THE PENTAGON — Following the Navy's unpopular decision last month to end the rating system that has identified sailors by their functional job, branch leadership is reportedly shocked to learn sailors are not total morons who will immediately embrace an idea killing a 200-year-old tradition.

“We figured that once we made our decision, the fleet would simply shut up and color," said Cmdr. Marco Guevara, a Navy spokesperson. "Not because we think sailors are disciplined professionals who follow the chain of command, but really because we assumed they’re all too dumb to know that we think they’re idiots and we like to fuck with them.”

According to sources, the Secretary of the Navy’s staff was surprised not only by the overwhelming backlash that erupted by the loss of terms such as "yeoman," "fireman," and "corpsman" in both traditional and social media, but when they learned of a White House petition against the move that had garnered nearly 100,000 signatures, Secretary Ray Mabus reportedly remarked, “Wow, maybe sailors aren’t mindless robots who will blindly accept any cock and bull story we feed them.”