The F**kery of 4:20

There was a saying within my group of friends while I was in. Whenever something would come up last minute that absolutely had to be done by the end of the day we referred to it as "the f**kery of 4:20". This was both an accurate statement and a reference to the fact that these taskers would inevitably come down from leadership at about 1620. Leadership would seemingly wait until a large portion of their people would go home to bring forward a tasker that they had known was a requirement since their staff meeting at 0900 and absolutely had to be done before the next duty day. Sometimes these taskers would come down and we would only have about 20 minutes to get them done. Another one would come down because we were still in the office after the close of business and we would end up being in the office until 7 pm, only to repeat the cycle the next day.

If you are one of those people who sits on required tasks till the end of the day to hand them down, you're wrong. If you are one of the people who is tasked with completing these, I'm sorry.

This is something that I didn't really notice until I had risen a bit in the ranks. When I was an Airman, I assumed that was just how information was passed down and I was already expecting to be at work late because of the shift I was on and the nature of my work. Everything was good. When I started going to staff meetings and hearing about these things in the morning and just thinking that they were informative or back-burner items, I started to see the problem. The Commanders are overloaded with things that are nowhere near mission essential constantly and are often just passing things along as they come in, but there needs to be room to say "That can wait".

When there are mission essential things that are happening on the flight line, the shop bosses have other things on their mind besides "how can we spend $200K by tomorrow because we only have till then to order new furniture for our office". The shop bosses need to be able to focus on their people so the Commanders need to be able to say "not right now". This brings up a question on how the DOD budget actually works, but I may dig into that in a later article.

If line items such as awards aren't being thought about or EPBs aren't being tracked so that people can work on them ahead of time, then something is wrong. If someone has to stay late at work to count how many keyboards are in the squadron and have to chase down every computer through several buildings at 4:20 pm before the people that work there go home and they can't get in, then something is wrong. I understand that there are always too many things that need doing, but we do have Email for a reason. If it can be a couple of Emails at 10:30, then why is it a text at 16:20? What I'm trying to say is that if information that needs to be passed down from someone who attended that staff meeting in the morning can be passed down as an Email right after that meeting, then why isn't it? Why do things have to wait until they can't be delegated to a group of people and end up being on one person's shoulders who now can't go home on time?

If things can be delegated early as soon as they come to light, then why isn't that information being passed down to people who can do something about it while there is still daylight to burn?

Try to think about the person who might have to stay late because you forgot to send that Email or text. Try to get information out to the NCOs or young officers so that they can get the taskers done as part of their work day or delegate them while there are people to delegate to. Try to think about the people who are completely focused on something else and try to ask yourself "Does this need to be done right now? Is this essential enough to hold someone late to do it, or can it wait until tomorrow? Should I have told someone this needed doing this morning before it was the end of the shift?"

I understand that taskers are a part of being in the military, and some people thrive in the last-minute environment, but at least try to give people the option to not have to stay late and endure another round of the f**kery of 4:20.