3MI Club: You Are Not Your Spot Check Score

U.S. 7TH FLEET AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY

11.11.2017

Story by Petty Officer 3rd Class Eduardo T Otero  

USS RONALD REAGAN (CVN 76)   

“The first rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.”
The first rule of 3MI, apparently, is you talk about it…a lot.
3MI is finally around the corner. So here’s the last article in a series where we take a look at Fight Club, the cult novel by Chuck Palahniuk, to give you some tips and tricks for the upcoming inspection. I’m just as excited about this last one as you probably aren’t. And that’s fine. Really, it is. Don’t worry about me.
Last round is interacting with inspectors. So type up the list, make exactly 10 copies and don’t forget the original in the machine. Your very last batch of 3MI rules is ready for dissemination.
Final Round: Interacting with Inspectors
In chapter 12 of Fight Club, Tyler asks the narrator to type up the fight club rules and make exactly 10 copies. The narrator uses the copier at work to do this but forgets the original in the machine. His boss finds it, asks the narrator about it and proceeds to read the rules out loud – mocking him as he does. What follows is not your typical office space water cooler conversation.
Here’s today’s excerpt from the novel:
“I hear Tyler’s words come out of my boss, Mister Boss with his midlife spread and family photo on his desk and his dreams about early retirement and winters spent at a trailer-park hookup in some Arizona desert. My boss, with his extra-starched shirts and standing appointment for a haircut every Tuesday after lunch, he looks at me, and he says:
“‘I hope this isn’t yours.’
“I am Joe’s Blood-Boiling Rage.
“[…] My boss reads:
“‘The third rule of fight club is two men per fight.’
“Neither of us blinks.
“My boss reads:
“‘One fight at a time.’
“[…] What about it? He shakes the paper under my nose. What do I think, he asks, what should he do with an employee who spends company time in some little fantasy world. If I was in his shoes, what would I do?
“[…] What I would do, I say, is I’d be very careful who I talked to about this paper.
“My boss takes the paper out from under my nose.
“Go ahead, I say, read some more.
“No really, I say, it sounds fascinating. The work of a totally diseased mind.
“And I smile.
“[…] My boss just looks at me.
“Let me help you, I say.
“I say, the fourth rule of fight club is one fight at a time.
“My boss looks at the rules and then looks at me.
“I say, the fifth rule is no shoes, no shirts in the fight.
“My boss looks at the rules and looks at me.
“This is exhausting, and all of a sudden very, very boring.
“[…] No, I say, the paper’s not mine. I take the paper between two fingers and jerk it out of his hand. The edge must slice his thumb because his hand flies to his mouth, and he’s sucking hard, eyes wide open. I crumble the paper into a ball and toss it into the trash can next to my desk.
“Maybe, I say, you shouldn’t be bringing me every little piece of trash you pick up.”
Yeah…Don’t do that to your 3MI inspector – or your Chief, or anyone else really. Jerk!
According to resident Project Mayhem Maintenance expert, Fire Controlman 1st Class Carlos Aruz, the following are the key rules when interacting with inspectors during a spot check:
Rules of 3MI Club (Interacting with Inspectors):
#1: Be courteous
In Fight Club, if you were a member of Project Mayhem and got arrested, you were off the team. Same kind of thing goes for 3MI. If you end up having to stand in front of security dispatch for whatever reason halfway through the inspection, you’re done. When interacting with the inspectors, don’t argue with them when they point out something you missed or did wrong. Don’t snatch papers out of their hand and give them paper cuts. Don’t threaten them with being a potentially unhinged psychopath. That way, you have a chance of passing your inspection and you don’t get swept up in that revolutionary bread and water diet fad that 0 in 5 doctors recommend. Kill two stones with one bird.
#2: Be knowledgeable
You should be fine in this area when it comes to your maintenance; you were the one doing it anyway. That being said, it doesn’t hurt to check out a few references before the inspection. SKED helps a lot on this one; it has your maintenance requirement cards (MRC), standard PMS material identification guide (SPMIG), related maintenances, etc. Your work center supervisor should be able to help out too. Unless, of course, you once took an MRC with two fingers and jerked it out of his hand and sliced his thumb with the edge and crumbled it up into a ball and tossed it into the burns bag next to your workstation. These things happen. In that case, stick to SKED.
#3: Have the right mentality
I know round 4 was a bit adversarial – what with the “inspectors are from Venus and maintenance people are from Mars” and all. The truth is that as much fun as it might be to think about this whole thing as a tug of war, inspectors are not really out to get us; they just want to make sure we’re not screwing up our maintenance. So sure, when the inspection comes around, take charge, show him or her who’s boss, expect random tests and questions, but keep the right mentality throughout. The inspector is not there to fail you.
#4: Be confident
Faking it till you make it is a thing. In the case of 3MI, you don’t even have to do the faking part. Inspectors will feel at ease if you show them you know what’s going on. Weirdly enough, the best way to not get asked the tough questions is to seem like you know the answers, and odds are you probably do anyway. If you were waiting on some sort of dating advice based on my little tease in round 4, my bad. Tyler would be your go-to guy for that one. Thanks for being a faithful reader, though.
#5: Be calm
If you noticed how I screwed up in the stuff I wrote for rule #1, you’re probably ready for 3MI with your slightly above abysmal attention to detail and working knowledge of idioms in the English language. On the other hand, if you thought there was nothing off about the idea of murdering inanimate objects with some avian creature, we should totally hang out sometime. My point is people make mistakes and the world doesn’t necessarily end (most times). If you prepped as much as you could for your inspection, the only thing left to do is chill out. Freaking out and overthinking will only hurt at this point, and again, if things don’t go as planned, you can take it as an opportunity to do better next time. It’s like the saying goes: “No use crying over the horse that spilled your milk when you got back on it.”
And there you have it. Simple. To the point. Marla Singer-proof. Now you know all the rules for kicking butt during 3MI. So go out there, do your best, celebrate your successes and learn from your failures – it’s all part of life.
As a last bonus rule (cause I’m feeling all generous and stuff, and this one’s useful in life in general as much as it is for 3MI, in my opinion) here’s a quote from the narrator of Fight Club where he sheds some unusually heart-warming insight on the human condition:
“[…] There will be mistakes, and maybe the point is not to forget the rest of yourself if one little part might go bad.”
You are not your qualifications. You are not your maintenance assignments. You are not your spot check score.
“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.”
I’m Joe’s Final Bow.

• Date Taken: 11.11.2017
• Date Posted: 12.29.2017 20:15
• Story ID: 260875
• Location: U.S. 7TH FLEET AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY