the nukes that came to me with their issues after I got out were  nukes who were very successful, who you would have never guessed there was anything wrong with them. And you know, and  doing well on all your exams and getting all the maintenance done and always smiling is, is not code for I'm doing great. You know, oftentimes it's that, that's the, I'm doing really bad, you know, but they're trying to set an example. Yep. There's that, there's that in, and, and when you get out you gotta watch yourself as well. Right. You know? Oh yeah. I myself have gone through, uh, a number of issues. 'cause at first you get out and you're like, okay, I'm never gonna have as stressful or time consuming a job as this again. And you were a hundred percent.  However,  that stress that's, that you, that you incurred, okay, doesn't mean that it may not have residual effects later. Um, and you have to come to terms with that. And then sometimes just,  You know, you just got to get through the day. Um, you know, that's what I've been doing the last few months, you know, um, you know, coming through abnormal medical, you know, issues. And, but you just, you got to come through every single day. There's resources for them. There's  really, once you get out, the world is your oyster. Whether you get out at  three years, whether you get out at 30 years, you have an intellect, a skill set that  First off, you can go to any of the standard places, AWS, and you're going to do a great job. Um,  don't be, if you,  I was very fortunate that I ended up at GE and I quickly moved into a supervisory position. Because I made the mistake thinking that I needed to be a civilian engineer before I took a leadership role. Uh, I found out civilian,  Engineering entirely different than ours. You would hope that, you know, GE Aviation would have, like, all the right drawings and the same level of standards. Not so much. Um, if you had drawings, there were six copies of them from 1950, and you didn't know which one was real. Um, you know, and I found out the hard way, you know, for that. Very fortunate to have a good community there at GE that helped me transition into a role that I was, you know, going to be more effective at because I was great in maintenance and troubleshooting in the service. But what I didn't realize is that I'm super dependent on the drawings. Right. I'm the guy that you would come to like, we can't figure out this. I go through be like, okay, go look here, here, here, here. Right. That's just, that's where my mind was effective. Um, and without those tools, I found out I was not near as good a troubleshooter as I used to be  that I would be. Yeah. So, um,  but yeah, just stay with the community, take care of each other. That that's my, my beacon of hope. Uh,  embrace the suck. It does get better.  You know, looking back at it, um, it's easy to say that the further you get away from it. Um, but yeah, you, you appreciate more the further you get away from it, the impact that you made  because it's hard to make that type of impact  outside the service. You got to work  extra hard. You have to be, um, very diligent about trying to make that impact. So, um,  hang in there, share your stories and call if you need for help. That's that's that's my that's my leave, you know, I'll say this I manage and not talking about work stuff But even through all of this at this point, you know, i'm managing six separate startup companies Um, you know, we do work with the world bank Um, so it doesn't have to be the normal  Track either so if you don't want to do the the standard go work at a power plant or the data center Center right you have  you have the intelligence and quite frankly you have the Surprise believe it or not you actually have the social skills right to be effective leaders in the civilian sector Well, I'm gonna say this  the work ethic Because I, you know, between jobs before I worked at the acid plant, I went and worked at a restaurant. I'll tell you even the laziest nuke when you're working in a civilian world with 14 year old girls. 16 year old girls who love Tik TOK all day. Even young men who just smoke and joke around.  The laziest military members still had their worth at work. I think is so much higher than that. Yes. Or most civilians, like, trust me, like you said, the social skills surprise me. You'll be surprised. Even, even nukes, even military members, even though you've been so like. Clicky in a way, right? Because you've been on the ship or this command, right?  It's, it's no different out there and, and, and you'll find out, you know, in the nuke world, it's hard to feel smart because there are people in the nuke world I've met who For everything they look at a manual, got it memorized in seconds. Like they're,  you're continually comparing yourself to the best of the best, you know? And you know, nukes are like, dude, we're not the best of the best. Like this guy, trust me, you're going to get out there and realize that I put it like when, when,  if you're a fish in a tank and then you get put in a different tank, you're going to see, you know, what you're comparing yourself to. There's so much more out there. So,  you know, you really are a level up. When you get out. But yeah, just go ahead. Yeah. I mean, the naval nuclear power program is the most academically challenging.  Military program  in the United States and I would argue in the world currently and therefore would be human history at this point So yeah, yeah, and you're grading yourself on a very strong curve while you're there when you come out that You have a whole lot of other individuals not on that curve, and that doesn't mean anything less for them. But you have the tools and the set to write your ticket if you're willing to ask for help.  And ladies and gentlemen, if you're curious more about Mr. Jason, we're going to have all his stuff in the description for this show. So you can find the links to his LinkedIn and other stuff. But Jason, the most important part of this whole conversation, I have a request for you. Before we leave,  can you give me a hearty nuke power?  A hearty nuke power. I don't know if they yelled that back in, back in your day, but, um, at PT, you know, we will yell new  power.  Oh God. We would have, you know, who, yeah, rudder switch swoosh and all that. So. I would much rather do nuke power than hoo yah, okay? Oh, I love the hoo yah, but I'll tell you, Jason, one funny story real quick here. We're at the all hands call in the hangar, hangar bay. And, you know, they're calling on each division. You know, aviation. Oh, you know, they do their stuff. Reactors all whispering to each other. We want to show how overworked we are. We want to show how depressed we are. No one say a word.  So he goes reactor and it's just dead silent and I just yell nuke tower and everyone turned and looked at me just the hatred  I don't care I mean chief can talk to me if he wants was he at the end of the day if chief wants to come talk to me I'll have the captain come talk about that that ship spirit and that enthusiasm that he was asking for so  Can, can you leave us with a hardy nuke power? That's all I asked. Yeah. Nuke power. There you go. That was pretty good. Yeah. Uh, wonderful. Uh, thank you so much for having me on. Uh, wonderful program and, uh, I look forward to getting, uh, back in touch again. Sailing through the ocean blue  nuclear  reactors crew got in the,  the Stars is our guide.  The waves we.  Jokes and laughter fill the air On this voyage we have to share Working together, side by side As one family we will abide  In the heart of the ship, we reside  Nuclear operators with pride Powering the vessel,  with every stride  Our mission, the source of great pride

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