Meet me at the smoke pit

The smoke pit is commonly a smelly, yellow ash tray of a place, but some of the best bonds can be made there whether you are deployed, on a TDY, or at your home station. Most of the time you will find a group of people there from any demographic within the command that are willing to talk about anything from their personal life to their professional quadaries.

When I first arrived at my duty station, one of the first questions asked of me on my first day at work was, "Do you smoke?" I initially found this to be a little out of the norm compared to "Where are you from?" and "What do you like to do?" but it quickly made sense when I said yes and was promptly dragged out to the smoke pit by the NCO on shift and another airman.

At the smoke pit, it was explained to me that this is the place where things get done in the military. Everyone goes to the daily scheduling or staff meeting, or just has their coffee or energy drink with their partners, then goes out to the smoke pit to do a debrief. Every day at smoke time o'clock, and after any commander's call, you will see a line of NCOs and airmen proceeding outside to the smoke pit immediately after whatever event was just held. In this line of NCOs and airmen, you will hear various phrases such as "What the fuck was that?" and "What did you think about that?" but if you are a leader, you shouldn't worry about the profanity or the fact that a large portion of your unit is going to be missing for the next half-hour. You should have some trust that the things you asked for are about to get done.

I always thought it was a bit comical seeing this line of various people, most smokers, but some would just tag along to hear the thoughts of those they respected in the post-whatever brief. If you as a leader ask for something difficult to get done, or present a challenge to your forces, then you likely have some inkling about what was going down, and if you don't then I challenge you to go out to the smoke pit and be a fly on the wall.

Officers are a rare enough sight out at the pit. Most younger enlisted will shut their traps around them because they don't want to be heard complaining about their terrible day or whatever sketchy stuff happened in the field over the course of their week. I later learned when I was a flight chief that smoking and tobacco use is highly discouraged within the officer corp. Smoking is terrible for you and should be discouraged all around, but something magical happens if you are actively in conversation with your Flight Commander or a young O1-O4 from another unit. You will see an understanding light in the eye of the Officer, realizing that they are seeing actual mentoring with little filtered out and not much time taken to incorporate the buzzwords or latest leadership trends from the books on the Commander's desk.

The young kids at the smoke pit will overhear the older guys talking about the best way to do things, or rather ways not to do things, and how they did things at their last base. They will learn who works where, who does what, how the NCOs and SNCOs think about things and work through problems, and they will develop bonds with people from other shops. Every day, several times a day, there will be a meeting of the minds where people bring up their problems for other peoples insights, brag about the cool projects they are working on, and discuss events in town or on base. There is a lot of knowledge sharing at this hallowed ground, along with all the normal BS conversations that come from within the ranks.

There isn't much room for political correctness when you hear a bunch of maintainers complaining about their day, but these conversations will help your troops figure out how to meet various goals and build teams within the organization.

One of the things the military as a whole is focusing on, which I completely agree with, is health. It is a well known fact that tobacco is terrible for you and I support quitting if you haven't, but one thing that the military is moving away from as the people phase out tobacco is communication. The younger troops are missing out on that 0915 mentorship session, they are missing out on networking with the other troops from different work areas, and they are missing out on getting to know their bosses sans filter. This is a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless.

I don't know what the solution is, but I feel that the military needs to have a safe place for people to turn their filters down a little bit and actually get to know each other outside of mandatory fun days where you just see huddles of junior enlisted (and your NCO corp) waiting for the event to be over. Call me old school, but the smoke pit was the place where all the cool kids hung out. It was the place people got input to help them work through whatever their problems that day were, and it was the place that people got answers. If you can foster a place that has a similar atmosphere, but generates healthier habits, I think that would be a great boon to your unit.