The Setting
The screen door slammed shut behind me, and I surveyed what was to serve as my low security prison for the day. Not a sliver of morning daylight pierced the inky night from which I had emerged, and the last luminescence of day would be erased before I would depart in 18 hours, an eternity away.
‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,’ I thought. A tear ran silently down the face of my soul.
This was kitchen Police or more simply put, ‘KP,’ a time-honored military tradition that combines brutal 18 hour shifts scouring charred pans in hot kitchens with the mild psychological rebuke of doing the extreme opposite of what one typically envisions when joining the military. Today, there would be no jumping out of airplanes, low level helicopter flights, or stealthy night time reconnaissance missions. Only drudgery and toil awaited myself and the three unfortunate others who joined me.
Today’s KP experience came with a hardship bonus. My work would not be carried out in a modern, expansive, and relatively serene dining facility somewhere within the United states of America. On this occasion, I would be working in a tiny, temporary structure under the shadow of the lofty, snow covered mountains surrounding our small United Nations outpost in The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Macedonia had been a part of the communist nation of Yugoslavia up until 1991 when things took a negative turn for Communism in general and Yugoslavia in particular. As the Soviet Union’s grip on Eastern and Central Europe weakened, chaotic disruption quickly ensued across the region. In Yugoslavia, the many ethnicities and regions soon decided they would rather try and run their own shop instead of taking orders from Belgrade and broke away. The ethnic Serb leaders who had comprised much of the old government decided that the departing regions belonged rightfully to Serbia, and any residents who didn’t agree should simply be eliminated. War and genocide followed.
Macedonia also decided the time was right for them to go their own way, but unfortunately for them, they immediately discovered an uncanny ability to annoy all their neighbors – Serbia, Albania, Greece, and Bulgaria. This isn’t a good thing to do when you are a tiny, almost minuscule, landlocked nation with virtually no military. Serbia had already demonstrated remarkable ease in reaching decisions to invade neighboring countries, and the same seemed almost certain to happen here as well.
As the regional situation deteriorated, The United Nations put a combined United States and Nordic nation peacekeeping presence on Macedonia’s northern border in a proactive move to keep Serbia from expanding the Balkan war south and creating another Bosnian or Croatian nightmare. It worked. As military deployments tend to do, the presence persisted well beyond the original departure date, and six years later, I found myself as a part of this detachment, walking out of the night and through the gates of military culinary hell.
‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,’ I thought. A tear ran silently down the face of my soul.
This was kitchen Police or more simply put, ‘KP,’ a time-honored military tradition that combines brutal 18 hour shifts scouring charred pans in hot kitchens with the mild psychological rebuke of doing the extreme opposite of what one typically envisions when joining the military. Today, there would be no jumping out of airplanes, low level helicopter flights, or stealthy night time reconnaissance missions. Only drudgery and toil awaited myself and the three unfortunate others who joined me.
Today’s KP experience came with a hardship bonus. My work would not be carried out in a modern, expansive, and relatively serene dining facility somewhere within the United states of America. On this occasion, I would be working in a tiny, temporary structure under the shadow of the lofty, snow covered mountains surrounding our small United Nations outpost in The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Macedonia had been a part of the communist nation of Yugoslavia up until 1991 when things took a negative turn for Communism in general and Yugoslavia in particular. As the Soviet Union’s grip on Eastern and Central Europe weakened, chaotic disruption quickly ensued across the region. In Yugoslavia, the many ethnicities and regions soon decided they would rather try and run their own shop instead of taking orders from Belgrade and broke away. The ethnic Serb leaders who had comprised much of the old government decided that the departing regions belonged rightfully to Serbia, and any residents who didn’t agree should simply be eliminated. War and genocide followed.
Macedonia also decided the time was right for them to go their own way, but unfortunately for them, they immediately discovered an uncanny ability to annoy all their neighbors – Serbia, Albania, Greece, and Bulgaria. This isn’t a good thing to do when you are a tiny, almost minuscule, landlocked nation with virtually no military. Serbia had already demonstrated remarkable ease in reaching decisions to invade neighboring countries, and the same seemed almost certain to happen here as well.
As the regional situation deteriorated, The United Nations put a combined United States and Nordic nation peacekeeping presence on Macedonia’s northern border in a proactive move to keep Serbia from expanding the Balkan war south and creating another Bosnian or Croatian nightmare. It worked. As military deployments tend to do, the presence persisted well beyond the original departure date, and six years later, I found myself as a part of this detachment, walking out of the night and through the gates of military culinary hell.
