Engineering: My leadership? (1 of 3)

Disclaimer: Rates and names have been changed. The rank of the one named “Fitzgerald” is maintained as it pertains to my reporting.

There’s a lead up to this post before I get to the meat and potatoes.

Some time ago I received a friend request on Facebook from a woman on our ship. She was a topsider who was universally known to be cheating on her husband with one of our first class Engineers, GSE1 Fitzgerald. GSE1 was also married (to someone else).

Their relationship was well known all over the ship. They’re were always together during port visits, and on my last deployment she spent most of her free time in CCS when Fitzgerald was on watch, ostensibly to learn the engineering portion of her ESWS.

It took me one month of study to get my ESWS. And that was without spending hours in one place to learn a portion of it. She did not need 7 months to learn the Engineering part… yet you could always find her in CCS, sitting near GSE1 giggling and telling the lower ranking Engineers to get back to work. But I digress.

She was well aware that I hated Fitzgerald, and disliked her very much for cheating on her spouse. So when I received that friend request I snorted and immediately hit the ‘Not now’ button. If there was a ‘Never’ key, that would have been my choice but eh, facebook.

I forgot all about it.

Fast forward some months, and I now have a new friend request.

From Fitzgerald.

My mouth fell open. I am amazed this dude would ever think I would want to talk to him, be associated with him, accept something even as trivial as a friend request on Facebook from him. The memories all came back, and I was reminded allllll about Petty Officer Scumbag Fitzgerald.

Look back tomorrow for more.