Cedar and the Lube oil King

I have seen people work their fingers to the bone and get nothing more than a high-five.

I have seen the people who delegate responsibility receive more accolades than I care to count.

I have seen some of the dirtiest grease monkeys earn some of the shiniest medals.

The fact of the matter is that sometimes credit is not given where credit is due. It is a product of the work environment we place ourselves into. Extremes rarely dominate any area of the work place though, and we can expect that sometimes we will receive our comeuppance, and sometimes we will need to take a back seat to other people's (sometimes undeserved) spotlight.

Picture it: Haze grey and underway, 2009. I was working hard at expanding my repertoire of useful skills by assisting a short handed division. I would stand their watches and perform some of their maintenance. I replaced large components, I replaced valves, I trained their junior personnel in the art of making water. I quickly became one of their 'go to guys' for all sorts of technical issues, and I was seen as one of the 'in crowd'.

This embattled division eventually overcame some pretty big challenges; challenges that would have staggered a fully manned team. What's more, they did it with style and class. Naturally, when it came time to receive awards for all their hard work they were graced with awards all around. The problem came when they had to admit someone (me), who was not part of their group, had a big hand in their success. It seems that it was bad form to admit they had received help. It turns out the divisional leadership didn't want to send the message that they had a weakness, and that I had helped fill a void.

The exception was Cedar the Terrible. Cedar, a leader within his division, saw my efforts and he genuinely appreciated me. He filed the paperwork for an award for me and was shot down. Again and again he did this, each time the outcome was the same. I remember him coming up to me and saying he tried his best and was still unable to get me the reward I deserved, but he was able to get me a smaller award, a menial one. I gladly accepted his generosity; it wasn't very often that his group of people acknowledged what my group contributed to the overall goal. In fact I remember Cedar telling me that I was in a support division and our main duty was to serve him and his. Never mind all that fancy chemistry and radiological controls we had to perform to keep NAVSEA08 off the Captain's back. Either way, an 'atta boy' from him was generally hard to come by.

Cedar used some typical Cedar methods to ensure I received a three day special liberty pass (the fine print said I could only use it in conjunction with a weekend and i had to find someone to stand my duty...).

While I was grateful for the recognition, albeit slightly skewed from what I actually did, it was still less than pleasant watching the people I had worked arm in arm with get awards for things I had been a part of. On the other hand, it did offer the newer guys a much needed boost of confidence and allowed them to become almost as good at their job as my division was at ours.