Please Refrain From “An Officer and a Gentleman” Workplace Rescues
An Urgent Memo
September 15th, 1982
Mount George Manufacturing Facility
Prosthetics Division
From: Management
To: All Employees
Due to the current popularity of the movie An Officer and a Gentleman, we have experienced a rash of incidents whereby boyfriends will walk onto the factory floor, lift an employee from her workstation, and then carry her from the premises to the applause of her coworkers.
Please note that these intrusions are strictly against company policy. While An Officer and a Gentleman is an enthralling tale about love, duty, and the resilience of dreams, acting out scenes from this film is wholly incompatible with the operation of dangerous machinery. Having unauthorized personnel on the floor, often in loose-fitting, rented naval officer costumes and accompanied by a friend with a portable stereo playing the hit song “(Love Lifts Us) Up Where We Belong”, is nothing less than a prelude to tragedy.
In addition, productivity suffers when we have to constantly stop and start the assembly line to replace workers as they are whisked away to their new, more emotionally gratifying lives.
I would also like to take this opportunity to remind you all of the enormous value our products have to those who need them. There is a long waiting list filled with the names of disabled children and veterans, all needing the prosthetic limbs manufactured at this plant. I’m sure many of them also enjoyed An Officer and a Gentleman, but even so, I would hate to explain this as the reason for the delays in the delivery of their limbs.
So, effective immediately, the doors to the factory floor will remain closed at all times to non-employees dressed as naval officers. Even if they bear the rank of admiral.
Furthermore, we will no longer be rehiring anyone who is carried off the factory floor only to later realize that, in love or not, they still need a job.
To those of you who do not yet fully grasp the gravity of abandoning your workstation, I would refer you to the scene in An Officer and a Gentleman where Zach Mayo is told he is going to be mustered out of Aviator Candidate School, even after he endured such torments as being sprayed with a hose while jogging in place and being referred to as “Mayo-nnaise” by Sergeant Emil Foley:
Sgt Foley: I want your DOR!
Zack Mayo: I ain’t going to quit!
Sgt Foley: You can be free. You and your daddy can go whore-chasing together!
Zack Mayo: No sir, I ain’t going to do it! I ain’t going to quit!
Sgt Foley: Then you can forget about it. You’re out!
Zack Mayo: Don’t you do it! Don’t! You… I GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GO! I got nowhere else to g… I got nothin’ else.
I implore you to meditate on this powerful scene, expertly rendered by Richard Gere and Louis Gossett Jr. If you feel similarly about your employment here at the Mount George Manufacturing Facility, then I do not anticipate any more problems going forward.
Mark Russell is the author of God Is Disappointed in You, published by Top Shelf Productions and available at fine bookstores everywhere.
