Day Check and Stay Check By AFCM (AW) Pedro Gonzalez
This article is dedicated to the night shift supervisors. You are the heart and soul of your maintenance department. I often wonder if that desk Chief ever went home. Early in my career, just like many of you, I worked the night shift – night check or “stay check” as we used to call it back then. It seems no matter what we did, we were always
there so late. We often greeted day check on numerous occasions. We were often tired and could rarely plan our off duty time. I thought when I am in charge, I will put an end to it. I couldn’t understand why we always seemed to get the short end of the stick. Was it because we were on sea duty? It always seemed like our sister squadron was going home before we were. I also felt the desk Chief did not care about us or maybe the Chief did not want to go home. Eventually, I became a shift supervisor. I soon learned the amount of time we stayed at work depended on us. I still thought my desk Chief did not want to go home, but now I was in a position to do something about it. As you advance to positions of greater responsibility and experience, you will encounter roadblocks preventing you from completing your assigned tasks. I frequently asked myself, do we have enough people? Are our technicians trained and qualified? What are the priorities for the night, for the week and long-range? Lastly, how are we going to get there from here?
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Quinton A. Lee
8
MECH
As a Petty Officer second class (E-5) and shift supervisor, it was not always easy to understand all the moving pieces that play into the “big picture” of managing aviation maintenance. It often felt like we were working in isolation — airframes against the rest of the squadron.
