Staff command works hard to accomplish nothing

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Members of the 143rd Support Command staff worked late into the evening last week in an extraordinary effort to accomplish absolutely nothing, sources confirmed today.

Capt. Roger Mercer, the command’s operations officer, began the day by scheduling three pre-meetings to prepare for a meeting that would determine the agenda for a 5 p.m. meeting with the commanding officer.

Attendees were instructed to “come with an open mind and be prepared to discuss,” though nobody was told what they would be discussing.

“We really need to get left of this,” Mercer said during the first pre-meeting. “But before we make any decisions, I’d like to form a working group and circle back.”

By lunch, the working group had established a battle rhythm, created a Teams channel, appointed a note-taker and scheduled its first meeting for the following week.

Several subordinate units contacted Mercer seeking guidance on upcoming requirements.

“Just do it like you did last time,” he told each of them, referring to tasks they had never performed before.

When pressed for clarification, Mercer forwarded a four-year-old operations order for an unrelated exercise with the instructions: “Same basic concept. Just update the dates.”

“Mercer is the best staff officer I have,” Col. Daniel Wallace said. “His ability to synergize, circle back, sidebar and piggyback off what someone else just said is second to none.”

Wallace praised Mercer for occupying what he called the ideal staff-officer performance band.

“He’s not good enough that anyone would risk putting him somewhere important, but he’s nowhere near bad enough to get rid of.”

The command’s administrative section was equally productive.

Samantha Breck, a GS-7, configured her inbox to automatically reject all incoming paperwork with the message, “Incorrect. Fix and resubmit,” before leaving for a three-hour lunch.

When soldiers emailed asking what was incorrect, Breck replied, “Someone at your command knows how to do this. Ask around.”

Nobody did.

At 4:45 p.m., the command’s master task tracker showed 37 overdue requirements, 14 tasks awaiting clarification and not a single completed item.

Staff members nevertheless congratulated one another on a productive day and went home.

Two civilian employees and a major remained behind for another hour discussing fantasy football, retirement eligibility and how the Army had gone to shit sometime around the first Obama administration.

At 2 a.m., Mercer began calling units conducting field training to demand why they were following instructions his office had issued earlier that day.

He then turned off his phone and went back to sleep.

Mercer awoke five hours later to dozens of frantic messages asking whether the mission had changed.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I meant to tell them never mind.”

At press time, Mercer was drafting an after-action review identifying subordinate units’ failure to communicate as the primary cause of the confusion.