Some Ways For Old Salts to Simulate Being in the Navy

1. Lock all friends and family outside. Your only means of communication should be with letters that your neighbours have held for at least three weeks, discarding two of five.

2. Surround yourself with 200 people that you don't really know or like: people who smoke, snore like Mack trucks going uphill, and use foul language like a child uses sugar on cereal.

3. Unplug all radios and TVs to completely cut yourself off from the outside world. Have a neighbour bring you a Time, Newsweek, or Proceedings from five years ago to keep you abreast of current events.

4. Monitor all home appliances hourly, recording all vital information (ie: plugged in, lights come on when doors open, etc)

5. Do not flush the toilet for five days to simulate the smell of 40 people using the same commode.

6. Lock the bathroom twice a day for a four hour period.

7. Wear only military uniforms. Even though nobody cares, clean and press one dress uniform and wear it for 20 minutes.

8. Cut your hair weekly, making it shorter each time, until you look bald or look like you lost a fight with a demented sheep.

9. Work in 19-hour cycles, sleeping only four hours at a time, to ensure that your body does not know or even care if it is day or night.

10. Listen to your favourite CD 6 times a day for two weeks, then play music that causes acute nausea until you are glad to get back to your favourite CD.

11. Cut a twin mattress in half and enclose three sides of your bed. Add a roof that prevents you from sitting up (about 10 inches is a good distance) then place it on a platform that is four feet off the floor. Place a small dead animal under the bed to simulate the smell of your bunkmate's socks.

12. Set your alarm to go off at 10 minute intervals for the first hour of sleep to simulate the various times the watchstanders and nightcrew bump around and wake you up. Place your bed on a rocking table to ensure you are tossed around the remaining three hours. Make use of a custom clock that randomly simulates fire alarms, police sirens, helicopter crash alarms, and a new-wave rock band.

13. Have week old fruit and vegetables delivered to your garage and wait two weeks before eating them.

14. Prepare all meals blindfolded using all the spices you can grope for, or none at all. Remove the blindfold and eat everything in three minutes.

15. Periodically, shut off all power at the main circuit breaker and run around shouting "fire, fire, fire" and then restore power.

16. At least once a month, force the commode to overflow to simulate a 'black water system' boo-boo.

17. Buy a gas mask and smear it with rancid animal fat. Scrub the faceshield with steel wool until you can no longer see out of it. Wear this for two hours every fifth day especially when you are in the bathroom.

18. Study the owner's manual for all household appliances. Routinely take an appliance apart and put it back together.

19. Remove all plants, pictures and decorations. Paint everything gray, white, or the shade of hospital smocks.

20. Buy 50 cases of toilet paper and lock up all but two rolls. Ensure one of these two rolls is wet all the time.

21. Smash your forehead or shins with a hammer every two days to simulate collision injuries sustained onboard Navy ships.

22. When making sandwiches, leave the bread out for six days, or until it is hard and stale.

23. Every 10 weeks, simulate a visit to another port. Go directly to the city slums wearing your best clothes. Find the worst looking place, and ask for the most expensive beer that they carry. Drink as many as you can in four hours. Take a cab home taking the longest possible route. Tip the cabby after he charges you double because you dress funny and don't speak right.

24. Use fresh milk for only two days after each port visit.

25. Keep the bedroom thermostat at 2 deg C and use only a thin blanket for warmth.

26. Ensure that the water heater is connected to a device that provides water at a flow rate that varies from a fast drip to a weak trickle, with the temperature alternating rapidly from -2 to 95 deg C.

27. Use only spoons which hold a minimum of 1/2 cup at a time.

28. Repaint the interior of your home every month, whether it needs it or not.

29. Remind yourself every day: 'it's not just a job, it's an adventure!'

30. Mix kerosene with your water supply to simulate the de-sal plant on the ship picking up JP5 in the intake -- if a lit match thrown into your coffee pot doesn't ignite it, add more kerosene.

31. Stand outside at attention at dawn and have the poorest reader you know read the morning paper outloud. Be sure to have him skip over anything pertinent.

