The Inventory

The setting is Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  I worked at the commissary during this, my last year in the Navy.  The commissary was a big operation.  There was the main store, the attached warehouse, cool dry storage spaces and the "refer" plant.  The refrigeration plant was dockside with two giant chill boxes and two giant freezers.  The freezers and chill boxes were large enough for forklifts to stack pallet loads of merchandise.  It was here that we stocked cold storage eggs coated with parafin that could supposedly be used a year or more after they last saw a hen.  They wouldn't kill you but they did taste funny and had a strange green tinge when scrambled.

Regular milk on the base was made at a plant from instant cows.  They would add water from the desalination plant to powdered milk and put it in containers.  This way you could get the "real milk" experience without having to add your own water. 

I stocked shelves, operated a forklift, drove a truck, worked as a cashier, took inventory and basically did as I was told, most of the time.  The commissary was run by a certain Lieutenant who didn’t like me.  His second in command was a first class petty officer.  I don’t remember either of their names now.  The Lieutenant had dark blonde hair and the first class petty officer was a freckle-faced redhead.  If either of you two ever gets to read this you will know who you are.  If all went well you already know who did the evil deed.  For the rest of you, here is the story.

I was married and had a wife living in Miami.  The Lieutenant and the petty officer were also married but had their wives stationed on the base.  I was trying to get to see my wife and they were trying to get as far away from theirs as possible.  The solution to their problem, and mine for that matter, lay in the monthly produce flights to Miami.  Except for the Miami flights the only fresh produce came from Jamaica.  The Jamaican produce consisted of furry tubers and weird vegetables most Americans never heard of.   We also had refrigerator ships that docked in Gitmo but after the two to three months trip from Norfolk via other stops, the produce they carried could hardly be considered fresh.   

The produce flights also brought “cargo” out of Gitmo in the form of Cuban fence jumpers.  These were individuals who managed to sneak on to the base without getting blown up in the minefields.  The clever brain-trust that was the military kept this secret cargo separated from us on the boat ride to the west side of the bay near the airstrip.  We were kept below deck while the "cargo" was kept topside.  We weren't supposed to know they existed.  It was then however impossible to separate us in the hold of the open cargo plane that we were all flying to the Opa Locka base in Miami.  I was never an aviation buff so the actual aircraft type can only be described as a large propeller driven cargo plane with a nose wheel and that it loaded from a side door.  I've looked at pictures of military cargo planes and it was similar to a C-130.

These "C-130's" weren't in good condition and were prone to oil leaks.  They had two of them at Gitmo and could never get both of them in the air at the same time.  They were always stealing parts from one to get the other one running.  When we got close to Miami they would open the side door and two of the air crew would be stationed there with fire extinguishers to put out any oil fires after landing.  We would have a day off and then we would be back to load the plane with local produce, fresh eggs, dairy products and fresh milk. On one occasion the loadmaster was late and we loaded the plane without his guidance.  The heavy milk ended up in the back of the plane and by the time the loadmaster arrived the "C-130" was sitting back on its tailpost.  We had to shuffle the milk forward and then everyone had to move to the cockpit area and jump up and down to bring the plane back down to rest on the nose wheel.

In order to get the heavily laden plane to clear the fence at the end of the Opa Locka airstrip we had to start our take off at one end of the runway in the grass.  We would make the fence next to 27th avenue with a good three or four feet of clearance.  It would be two feet if anyone had eaten a big meal beforehand.

In the nine months I served in Gitmo I was only allowed to make the trip to Miami on two occasions.  My selection was never a priority as the Lieutenant and the petty officer chose those individuals who would party with them.  I just wanted to see my wife.  Needless to say these two were not my favorite people.  They regularly went out of their way to give me crappy jobs.

This would just be a sad story if what you have read was the end of it all.  That story would have no place here.  This is a happy place.  I'm here to tell you of a chain of events that came together that provided me my opportunity for revenge.

The first thing that happened was that I put in for an early discharge.  The Lieutenant signed the early discharge application only because a denial would mean even more paperwork for him.  Besides, as he said to me, “These things never get approved.”  He promptly forgot about the application and things went back to normal.

The second thing in our chain of events was that both a general inspection and a mandatory inventory came due at a most inopportune time.  The inspection was to be one week after the scheduled inventory.  You see, in order to simplify any large-scale inventory, you need to let your on-shelf display stock run down before the inventory.  This allows you to count by case and pallet instead of individual items.  This would all be well and good if it weren’t for the fact that the general inspection would be calling for fully stocked shelves.

The third thing in our whirlpool of Karma would be that unbeknownst to the Lieutenant, my early discharge was approved and I had a date of departure that would yank me out from under his control at the worst possible time.  We were all assembled two weeks before the scheduled inventory and given our assignments.  There would be twelve-hour days and no time off during the inventory and inspection periods.  I had been assigned the crappiest of jobs doing inventory at the "refer" plant.  I raised my hand and told them that I was planning to spend that time on the beach in Key West.  Everyone laughed except my roommate Matt.  You see he knew that my discharge had been approved; that I had a flight scheduled out to Jacksonville, Florida, and that my discharge station was to be the naval base at Key West.  I was required to tell my supervisor of my upcoming departure so I counted this announcement as my official two week notice. I couldn't help it that they didn't believe me.

