Adjacent Possibilities

Onboard a ship in the Far East, I found a sort of Edwardian fatalism that prescribed "stuckness" to one's career as a civilian mariner with the Military Sealift Command. I immediately attributed this mentality to the hardships of the COVID-19 era: restriction to the ship, delayed reliefs, no hazard pay. A large percentage of the workforce took retirement or other employment. Some, including myself, took the opportunity to promote into the power vacuum. Others will retire in the next several years, so they endured the transitory inconvenience. But there were others who were institutionalized into the Western Pacific carousel of port visits and girlfriends, before and after COVID-19. They offered advice contrary to my bookshelf of career guidance material: "What are you saving your money for?" "You're too young to have that position, why don't you ask for a demotion and take it easy?" While gray hair might help in establishing gravitas on personnel problems, I held a Master's Degree and Professional Engineer's license that attested to my experience in handling technical and planning issues. A crew swap brought me back to the East Coast this month. While I anticipated the same issues related to personnel readiness and attitude, I was surprised to find the "Old MSC" of competent and hopeful mariners onboard. In a way, this makes sense: While the COVID-19 era hardship conditions lasted 30 months in the Far East, normalcy was restored within 3 months onboard Norfolk, based ships. The attitudes of "Stuckness" were positive in nature, and related to building and supporting one's family in Virginia or a nearby state. Long-timers could see the up-or-out dynamics in the officer's mess: recent college graduates often wear the shirts of their family's contracting business. Implicit was the idea that MSC was a good place to start a career, but that the future was open-ended. The visibility of shore staff, and small repair firms on a daily basis emphasied that work could be found in adjacent fields. The employment relationship, then, was more of a two-way partnership, than a dependency on the employer's paternalistic support.