32. Every four hours, check the fluid level in your car's radiator. Check the tire pressure and replace air lost from excessive pressure checks. Be sure to place red tag on ignition stating "DANGER: DO NOT OPERATE" while you perform these checks. Inform your neighbor as to the results of these checks, have him tell you to repeat the checks because he did not see you perform them.

33. Paint your house grey (exterior) include windows except for rooms you do not frequent, paint your car grey, paint your driveway a different shade of grey.

34. Wait outside your dining area as a family member eats a meal, then have that person serve you a meal prepared several hours earlier.

35. Shut all blinds and doors at sunset.

36. Clean your house 'till there's absolutely not a speck of dust anywhere. Call on a stranger to come inspect your house. Ensure stranger sees dust that has collected in the time it took to find him. Stranger cannot leave until he finds irrational fault with your house/belongings.

37. Hang Christmas lights in June. When the neighbors ask, say, "deceptive lighting."

38. Hang white lights when relatives visit. When neighbors ask, say, "friendship lights."

....son of a gun, that sure brings back memories! I'm 6'6" and I just loved those water tight doors. I just never learned to jump & duck at the same time!!!!!

I liked the 100 reasons why mcdonalds is better than the Navy.


1) No McORSE

2) If you have to take a piss, you can go take a piss. No questions asked.

3) You'll never have to go port and starboard on the fryer.

4) Better pay.

5) The effing sun.

6) Air.

7) The boxes of food at McDonald's aren't stamped "Rejected by Hardee's" or "Not fit for human consumption".

8) The ability to call in sick.

9) The ability to quit.

10) McDonald's doesn't get their uniforms from the same company as the state penitentiary.

11) McDonald's doesn't deploy.

12) They have actual janitors.

13) No McDrills.

14) The grill breaks, you CALL someone to fix it.

15) At least your boss accepts that he's a clown.

16) No McResin Discharge.

17) No all night hydro on the fryer.

18) One word: overtime.

19) Every day is slider day!

20) At McDonald's, you will never, EVER, worry about being put in prison for ten years because you told your wife what the secret sauce is.

21) They pay you for training.

22) You'll never die a horrible, excruciating death from the crush depth implosion of a McDonald's.

23) No steam piping.

24) No time at McDonald's will you hear your boss give a thirty minute dissertation over the P.A. on the importance of being at the register 15 minutes early.

25) They won't ask you about Taco Bell operations on the advancement test.

26) You get to leave work EVERY day at the end.

27) McDonald's will eventually fire the really stupid employees.

28) two words: Happy Meals.

29) McDonald's doesn't look like a big black turd.

30) Grimace don't do Vulcan Death Watches.

31) McDonald's has a slide out back.

32) To do something at McDonald's, you look at the color coded chart, not OP umpty-squat, chapter whatever, reference 3, ACN B, rev 17.

33) If McDonald's catches fire, you LEAVE.

34) No McSmall Valve Maintenance.

35) No McCOB.

36) Leaving McDonald's in an emergency doesn't require a steinke hood and a lot of praying.

37) The coffee's better.

38) Someone else makes the water.

39) You don't have to live there to work there.

40) The only cones come from the ice cream machine.

41) McDonald's doesn't go into dry-dock. (again and again)

42) ALL the tests are multiple choice.

43) Their TV commercials are a lot cooler.

44) Three words: Sea Foam Green.

45) Stock in McDonald's is worth something. The Navy is a part of an operation that is 6 trillion dollars in the hole.

46) Special sauce isn't "hand made".

47) No McBilges to clean.

48) Opening for business doesn't require a full day of preparations and everyone to show up for a brief at 0230.

49) Three words: Stupid [censored] hats.

50) Personnel inspection requirements are written on the door. (No shirt, no shoes, no service)

51) At McDonald's, dislocating your shoulder is not considered getting the good deal.

52) McDonald's never had an accident that cause a person to be stuck to the ceiling impaled on a french fry. (i.e.. No Mc-SL1)

53) Because you deserve a break today.

54) Even the little Hamburglar is cooler than a goat.

55) Mayor McCheese doesn't wield a righteous thumb of indignation.

56) You can choose which McDonald's you want to work at.

57) If you want to buy your boss a beer, that's okay.

