The game we played with Dan Hudock reminded me of two customs at Officer Candidates School(OCS). We candidates, must address ourselves in third person, like “This candidate”. For example, if you have a question, you say “This candidate requests knowledge”, or if you are ordered to report to a staff, you say “Candidate Chen reports to platoon commander Captain XYZ as ordered”.
If you said “I have a question” or “I don’t know”, the sergeant instructors will correct you in the most unforgettable way to ensure you never used first person while at OCS.
The second custom is to give the proper greeting of the day. The greeting has two parts: proper time of the day + the person you are greeting. For officers, we just say “good morning sir/ma’am”; For enlisted Marines, we must address their rank like “good morning Gunnery Sergeant. If there is a group of male Marines, we say “good morning gentlemen.” If there is a female staff sergeant among a group of Marines, we say “good morning staff sergeant, good morning gentlemen.” If there is a female officer and a group of male Marines, we say “good morning ma’am, good morning gentlemen.” If there are multiple female Marines among a group of Marines, we just “good morning ladies, good morning gentlemen.” As for civilians who works at the chow hall, we say “good morning ladies, good morning gentlemen.”
I hope I lost you. People actually messed this up at the beginning phases. They either called a female officer sir or did not address the enlisted Marines by their proper rank. Even worse, some said “good morning” when it was actually evening.
The purpose of this is to finesse our situational awareness, so we were always taking mental pictures of our surroundings.
While playing Dan Hudock’s game, I have to constantly reminding myself to look out for the keywords and some trap questions that can be intuitively answered with the key words. As the result, I still remember most part of the conversation after several weeks. I suppose, in sales, that salesperson are looking for certain outputs from the clients. It could be a subtle smile, a yes, or a handshake, and perhaps when you could pick up some implied clues by replaying the conversation in your head, which leads to a closure. Salesperson must have sharp senses in order to capture the client’s key outputs. This might sound easy but it is hard, just how people would mess up the simple greetings at OCS, but it is a good challenge and a good skill to have.
BoweryJE22