Flight of the Blue Falcon

When new cadets arrive at West Point they get their own version of basic training, CBT, or "Cadet Basic Training" -- better known as "Beast" -- where not only are there new cadets, but cadre who are slightly older cadets. I know having kids two or three years older than you yelling at you doesn't compare to the fear a seasoned drill sergeant can inflict, but it was harrowing enough to understand sometimes the best way to get through more challenging times in life is to maintain a low profile.

I quickly understood I was never going to maintain a low profile. We all wore the same uniforms, but being short, female and brown meant I was still going to stand out. On top of that, the Beast companies were organized into four platoons. For every formation, the entire Beast Regiment stood on the Apron, which spanned the parade field ("The Plain"). Because there were so few women, we were usually placed in the front, and beacuse of our height, we generally wound up at the end of the squad. My first squad leader, Cadet Coll was a junior (AKA, "cow"), and petite, fit, and loud. She wasn't exactly scary, but she also made sure our squad didn't slack off.

Being a cadet required you to understand military basics. We went to the range to fire M-16s, we spent a week sleeping outdoors, we collectively learned the basics of land navigation and how to maintain our uniforms. West Point adds the twist of wearing traditional gray wool uniforms, eating in a mess hall designed to hold 4,000 people at once, and living in the barracks with strict rules about accountability. You were an adult, but you couldn't keep a car on post until you were a senior. The running joke was that you gave up your rights and slowly earned them back as "privileges." And, there were plenty of quirks that came along with this life.

Instead of going through an assembly line style food line with lunch trays, we sat in the Mess Hall with waiters who served us. The tables sat ten, with the squad leader at the head, as the "table commandant." Contrary to the widely accepted protocol that leaders ate last, the table commandants served themselves first. West Point embodies a situation where "this is tradition and how we've always done it" sometimes collided with principles of competent leadership, leaving us with a place that was part Army, part boarding school with a large helping of its very specific brand of quirk.

The three new cadets at the far end of the table also had roles, there was a hot beverage corporal, a cold beverage corporal, and directly opposite of the table commandant was the most stressful postion of all, the gunner. We rotated positions at every meal so everyone got their turn. The biggest task was presenting dessert to the table commandant, and often dessert arrived in the form of a cake that needed to be cut.

I had a practice run at this after being accepted to West Point but before I arrived. The parents club in Northern California held a luncheon for all of the cadet candidates who were planning to attend. Part of it included an uncut cake as dessert. I was assigned to cut the cake, and in this case, there would be seven slices. I did the best I could and everyone at the table heartily agreed that I had done a pretty good job at eyeballing and cutting seven nearly even slices. The trick was, once you arrived at West Point, even if you did do a good job cutting the cake, you were going to hear about every error, every sloppy crumb that lay bare on the icing, every way you had butchered this cake in such a way that it was the equivalent of killing your whole platoon.

When my turn came around to be gunner, there was no cake for dessert, but in an odd twist of fate, there was cornbread in a round tin. So close! I picked up the tin and held it at my left shoulder and recited my line. "Ma'am, the side for this meal is cornbread. Would anyone not care for cornbread, ma'am!" We announced it this way so anyone wishing to be exempt could raise a hand, or this being Beast, a "paw" to spare themselves from having a slide while also letting the gunner know how many pieces to cut. No one raised their hand. I quickly got to slicing.

I felt confident. This was an even number. If I could manage seven slices, sure I could do this. I raised the tin again. "Ma'am! The cornbread has been cut, the cornbread to Cadet Coll for inspection, please!" "Come on down, Richards," she called from the end of the table. I placed my napkin on the table, scotted my chair back, stood at attention, picked up the tin from the table and quickly walked it down to my squad leader for inspection. When her eyes bugged out I realized something was very wrong.

"Richards, I need you to count the number of slices you cut."

I counted once, and then twice. There were ten people at the table, and everyone wanted cornread. In my haste and overconfidence I had cut eight slices.

"How many slices, Richards?"

"Ma'am, there are eight slices."

"And how many people are in our squad?"

"Ma'am, there are ten people in our squad."

"Do you know what you just did, Richards? You dicked all over your classmates. You're a buddy dick."

I didn't know any of these terms, but I now understand this was the sanitized version of calling someone a "buddy fucker," or if you wanted to get fancy, a "blue falcon." It wasn't true, but this was not the time to plead my case.

Cadet Coll continued. "I need you to choose two squadmates who will not get cornbread, and you can't choose yourself."

I chose two squadmates who would not get cornbread, and I felt horrible for the remainder of the meal. It's an incident that's stayed with me, not because anyone in my squad bought into the accusation, but because the accusation didn't fit. I cut the wrong number of slices because I was in a rush, not because I was trying to screw anyone out of their fair share of cornbread. Plenty of us have experienced the consequence of dealing with a blue falcon. It happened to me last week at work.

On Monday I arrived at work with my access card, which serves as the magic key to opening the automated gates to my work site, to being able to access my computer, and getting into my email account. I could do the first two things, but quickly discovered my email was disabled. This meant I couldn't see meetings or any recent communication.

I quickly made it known, "Hey, I'm not blowing anyone off, I just can't get into my email." Everything else seemed to be working but apparently my access card was flagged because the expiration date was over a year away, while the contract I support expires at the end of September. This sent me on path to re-apply, get a new card and see if that fixed the issue. In the meantime, no email or calendar access -- not the worst thing in the world.

On Wednesday I went into the conference room to refill my 40 ounce Stanley knock off (thanks, Aldi), and the guy responsible for updating my access card paperwork, was sitting at the head of the table. I considered asking if this was a meeting I needed to attend but decided to get my water and return to my office. Well, when you get that kind of inkling, you're better off just asking the question. Remember, I couldn't check my calendar. As luck would have it, yes, there was a meeting, and the guy and I were on the project together -- a team effort -- yet, he had said nothing. I know his nature. I know he'll leave your slide out of a briefing if you failed to update it for the weekly staff meeting. We are adults and we do this weekly, so if you miss, it really is on you, but everyone has an off day on occasion. There is no reason to take advantage of every opportunity to exhibit blue falcon behavior.

When my nearly 50 year old brain jogged its memory later, I recalled that yes, there was a kickoff meeting Wednesday, and I'd missed it. In an effort to be proactive, I stopped by his office and said, "I forgot there was a project meeting. I don't have access to my calendar."

He looked up, "Oh! I forgot about that."

Of course he did. Given the nature of our jobs, I didn't have the levereage to make a bigger stink; there would be no comeuppance from this slight. Work environments often tout the importance of teamwork, sharing information, and setting up each other for success, yet we all know there's that one person, that bad agent. On Friday I had to take a one hour detour to lovely and scenic Pennsylvania to get a new access card. Why not get one close to my work site? Because that location does not allow walk ins, and appointments were booked for over a month. The lady updating my card realized my card still had a lot of time left on it, and I had to explain my predicament. "Oh," she said, "well, whoever had to submit this form put the wrong expiration date on it."

And who could that be? If you guessed a certain aforementioned blue falcon, you'd be right.

I don't understand people who operate this way. It would have been a minor inconvenience to give me a heads up. If I had been sitting there and he was about to miss the meeting, I would have said something. And there's that hard lesson we all learn at some point in life: You can't expect you from other people.