58) If you want to tell your boss to eff off and just die effing die, that's okay too.

59) There is no Uniform Code of McDonald's Justice to deal with.

60) The news comes from USA Today, not Ric Crawford, GS-12.

61) No one will rack you out at 2 in the morning to start the grill.

62) Chances of you getting called back after you get off work are pretty damn slim.

63) Putting the pickle on the hamburger doesn't require an QA-34 and a signature to be used against you in a court of law, should they want you.

64) The only guy in a silly yellow suit is Ronald.

65) How many McDonald's were sunk in W.W.II?

66) Fixing the register doesn't require a rubber room and a rope man.

67) Nothing on the menu contains the phrases, "Horse C%$@" or "baboon a$&".

68) At McDonald's, the riders would have to leave at closing time.

69) $2.99 is a meal price, not a daily wage at McDonald's.

70) You don't have to go single register operations if someone spills a Coke.

71) McDonald's doesn't require a 24 hour Shutdown Register Operator and McRoving Watch.

72) McDonald's doesn't call your house at 5:30 in the morning blaring some god-awful antiquated song about a bugler just to wake you up.

73) No McRadcon.

74) At McDonald's, your boss will never make you drive him around for two and a half months so he can spy on Wendy's.

75) You will never be locked in for 24 hours pretending to operate everything. (i.e. no McFastcruise)

75.5) You don't have to come in to work at 7:00 only to wait around for an hour waiting for your boss to tell you things you already know.

76) At McDonald's you will never hear, "Shake machine troubleshooting team, and all off watch drink makers, lay aft."

77) No McGMT.

78) At McDonald's you don't have to route a 1250 for a new stack of cups.

79) If you burn a hamburger they won't take away half a month's pay for two months and restrict you to the playground.

80) Knowledge of the material of construction and variable operating characteristics of the grill are not prerequisites for operation.

81) You don't have to take apart the shake machine once a quarter just because.

82) You don't have to share your bed with two coworkers.

83) You don't have to shave off your goatee when the district manager comes.

84) At McDonald's, when the toilet clogs, you don't rig pressurized air to the crapper.

85) You don't have to shut everything off and call in the last shift to start the grill.

86) Early in the morning, you don't cycle the drink machine on and off just for practice.

87) You scrub the floors because it's dirty, not because it's Wednesday.

88) There is almost always plenty of parking. If not, drive through.

89) Don't like what you got? Take it back.

90) You don't have to take a turbidity prior to putting a new catsup dispenser on service.

91) Failure of the warming oven door to open is not a panic causing event. It will also not preclude you from starting another fryer or pulling the fries out of the vat due to interlock.

92) No Mc-HPACs.

93) No one hates it so bad they refer to it simply as "The Mac".

94) No 16 hour days at McDonald's prototype making burgers in the middle of the desert for no one.

95) If you wipe up a catsup spill at McDonald's, you don't have to let it dry before you throw it away.

96) They won't secure one of the register operators to keep track of the people going into Burger King.

97) You don't have to have permission from the Manager, Assistant Manager, and Register Operator before going into the freezer.

98) At McDonald's, the toilet paper stays in the bathroom, not on the dinner table.

99) You don't have to completely undress to pinch a loaf.

100) ALL of the articles of the Constitution apply to you at McDonald's.

i remember doing a working party onloading food and found 5 boxes of steaks that were stamped REJECTED- WASHINGTON STATE PRISON. i had never seen so many cooks happy to find steaks to cook, they had to soak them in teriyaki sauce for 2 day to get rid of the nasty smell.

I almost wet my pants LOL

I've been there too! USS Dace SSN607...way back in the old days.
I am not sure I was on the boat yet, but we had fried chicken one day and I swear it was rabbit. No wings, no breasts. I raised rabbits as a kid, so I was quite familiar with the taste and texture....it was rabbit alright!

that is all true, living it right now got 3 months left of a 5 year stretch Uss George Washington (CVN 73) or as we like to call it (Cell Block 73) and (USS Auschwitz)

uss carl vinson cvn-70
uss halsey cg-23
uss california cgn-36
they are all the same. the best comand and the worst comand is the one you just left.