“Hi, what do you do on board?” By asking open-ended questions like this, I could better gauge what the crew thought their job was. “Whatever they tell me to do,” he immediately replied with unmistakable cynicism. He knew he was a follower, and not happy with it, but he also was not taking responsibility. He was throwing it back in my face that the command was all screwed up. It was a stunningly insulting thing to say, yet a brilliantly clear description of the problem. I should have been irate. Instead I felt strangely detached—like a scientific observer. “Whatever they tell me to do.” That
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