The duty roster showed that I had the night watch two days before the inventory was scheduled.  On the night watch you locked yourself in the commissary and patrolled the premises.  You mostly had to keep an eye on the temperature gauges on the coolers and freezers and record your findings.  You wandered around most of the time just snacking on whatever you wanted.   It was a boring job, except on this night.

I already knew how they conducted inventory.  It was a truly asinine system designed by the Lieutenant whereby the accounting office would print up two complete sets of IBM punch cards with one stock item on each card.  The stacks were identical and would be used by two inventory teams.  This, on the surface, would seem like a good plan.  Actually it would be a good plan if one second class storekeeper (me), didn’t have a grudge against the person who had the most to lose if things went wrong.

The next step in the inventory process was the weak link.  This clever system had each inventory team take a stack of cards.  The large teams were then divided into two man teams, each with a small portion of the full stack.  The two man groups would write down the shelf item count on the individual card.  This involved running all over the store to find the next item in the stack.  The inventory process never involved walking down each aisle and counting each shelf in order.  That would have been the normal way.  My dad always said there were three ways to do things, the right way, the wrong way and the Navy way.  In this case the Navy way was interpreted by a not so clever Lieutenant until it more closely resembled the wrong way.

 The next step in the inventory process would have the teams use the same stack of cards back in the warehouse to record the case lot quantities.  The cards would then be given to a keypunch operator who keyed in the recorded quantities from each card.  The computer would then print out a list of any discrepancies and the recording teams would recount and verify.  After the counts matched on each set of cards, the inventory would be assigned a dollar value that needed to balance with the accounting records.  Sounds good doesn’t it.

It might have been good but you see I spent the better part of my last eight hour duty shift going through the two stacks of cards back in the accounting office and I removed identical cards from each stack.  I picked relatively expensive items that wouldn’t likely be missed.  Spices like saffron and vanilla were expensive but did not have a high turnover.  I also pulled cards of certain frozen meat items or obscure expensive canned meat or seafood.  I pulled enough cards out to make a serious dent in the outcome of the inventory if those items weren’t counted.

The day of my departure coincided with the first day of the inventory process.  I got all of my checkout signatures except the one from the Lieutenant.  I didn’t want him standing in my way so I scribbled something next to his name and nobody checked.  I did manage to get both the Lieutenant and the first class petty officer an appropriate Get Well card that they would receive in the inter office mail while my commercial jet was out over the Atlantic.  I told them that I knew they were sick and hoped they would be feeling better soon.  A p.s. at the bottom wished them luck with the inventory.

I flew to Jacksonville and drove to Miami.  I had a few days off before I checked in at the Key West Naval Station.  It took a couple of weeks to finalize my discharge. Then I was a civilian once more.

A couple of months later I met my old roommate Matt for drinks while he was in Miami on a produce run.  Since I knew Matt was involved in the inventory I hesitated to even bring it up but I had to know.  I had never told anyone what I had done.

I casually asked, “Well, how did the big inventory go?”  I innocently listened as Matt proceeded to tell me of the chaos I left behind.  The inventory had been hurried because of the general inspection but the books didn’t balance.  There was a tremendous shortage.  Matt and I knew that everyone who worked at the commissary stole the occasional case of rib eye steaks but it really looked like things had gotten out of hand.  They could only explain away so much to "shrinkage" before things looked really bad.  They counted, recounted, and counted again.  They used that same double stack of inventory cards over and over.  Days went by, tempers flared, accusations were made.  It seemed like all was lost when it was finally decided that they had almost worn out the IBM cards with all of the notations and such.  They re-ran the double stacks and the inventory came in close enough as they say for “government work”.  There was no time to properly stock the store and organize the warehouse in time for the inspection.  Matt was sure that we (they) got a low score.

I then knew that Matt would enjoy knowing what I had done more than be mad at me for all of the extra work I had caused him.  He didn’t like the Lieutenant any more than I did and he hated that first class petty officer.  I told Matt what I had done with the IBM cards.  Matt’s eyes had a natural bulge to them but when I told my tale I thought they would fall out of his head.  It took a few minutes but I saw a smile come over his face that was the result of more than just the alcohol he had been consuming.  I knew he was good with it all when he said the next round was on him.

I made Matt promise that he would tell the two SOB’s what had happened to their inventory and who was responsible.  He readily agreed.  He never got to go on another Miami run but I got one final letter from him.  In it he said he told my story to both the Lieutenant and the PO and both were thoroughly pissed.  The PO had said he would hunt me down the next time he was in Miami.  Since I was now a civilian and had a significant height and weight advantage over the little redhead I told Matt to give him my phone number in Miami.  I never heard from Howdy Doody.