Safe Guard Government Property

Many years ago I was stationed at Grifffiss Air Force Base in Rome NY. It was a bit unusual in that we had a large number of civilian employees. In our unit the civilians did almost all of the i n shop work while the Airmen did the work on the flight line. 

When working on aircraft you had to carefully inventory your tools. The boxes were to be lock when not in use to keep tools from being "borrowed". If you left a a pair of pliers on the airplane there was a chance that it could end up doing damage during flight. So after every job we checked our tool box to make sure we had them all. If a tool was missing, the aircraft you had worked on were grounded until the missing tool was found. This involved a lot of paperwork and of course you had to notify your commanders.

This policy applied to the civilians who work in shop also. They suppose to check after every job and to lock their box whenever they left their work bench. In practice they only inventoried them at the end of the day and only locked them at night. After all they were not working on aircraft and the group had worked together for years.

A new Lieutenant joined the Squadron. He notice this violation of policy. Instead of saying something to them, he decided to get his point across by taking a screw driver for one of the boxes. At the end of the shift, the missing tool as noted and the procedure of notification was began.  A missing tool notification is a major event and not to be taken lightly. During the ensuing chaos the Lieutenant walks in holds up the screw driver and ask if this is what they are looking for. He then proceeds to lecture them about their "failure to secure government property".

Then next day the Lieutenant come back from lunch and find his telephone, blotter, pen and pencil holder all neatly arrange on the floor where his desk used to be. One of the civilians walks by and ask him "did you secure your government issued desk before you left for lunch?". It took him 2 days to finally find where they had hid his desk.