After reading many postings and responses, I’m finding most have been fairly knowledgable and professional for fellow mariners or novice mariners genuinely seeking guidance or help from a few professionals with experience in our line of work. However, after reading some of the ridiculous responses, I’ve realized thats not what they’re getting out of this forum and I couldn’t help but wonder where the integrity and camaraderie is/went… What a shame. Not to mention how unprofessional some of you sound when putting in your effort to help.
If you are on this forum engaging in conversations, I would imagine you consider yourself to be a knowledgeable professional Merchant Marine, as most people who come on here are looking to stay plugged-in to the latest news, updates and how the rest of the industry is doing strictly from first person perspective.
With that, I think its fair to say this would be professional site/forum for people seeking professional responses and posts. Not some place to read about a disgruntled seaman. I’m finding some of you are venting because you’re upset with how you handled yourself throughout your career, got fired from a company, laid off due to a down-turn, failed to take opportunity when it was presented, or just got lazy and burnt-out.
Here is what I propose:
I really would like to take a pole on what each of you think professionalism and Integrity stand for. I think this would be interesting to see. I would challenge you not to look up the meanings and respond in your own words. If you need to look it them, I would hope you can learn a little more about what they really means or stands for and going forward, act in such a way.
Professionals respond in a way that set emotions aside and provide an example of how to lead. They answer others with facts and helpful advice. Attaching your emotional havoc to your views only gives the wrong impression and makes you and everyone around you look bad. It just puts bad taste in their mouth about the industry. I think most would agree Mariners are smart, intelligent people. I don’t have to tell you that. From my experience the persona of a merchant marine is fairly respectable by those who work ashore. Can you keep that reputation going and contribute to making it a better? Or will you contribute to ruining it?
Maybe you should ask yourself; Are you professional enough to post on “gCaptain”?
I’m not sure how long you have sailed but for the most part, I have found that most of those that I sailed with were great workers and had your back when things went south. But (there’s always a but) Merchant Sailors also tend to like to bitch a lot. I look at the forum as a bunch of us sitting around in the lounge or galley and the conversation is pretty much as I would expect to be in real life.
I do agree that sometimes newbe’s get jumped on for no reason. In my career, I trained my fair share of “Green” crew members and always tried to remember the old saying, “there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers”. As with anything else there are limits.
As for our opening question, after spending close to 35 years sailing plus being the Fifth Generation of Merchant Mariners in my family, I do and hope that others consider me “Professional” enough to post.
Well Sir, that is a good question. At least one a shrink would ask his client.
You certainly know that the maritime world works like clockwork and the few things which are hitting the news are by far rare. But you also know that mariners are used to hard work under special conditions living in an environment which isn’t always polite.
On the other hand not all are in positions where the honed word makes their living.
We had to learn it the hard way to make our reports understandable and watertight since people from shore are trying to find the culprit which should better be the human factor.
I am here on this forum to extract the really interesting things which are there in abundance if you know where to look and if you understand the circumstances under which the comments are given. Being from the engineering side I admit there could be more relating questions but you have less room to elaborate because that is a field
of accurate answers.
Is this professional enough? If any of you fuckers flag this and it get pulled down I will just keep posting it until I’m banned. I think it’s very unmariner like to being censored to the level we have been as of late. I don’t work in the fucking office because I am too crude and offensive. I’m definitely professional enough to weave a tapestry of obscenities that will float across the GOM to wherever the recipient may be hiding.
LOL, I was well known in my office after I told a Port Engineer to go F Himself while (unknown to me at the time) on a speaker phone. I only found out when I heard the head of Engineering say “what did he just say”. The best part was that most of those that overheard it said the PE deserved it.
Nice start. I would suggest that this forum belongs to gCaptain and it is up to John to set the tone. pre·sump·tu·ous prəˈzəm(p)(t)SH(o͞o)əs
adjective
(of a person or their behavior) failing to observe the limits of what is permitted or appropriate.
“I hope I won’t be considered presumptuous if I offer some advice”
synonyms: brazen, overconfident, arrogant, bold, audacious, forward, familiar, impertinent, insolent, impudent, cocky; cheeky, rude, impolite, uncivil, bumptious; informal, sassy
“that was quite a presumptuous remark”
I wouldn’t say your first post and first 7 days in the forum have been an outstanding success.
Back when they first put bag phones on the tugs, the company was going through a merger. The port capt called and I just happen to answer the phone. He was jovial and asked how the discharge was going. I said “Great! How’s the merger going? Ya’ll still measuring peckers to see who’s in charge”? It sounded like a machinery failure as he was grappling with the handset. He said in a muffled voice, “The transition is going very well, thank you”. He told me later they were just sitting down for a board meeting.
I hate making typos (which is why I usually end up editing many of my posts several times) almost as much as I hate reading them. A few here and there, yeah evrybody makes those, some are just rare when they do it. But when you come out talking about being all professional I hope you use a spellchecker at a minimum. So when you fix the original posts typos I’ll consider doing what it asks, since I would look very unprofessional if I tried to pole dance, and probably twist an ankle doing it.
I get to see plenty of perspectives here that help me quite a bit thank you very much, regardless of the lack of professionalism you think you see.
I don’t think it’s bad that people are upset about being laid off. I am. It stinks. Does the fact that I have not had a full-time job for nearly a year mean to you I’m not allowed to post here? Thank you very much for letting me know your perspective on things. There, that’s my daily vent. Mind you, I’m not mad at anybody in the company I got laid off from, but I’m not exactly happy and overjoyed that it happened.
And what does integrity have to do with anything else in your post? Or do you just use it since it’s such a nice sounding “big boy” word.
Yeh, maybe spend some time establishing yourself on here before you saddle your high horse and indict everyone with silly, rhetorically pointed questions of “professionalism”. What are you, a schoolmarm?
None of us need to show our resumes to seek eachother’s approval. I certainly don’t expect it and no one should expect it of me. It isn’t hard to tell from one’s contributions where they are coming from, what they know or if they are bullshit artists.
If you don’t like what someone posts go somewhere else or use the block function.
Most of the main contribu tors here share their knowledge willingly, but a lot have not so much tact or patience. Like being on board a ship, have some thick skin.
Like most in real life, there’s a time to watch your p’s and q’s and turn-to, and a time to let the badger out to play and cut up with your shipmates.
I like to laugh at others and at myself and love potty humor as much as the next guy. There’s a time and a place to have a stick up your ass. The administrators here do let us get away with a lot, and we do get put on time out occasionally. Luckily for me it hasn’t happened yet (but I’m sure I’ve come close.)
There must be something good about this forum and the people that are a part of it. More and more companies advertise here, and there is lots of lurker traffic. How many have come here for guidance on their license upgrades, job hunting and maritime news that have never joined in on a thread? I bet a lot, and because of the years of threads here, talk about a lionshare of info. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it…and ultimately it’s up to the administrators to reprimand us, not you.
At first I thought he was just an arrogant nitwit in lecturing an entire community with a the father to child talk as they call that in psychology . For a first timer that takes an impertinent and stupid attitude to do so.
In view of his last post it is now clear that he did this on purpose, it is a hoax, in order to see if he could stir up the hornet’s nest and I must say, to some extend he succeeded. Let’s stop reacting, he is poison and should be treated as such.
