Back to Square One

Monday was supposed to be our first day wearing our agency uniforms.

For eight weeks we've been looking forward to shedding the standard penguin suits (black slacks, white dress shirt, black tie) for the actual police uniforms. I spent the entire weekend preening my uniforms to ensure they were in perfect condition. I was sitting on my couch for hours with my camping headlamp on looking for loose threads in the seams, on the collar, and even inside the pockets. I had my military creases neatly pressed, the brass nametags properly positioned and a keen shine polished into my boots.

After our morning run of about 5 miles, we ran to the locker rooms and prepared to don our new uniforms. Then, we found out one of the female recruits brought the short sleeve uniform shirt (we've been told for months to wear long sleeves). Since our class does everything in unison (or not at all), we were quickly told to forget about uniforms and return to the penguins. Unfortunately, one of the guys in my class didn't think we'd need the black and whites anymore and didn't bother to bring his in. Again, since we all have the be in the same dress, we were given three minutes to change out of the black & whites and into our tactical gear (cargo pants, tee-shirt, and baseball cap). This time, several classmates were missing hats and our sergeant was furious. The next order was given to change back into the morning,s exercise gear within two minutes. I had a clean excercise shirt in my locker but most of the others did not. After a sweaty morning of running and doing situps on the canal bank, most of the shirts were disgustingly dirty. The sergeant could not believe that some people didn't have extra exercise shirts and became even more angry with us. This was supposed to be the morning that his class showed off its new uniforms and he was embarassed in front of the academy commander. We've got to be careful not to develop a reputation for being a class of screw-ups.

His frustration gave rise to a fun-filled morning of pushups, situps, leglifts, and other drills in the wet bermuda grass. We then spent the rest of the day in class wearing our dirty, smelly, sweaty exercise gear.

Needless to say, Monday was a bad day for class #407 but hopefully we'll straighten up soon and get to someday wear our uniforms.