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Comment by Caveman_Coder | Hacker News Reader

> "The guy cleaning toilets does not need two more guys backing him up for the 2nd and 3rd shift. Dirty toilets wait until he rolls out of his bunk, or until the captain eats a volatile burrito, and someone wakes the toilets guy up to deal with that specific problem outside of regular duty hours."

That isn't how it works.

So there are all kinds of functional roles in the Navy (and I'm going off of submarines since that it was my experience was in), roles having to do with operating the sonar equipment, IT/comms equipment, torpedoes, and the engine room. So these people will be on watch (hourly logs, monitoring system conditions, etc.) and then after they are relieved they'll do whatever maintenance and cleaning they are assigned to. There is not a "clean-the-toilets" job role.

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I know that's not how it works in practice on a naval vessel, but that's how it works in abstract economics world.

In AEW, specialization rules everything, so the toilets are cleaned only by a specialist toilet cleaner, and specialist toilet cleaners only clean toilets. If you try to shoehorn AEW onto a ship, you only need one toilets guy, because having clean toilets is important, but not so important that it has to be done 24-7.

It is an open question whether it would be more efficient to have 3 radio operators providing 24-7 coverage on the radios during their duty hours and doing other jobs when they are off watch, thus giving them 16-hour workdays divided up into 8-hours of "important" work and 8-hours of "grunt/scut" work, or to have 2 radio operators on watch 12 hours each, and one specialist cleaner taking up that extra 8 hours in that bunk, cleaning toilets 12 hours a day. Is that last 4 hours of work squeezed into the day okay if it requires no dedication or focus?

I too was in subs, the problem here is that you will not always have enough people to man a three section rotation. People cycle on and off the boat very frequently I spent 4 years on the same boat with a crew of on average 160 people. In my time probably 300+ people rotated through, routinely many divisions would have only 2 qualified individuals for a watch station putting them on 12 hour shifts with having to get up in your off time to give a food and bathroom break. The issue is the military goes through periods where a certain rating is undermanned so they encourage the recruiters to take as many people for that rate as possible. Since recruiters have quotas they must fill they take people who are quite frankly useless. Those people end up not able to advance due to several factors and the Navy can only have so many people in a rate at the same pay grade so they either don't let them re-enlist or if they want to stay make them change rates to an under-manned rate. Now not all those who re-enlist will advance due to the same issue so often they just cut there looses and move or they reach higher tenure and can't re-enlist leaving an under-manned rate and the cycle repeats itself.

Most watch stations take months of training to not only get qualified but also for the command to have enough confidence in you to stand the watch. I myself stood a regular 12 hour rotation during times we where on the surface because we had only 2 qualified operators and the rate that actually owned the equipment was undermanned so they could not provide bodies. There are very rarely extra people to do grunt work you do that in your off watch time when you are not studying, qualifying, or doing maintenance. Very frequently commands will care about filling the watch bill over a person not just being qualified but also competent enough to stand a watch, thus accidents happen due to negligence and ineptitude.

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