Part 1 – The Tyrant
Without much ceremony, I was put to work at a massive gas heated griddle by the prison warden for the day, Sergeant Jones. Sergeant Jones’ civilian world credentials, his education, training, or overall success trajectory within broader society didn’t matter a bit in the small Army kitchen. He had achieved the auspicious rank of buck sergeant after six years of unremarkable service, a very mild pace of progression. Despite being just slightly below him in the great military status world, he held the power of a great sultan or feudal lord over me. Any ethical order that he gave was legally binding, and to not follow one invited punishment up to and including going to prison.
On the bright side of the Macedonian KP experience was that dish washing had been contracted out to locals hired by the U.S. government. However, the cooks had all been assigned to the border outposts up in the mountains to cook for the troops, so now the KPs cooked under the direction of the career cook sergeant on duty that day. Any given day saw a crew of untrained infantry, mechanics, and clerks attempting to fry bacon, get the powdered eggs right, and even elevate themselves to making entrees like chicken cordon bleu.
Jones glumly set me about my task, french toast cooking, with a stack of white bread loafs and a pan of whipped up eggs. Beyond a couple of experiences in the Boy Scouts long before, I had no idea what I was doing, and expressed some concern about what my feeble efforts could mean to the quality of the product, the morale of the troops who ate it, and perhaps even the stability of the free world if the potential resulting morale decrease that could stem from my poorly cooked French toast caused the camp to fail its regional security mission.
This didn’t appear to concern Sergeant Jones in the least, and so I stood with spatula in hand and gazed at the 20 slices of bread neatly arranged before me. Heat had slowly begun to chemically transform the eggs in which they had been saturated. My thoughts strayed to my high school classmates. ‘College doesn’t sound so bad,’ I mused. Time passed.
My watch revealed that it had reached 6 o'clock in the morning, still quite early by most civilized standards. Though I could not see it from my lonely culinary outpost, the first shimmers of the rising sun were starting to push back the night sky across the upward edges of the mountains to the east. Troops were beginning to emerge from the barracks and prepare for morning physical training. A distant diesel engine rumbled to life as one of the camp’s trucks was prepared for early work. My face was creased by the faintest of smiles while my eyes peacefully gazed at the wall beyond the griddle. A group of college girls sat around me in lush green grass on a warm day. They listened rapturously and laughed to the point of tears as I described how I had saved freedom in Northern Macedonia, all on their behalf of course.
Without my realizing it, Jones had come and stood beside me. He gave a disapproving look at the slowly simmering pieces of bread.
‘You gotta cook faster, Estill’ he said. ‘You're going too damn slow.’
Without another word, he disappeared into what was called the ‘Pots and Pans Room.’ As one might suspect, this is where the kitchen’s vast armada of pots and pans resided, and the contracted Macedonians labored all day to keep them clean. Beyond the occasional ‘checking in,’ he seemed to never be around the kitchen during the cooking process, and we were left on our own to figure out what to do.
I lifted a corner of one of the pieces of bread with my metal spatula while pondering Sergeant Jones’ order and wondered what could be done to accelerate what seemed like a pretty constrained process in terms of the chemistry and physics involved. The underside of the slimy, lukewarm slice was only lightly golden and didn’t appear ready to be flipped yet, but to at least give the impression of taking decisive action to address the situation, I began to press on a few of the slices with my cooking utensil. This at least produced a reassuring if momentary hiss.
Despite the lethargic rate of progress, it was soon time to start turning pieces over. During a moment's distraction, a slice towards the back of the griddle slid silently off my spatula and vanished from view between the cooking apparatus and the dingy white wall behind it. I quickly but discretely glanced around to see if anyone had noticed my transgression, and seeing that no one's attention had been drawn, I adjusted the spacing of the departed slice’s former neighbors to make it appear as if it had never existed at all.
0730, the time at which the soldiers of the outpost were supposed to begin sampling our wares came and passed. Troops began to line up outside in the cold talking, noting the missed opening time, and complaining with the enthusiasm that only members of the military can complain with and have been complaining with for millennia.
Within, all was a flurry of motion and chaos. Sergeant Jones shouted and roared like a cavalry general from centuries gone by extolling his charges into a formation desperately intended to stop an oncoming attack. The results of our work, including my French toast contribution, had somehow achieved every variation of completion from barely cooked to charred beyond what even a forensic scientist could identify without ever quite landing at palatable. None the less everything was dumped into pans and placed in the warmers. Ten minutes after when the doors were supposed to open, the soldiers finally trudged in and viewed the culinary selections that were ready to be served with visible dissatisfaction.
