The Plumber He Said, "Never Flush a Tampoon." *

Onboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, the heads (toilets) are not working as required.

And sailors are being written up if they, out of desperation, look for an emergency substitute:

The Navy’s newest aircraft carrier has a messy problem. Since deploying in May, the Norfolk, Va.-based carrier George H.W. Bush has grappled with widespread toilet outages, at times rendering the entire ship without a single working head.

But it’s no laughing matter. Sailors tell of combing the ship for up to an hour to find a place to do their business, if they can find one at all. Others have resorted to urinating in showers or into the industrial sinks in their work stations. Some men are using bottles and emptying the contents over the giant ship’s side, while some women are holding it in for so long that they are developing health problems, according to sources on the ship.

The sailors blame the ship’s vacuum system. But the Navy is blaming sailors for flushing “inappropriate material” down the toilets.

Some are taking extra showers when they need to urinate. Women are finding working men’s heads and putting a sentry at the door. Or they’ll use the industrial sinks in their workspaces. Men are sneaking onto catwalks to surreptitiously relieve themselves without getting busted by a master-at-arms on patrol, searching for sailors using anywhere but a head as a bathroom.

“If you violate a direct order, you go to mast. We had one seaman go thus far,” one chief told Navy Times.

An AIRLANT spokesman confirmed that one sailor received non-judicial punishment for “urinating on a sponson.”


*bonus points for identifying the source of the post title.