26 December 2007: Impatience leads to stupidity

Impatient people are often prone to make dumb decisions. Today is an excellent case in point. I had two members of my team flying in to BIAP to help out a couple of days. One is an Army Staff Sergeant and the other a Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer. Originally, they weren't flying in until around 1030. Not surprisingly, the arrival time changed. Unlike normal flight changes around here, this time the flight arrival time turned out to be a couple of hours early. That caught me by surprise. As soon as I found out they had arrived I jumped in the NTV and headed to BIAP. The drive takes about twenty minutes. Unfortunately, the Staff Sergeant became impatient and made a stupid decision. It ended up making something simple become a complicated waste of time.

When I arrived at BIAP I couldn't find my team members anywhere. The impatient SSG had no idea where on Camp Liberty he could find us - it's a big place. Yet he just couldn't sit tight and wait for me. He and the CPO boarded the shuttle bus and left, not knowing where in the world to go and having no way to get in touch with me. So when I arrived at BIAP I ended up standing around with my thumb up my ass wondering WTF? After waiting and watching for about thirty minutes I drove back to Camp Liberty. On a hope and prayer I drove past the hooch belonging to another NCO on my team. The two impatient ones were not there. I had the SGT jump in the truck with me and we started brainstorming where they may have gone. What resulted was a two hour joyride around Camp Liberty. We looked at the PX. We stopped by the unit where the inspections were supposed to take place. We stopped by units we've worked with in the past. We cruised shuttle bus stops. Finally, I suggested we drive by Liberty Pad. What the hell? We'd looked everywhere else. Lo and behold, there they were. They were sitting with their gear and looking clueless. I was not happy.

I didn't waste any time letting the Staff Sergeant have a piece of my mind. Although I kept it professional (I didn't even raise my voice), I did make it very clear that his impatience had only succeeded in wasting an additional two hours of our time. There were no hard feelings. I won't be as calm if it happens again.

In my experience in this line of work, impatience leads to stupidity. It happened again today.