Late that night after much of the camp was already asleep, I walked wearily back to my barracks room, tired and reeking of greasy, burned food but inwardly rejoicing that it would be at least a week before it was my turn to have to do this duty again.
On the bright side of the Macedonian KP experience was that dish washing had been contracted out to locals hired by the U.S. government. However, the cooks had all been assigned to the border outposts up in the mountains to cook for the troops, so now the KPs cooked under the direction of the career cook sergeant on duty that day. Any given day saw a crew of untrained infantry, mechanics, and clerks attempting to fry bacon, get the powdered eggs right, and even elevate themselves to making entrees like chicken cordon bleu.
Jones glumly set me about my task, french toast cooking, with a stack of white bread loafs and a pan of whipped up eggs. Beyond a couple of experiences in the Boy Scouts long before, I had no idea what I was doing, and expressed some concern about what my feeble efforts could mean to the quality of the product, the morale of the troops who ate it, and perhaps even the stability of the free world if the potential resulting morale decrease that could stem from my poorly cooked French toast caused the camp to fail its regional security mission.
This didn’t appear to concern Sergeant Jones in the least, and so I stood with spatula in hand and gazed at the 20 slices of bread neatly arranged before me. Heat had slowly begun to chemically transform the eggs in which they had been saturated. My thoughts strayed to my high school classmates. ‘College doesn’t sound so bad,’ I mused. Time passed.
My watch revealed that it had reached 6 o'clock in the morning, still quite early by most civilized standards. Though I could not see it from my lonely culinary outpost, the first shimmers of the rising sun were starting to push back the night sky across the upward edges of the mountains to the east. Troops were beginning to emerge from the barracks and prepare for morning physical training. A distant diesel engine rumbled to life as one of the camp’s trucks was prepared for early work. My face was creased by the faintest of smiles while my eyes peacefully gazed at the wall beyond the griddle. A group of college girls sat around me in lush green grass on a warm day. They listened rapturously and laughed to the point of tears as I described how I had saved freedom in Northern Macedonia, all on their behalf of course.
Without my realizing it, Jones had come and stood beside me. He gave a disapproving look at the slowly simmering pieces of bread.
‘You gotta cook faster, Estill’ he said. ‘You're going too damn slow.’
Without another word, he disappeared into what was called the ‘Pots and Pans Room.’ As one might suspect, this is where the kitchen’s vast armada of pots and pans resided, and the contracted Macedonians labored all day to keep them clean. Beyond the occasional ‘checking in,’ he seemed to never be around the kitchen during the cooking process, and we were left on our own to figure out what to do.
I lifted a corner of one of the pieces of bread with my metal spatula while pondering Sergeant Jones’ order and wondered what could be done to accelerate what seemed like a pretty constrained process in terms of the chemistry and physics involved. The underside of the slimy, lukewarm slice was only lightly golden and didn’t appear ready to be flipped yet, but to at least give the impression of taking decisive action to address the situation, I began to press on a few of the slices with my cooking utensil. This at least produced a reassuring if momentary hiss.
Despite the lethargic rate of progress, it was soon time to start turning pieces over. During a moment's distraction, a slice towards the back of the griddle slid silently off my spatula and vanished from view between the cooking apparatus and the dingy white wall behind it. I quickly but discretely glanced around to see if anyone had noticed my transgression, and seeing that no one's attention had been drawn, I adjusted the spacing of the departed slice’s former neighbors to make it appear as if it had never existed at all.
0730, the time at which the soldiers of the outpost were supposed to begin sampling our wares came and passed. Troops began to line up outside in the cold talking, noting the missed opening time, and complaining with the enthusiasm that only members of the military can complain with and have been complaining with for millennia.
Within, all was a flurry of motion and chaos. Sergeant Jones shouted and roared like a cavalry general from centuries gone by extolling his charges into a formation desperately intended to stop an oncoming attack. The results of our work, including my French toast contribution, had somehow achieved every variation of completion from barely cooked to charred beyond what even a forensic scientist could identify without ever quite landing at palatable. None the less everything was dumped into pans and placed in the warmers. Ten minutes after when the doors were supposed to open, the soldiers finally trudged in and viewed the culinary selections that were ready to be served with visible dissatisfaction.
Late that night after much of the camp was already asleep, I walked wearily back to my barracks room, tired and reeking of greasy, burned food but inwardly rejoicing that it would be at least a week before it was my turn to have to do this duty again.
Part 2 – The Motivator
One week later at 430 in the morning, the same screen door slammed shut behind me once again.
‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,’ I thought. ‘I should actually read that book someday.’
Physically, the conditions were identical to the last time I had been in our camp’s kitchen. As always, row upon row of stainless-steel pots and pans greeted me on the other side of the screen door. The nemesis of my last tour, the large gas fired griddle, sat just to my right and was sparkling clean having been scoured to perfection by the previous day’s KP crew who had departed themselves only six hours prior to my arrival.
Though things looked the same on the surface, they were actually very different. Sergeant Stevenson would be our designated ruler on this day, and he was ready to get to work.
‘Do you have any skills?’ He asked me.
Having been in the Army for nearly three years at this point, I could see this trap coming a mile away and knew that any affirmation was sure to result in some sort of greater and more challenging labor with higher performance expectations.
'None whatsoever, Sergeant,’ I immediately answered.
He laughed genuinely and loudly, creating an atmospheric contrast in the room at odds with the early hour and enthusiasm sucking fluorescent lights emitting their brain tormenting hum.
'Well, today you're going to learn! You’re going to learn today, Estill!'
He assigned each of us to a task, explained it, and carefully answered any questions. Good natured jokes flowed freely, and there was soon a surprising amount of laughter filling the kitchen. Then he did something that was the stuff of legend.
'Smith,' he said, referring to one of our other KP team members. 'What kind of music do you want?'
A stunned silence briefly hung in the air. I glanced at Smith who looked startled. Someone dropped the spoon they had been holding which nosily clattered the floor. The Kitchen Sergeant was going to let us decide what music to listen to on the beat up Sanyo boombox perched on a shelf by the sink? The one thing that had kept Jones busy was feeding new CDs into it from the bootlegged stack he had bought from a street vendor outside camp for $4. Giving us this choice instead of making it himself was a self-reduction in power almost on par with George Washington willingly stepping down after his second term as President.
Top 40 hits soon drifted through the kitchen while we set about what we had been instructed to do. 30 minutes before serving time, the breakfast meal sat in the familiar serving line warmers. Each pan was covered in a couple of layers of plastic wrap to mitigate drying while we waited for the troops to begin coming in.
We were rewarded with something that has only rarely been recorded in military history, a real, genuine break while on KP. This was made more remarkable due to the downtime resulting from everything being done early, something that would recur throughout the day. There was even ice cream! We were allowed to help ourselves to a secret 'stash' in the back of one of the freezers.
Sergeant Stevenson pitched in alongside us, teaching, helping, and even doing it himself when it was a complicated job over the heads of us part timers. We actually had fun, and for the first time in Macedonia, I found myself liking being in the kitchen more than in my normal work area and laughing from all of the good humor that naturally emanated in Stevenson’s positive presence.
More remarkable, the food we made was great for an Army dining facility and off the charts for one mostly staffed by part time KP workers. We even looked forward to eating the stuff we made. When the troops came in, the entire facility seemed a happy place as they clearly enjoyed the meals too. This was a different spectacle from the days when Sergeant Jones was in charge, and they would sit shoveling undercooked rice into their mouths with weary resignation.
‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,’ I thought. ‘I should actually read that book someday.’
Physically, the conditions were identical to the last time I had been in our camp’s kitchen. As always, row upon row of stainless-steel pots and pans greeted me on the other side of the screen door. The nemesis of my last tour, the large gas fired griddle, sat just to my right and was sparkling clean having been scoured to perfection by the previous day’s KP crew who had departed themselves only six hours prior to my arrival.
Though things looked the same on the surface, they were actually very different. Sergeant Stevenson would be our designated ruler on this day, and he was ready to get to work.
‘Do you have any skills?’ He asked me.
Having been in the Army for nearly three years at this point, I could see this trap coming a mile away and knew that any affirmation was sure to result in some sort of greater and more challenging labor with higher performance expectations.
'None whatsoever, Sergeant,’ I immediately answered.
He laughed genuinely and loudly, creating an atmospheric contrast in the room at odds with the early hour and enthusiasm sucking fluorescent lights emitting their brain tormenting hum.
'Well, today you're going to learn! You’re going to learn today, Estill!'
He assigned each of us to a task, explained it, and carefully answered any questions. Good natured jokes flowed freely, and there was soon a surprising amount of laughter filling the kitchen. Then he did something that was the stuff of legend.
'Smith,' he said, referring to one of our other KP team members. 'What kind of music do you want?'
