Outlets and Restrooms

Maybe the first thing you notice when you travel abroad – especially in foreign airports and foreign train stations – is the lack of power outlets. In an American airport, it seems every upgrade to the terminal comes with the promise of more workstations to plug in your iMac, more WiFi to connect to e-mail, and more places to charge everything you own, lest you board your 50-minute commuter flight at 87% battery. Likewise, the restroom situation in even minor regional airports is something that boarders on excessive. I do not believe that you can walk more than 100 yards at BWI without running into a combo men-women-family restroom buried between a TGI Fridays and a kiosk selling more devices to charge or more plugs to help you charge everything you own.

I am not sure what to make of this – I think that it is two concessions to an increasingly connected way of life and work. First, airports realize that you might be spending a lot more time there that you had initially planned, because planes never really run on time and for safety’s sake, a misplaced widget will shut a plan down for hours. That is why there are always bars open and places to charge your phone, because heaven forbid you have a conversation with someone who just missed his 6:50 to Denver and has to wait for the 7:50. But the second one is sadder: we work too much. Travel is no longer a chance to read a novel or catch up on sleep or use some drink coupons and knock back a Jack and ginger. Travel – and here I think especially air travel – means time where no one can call you so you can finally catch up on e-mail. Travel means blasting through power points or modifying spreadsheets. Travel means you just extended the work day by the length of your flight. Knowing they are fighting a losing battle, airports concede to the battery monster.

I noticed both of these while traveling recently to the Balkans. Frankfurt International Airport had cute shops, cafes selling berliners and baguettes, and scarcely any outlets. They also had, I believe, three restrooms in the entire airport, a problem compounded by the presence of good coffee. We arrived early for a flight to Bucharest, so I had time to walk around the airport. At every outlet, I saw an American typing furiously away at his computer or locked into an epic CandyCrush battle, oblivious to the world rushing past. (Americans are notoriously easy to spot in an airport. Maybe it is the insistence on letting everyone know, regardless of whether they care, that Texas should not be messed with or that they are a huge Auburn fan. Who knows. Personally? I think the cargo shorts give them away.) The co-workers I was traveling with were just as bad, as someone managed to produce two power strips and before my very eyes grew a circle of Facebook posts. If you listened very carefully, you could hear every living D-Day veteran groan audibly as the next generation focused more on Clash of Clans than the mission at hand.

But that’s traveling I guess. At least my guys were not answering work e-mails or phoning back to America to ensure that certain e-mails were received, read, and actioned on. But we still work too much.

When I learned I was going to be in Europe for the fall, I was excited. Europe in the fall means cold weather, beautiful scenery, and good beer (Europe probably always means good beer, but in this context it worked to paint a picture). When traveling as we are, not for war but for cultural exchange and combined exercises that make the news somewhere, there are many restrictions on Soldiers of all ranks: we are not supposed to go off post in uniform, we are not allowed to conduct official business over locally-purchased phones, we are not allowed to post photos of our base on Facebook or geo-tag our location on social media, and we are discouraged from congregating in groups because, again, Americans stick out… the list goes on. One curious rule – more than likely a holdover from the War on Terror – is the byzantine restriction on alcohol consumption. In the name of mission success and rebuilding frayed relationships, during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Soldiers were not allowed to drink. Barring exceptions – we had a few Miller Lites during the Super Bowl I believe, and alcohol surreptitiously shipped from home made it into Soldiers’ hands every now and then – most guys I know embraced the year-long visit to sobriety.

(As an aside – if you were to picture the people in America most opposed to alcohol and pornography, you would probably picture a Southern Baptist or other conservative Christian sect. If you were to put them on a map of the US and overlay the locations of most large military bases, you would find a strange correlation to location of conservative Christians and military bases – Forts Stewart, Bragg, Jackson, Benning, Polk and a few more are located in such a “Bible Belt.” Furthermore, if you stood at the front gates to these bases, located as they are in regions where a majority of people identify as conservative and who clutch their pearls at the thought of shotgunning beers, you would be hard pressed not to miss the businesses common to areas surrounding military bases: strip clubs, bars, pawn shops, and the occasional combination strip club/bar/pawn shop. I guess if you invade a country that doesn’t like when you drink, you throw them a bone or two in the name of prohibition. But I digress.)

 

Anyway, in Europe we are allowed to drink two 16-ounce beers in a 24-hour period, and they do not aggregate – not drinking beer from Sunday through Friday does not mean a Saturday where you can down 14 beers. There are some good reasons for this: we are attempting to continue forging ties with these countries, and letting loose a horde of drunken Soldiers does not help with that end state. Further, we are training here, which means shooting guns and marching long miles – a hungover Soldier is a liability in both instances. But it still does not add up: we are asking these kids to be the executioners of a grand political-military diplomatic idea that is based on armies working together. We trust these kids to be good ambassadors of the US and her military. We expect them to act as mature adults because they are all legal adults and maturity ought to be something adults strive for. But even after all these expectations are placed on their shoulders, we do not trust them to act like adults, designate a sober guy, and go have a few beers to let off steam. We do not trust them to be adults even though international relationships are based off the idea that they are adults. Most commanders have taken this a step further – in the name of good relations, they have curtailed drinking except for specific locations, at specific times, and with a specific set of people.

 

In America, if a kid drinks a 12-pack every night and is able to function at a level similar to his sober peers, there is nothing I can do. If he were stationed in Germany and wanted to do the same thing and could still perform, my hands would still be tied. But here, for some reason, it is two beers per night and you must be in a group of five or more people, on base or off base in a location that sells food, and only between the hours of 6pm and 9pm. It is intentionally directive, arbitrary, and confusing: identifying when people can drink seems draconian, two beers might affect some people more than others, and congregating in groups invited scrutiny from locals – and has been outlined as a bad idea by US Army Europe.

 

More to the point, if I tell a kid “don’t get drunk” and they do, they are violating the Uniformed Code of Military Justice and can be punished accordingly. Likewise, if I tell them “have a beer or two, but no more than two” and I see them having a third, the same UCMJ concept applies. But removing everything from them, managing their social interactions and in essence saying “we do not trust you to make adult decisions” yet in the same breath instructing them to partner with allied nations and show everyone how professional they are – these are mutually exclusive. And we are an Army that embraces an alcohol culture – from stable calls on Fridays, where we lift a beer and wear our Stetsons – to grog ceremonies and Officer Clubs, we recognize that some business is better done over a pint than over a conference call.

 

I think it circles back to the idea of working too much. If you knock off for a beer with your buddies, you are saying that work is either done, or nothing is so important that it cannot wait until tomorrow. We as an Army cannot say work is done, because if work is done then we have rendered ourselves obsolete, even if just for the remainder of the day. Our co-workers see us going home and, in our heads, they are chastising us for leaving when “there is so much work to do.” The egos that drive most people to continue to work on vacations or past 9 or 10pm or – yes – on flights cannot be ignored. The Army has been around 230 years, and it functioned just fine before any of us currently in raised our right hand and swore an oath. When all of us retire, the Army will still keep chugging along. Recognizing that, there is no earthly reason why people can’t look up, realize its 6pm, and leave their desk. We have become a self-perpetuating machine, always waiting for the next document to read or slide show to approve and scared senseless when we go fifteen minutes without an e-mail. We actually create work so we can tell our bosses we are still working, because maybe that means we’ll get a good evaluation, outlining our dedication to the craft.

 

I left the new office here about 9:30. I walked alone to my bunk, through the cold of the night, wondering what the hell I had actually gotten done. My cell phone was fully charged and on the way home – maybe a half mile walk – I passed only one restroom building.