Afishionados,

Today I had training on the Navy’s latest great idea: Making a cashless ship.

Instead of cash, the USS Abraham Lincoln will partake in the new Navy Cash Card program.

It works just like a credit card and has pretty much all the same features. Soon, it will be the only way to purchase items from the ship’s store and vending machines. I have my own apprehensions about the system, but we’ll see.

Anyhoo, the training was given by a young, skinny, personnelman who obviously didn’t prepare or rehearse his spiel whatsoever. Listening to him literally repeat himself drove me to the point of wanting to bitch slap him across the Puget Sound.

The biggest problem with the training was the fact that the new Navy Cash card consists of a “chip account” and a “strip account”. Essentially, the card has two sub-accounts independent of one another for purchases. The strip account can be used anyplace that takes Visa/Mastercard, whereas the chip account is what’s used in all the vending machines and the ship’s store.

I say this is a problem because “strip” and “chip” rhyme. Throw into the mix that I work on a “ship” and the personnelman repeated himself all too frequently and you get something kinda like this:

“Soon, we’re going to equip the ship with the new Navy Cash Card. The card is equipped with a chip account and a strip account. When we take our next trip on the ship, keep your card near your hip. To prevent losing it I recommend a clip. You can transfer funds from the chip to the strip for use off the ship. Or you can transfer funds from the strip to the chip, but only while onboard the ship.

If you get thirsty on the ship, just skip to the vending machines. If you insert your card into the machine and it doesn’t work, look for the chip. It’s likely you just inserted the card backwards and you need to give it a flip to slide in the chip. Once completed, grab your soda with a grip, hold it up to your lip, and take a sip.”

I swear the whole session sounded like it was given by Dr. Seuss.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 8:37 pm and is filed under Bullshit, Navy, Your Tax Dollars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.