A stunned silence briefly hung in the air. I glanced at Smith who looked startled. Someone dropped the spoon they had been holding which nosily clattered the floor. The Kitchen Sergeant was going to let us decide what music to listen to on the beat up Sanyo boombox perched on a shelf by the sink? The one thing that had kept Jones busy was feeding new CDs into it from the bootlegged stack he had bought from a street vendor outside camp for $4. Giving us this choice instead of making it himself was a self-reduction in power almost on par with George Washington willingly stepping down after his second term as President.
Top 40 hits soon drifted through the kitchen while we set about what we had been instructed to do. 30 minutes before serving time, the breakfast meal sat in the familiar serving line warmers. Each pan was covered in a couple of layers of plastic wrap to mitigate drying while we waited for the troops to begin coming in.
We were rewarded with something that has only rarely been recorded in military history, a real, genuine break while on KP. This was made more remarkable due to the downtime resulting from everything being done early, something that would recur throughout the day. There was even ice cream! We were allowed to help ourselves to a secret 'stash' in the back of one of the freezers.
Sergeant Stevenson pitched in alongside us, teaching, helping, and even doing it himself when it was a complicated job over the heads of us part timers. We actually had fun, and for the first time in Macedonia, I found myself liking being in the kitchen more than in my normal work area and laughing from all of the good humor that naturally emanated in Stevenson’s positive presence.
More remarkable, the food we made was great for an Army dining facility and off the charts for one mostly staffed by part time KP workers. We even looked forward to eating the stuff we made. When the troops came in, the entire facility seemed a happy place as they clearly enjoyed the meals too. This was a different spectacle from the days when Sergeant Jones was in charge, and they would sit shoveling undercooked rice into their mouths with weary resignation.
The Lesson
There were very few variables between the two days of kitchen police. With some nuances, the food menus were largely the same – canned vegetables, potatoes or rice, bread selections, and some sort of entrée that usually required baking or frying, yet the overall work atmosphere and quality of the finished product was starkly different under the Sergeant Stevenson regime versus that of Sergeant Jones.
The only true variable between the two days of KP was leadership. One leader had it, and the other did not. Leadership sometimes is not what one would think. It’s not standing at the podium and bringing the audience to their feet with a rousing speech and plan. A lot of the time, it is simply showing up with the right attitude and having a positive influence on a difficult situation.
Especially in the military, many would think that aggressive, on top of people direction is needed for a good outcome, but despite his surprisingly laid-back approach, Sergeant Stevenson produced remarkable results with our team in terms of quality, timeliness, and sustainable practices.
There is a seemingly endless quantity of books on leadership with new ones appearing every day. One would think that it must be an incredibly complex topic to justify so many pages of information, but at its core, many elements of leadership are simple and obvious. Attitude, attention to your people's needs, and good communications are foundational and timeless.
Sergeant Jones may have been enthusiastic and inspired at one point in his military life, but on our days together in Macedonia, he simply didn't care. Caring must come first. Care about your work and the people doing it, and you will find that the success trajectory of your organization will improve rapidly.
When it comes to leading a group through the completion of a task regardless of whether it is cooking for a few hundred soldiers or landing Apollo 11 on the moon, there are many important skills to learn to be successful - decision-making, risk management, and strategy development, but at the end of the day when all else fails, get the basics right. Enjoy yourself, get into the job, and treat your team with the respect and dignity you would want to be treated with yourself.
The only true variable between the two days of KP was leadership. One leader had it, and the other did not. Leadership sometimes is not what one would think. It’s not standing at the podium and bringing the audience to their feet with a rousing speech and plan. A lot of the time, it is simply showing up with the right attitude and having a positive influence on a difficult situation.
Especially in the military, many would think that aggressive, on top of people direction is needed for a good outcome, but despite his surprisingly laid-back approach, Sergeant Stevenson produced remarkable results with our team in terms of quality, timeliness, and sustainable practices.
There is a seemingly endless quantity of books on leadership with new ones appearing every day. One would think that it must be an incredibly complex topic to justify so many pages of information, but at its core, many elements of leadership are simple and obvious. Attitude, attention to your people's needs, and good communications are foundational and timeless.
Sergeant Jones may have been enthusiastic and inspired at one point in his military life, but on our days together in Macedonia, he simply didn't care. Caring must come first. Care about your work and the people doing it, and you will find that the success trajectory of your organization will improve rapidly.
When it comes to leading a group through the completion of a task regardless of whether it is cooking for a few hundred soldiers or landing Apollo 11 on the moon, there are many important skills to learn to be successful - decision-making, risk management, and strategy development, but at the end of the day when all else fails, get the basics right. Enjoy yourself, get into the job, and treat your team with the respect and dignity you would want to be treated with yourself.