Instructions Not Included

Here is a story about the first weeks after arriving to my first duty assignment in the Air Force. In the military busy work could be anything from mowing lawns that don't need to be mowed to renovating buildings on the cheap so the government didn't have to hire contractors. Busy work happened all the time to everyone and is a major part of GI life. The group of guys and girls I arrived with assigned to live in the same dorm were given the best busy work ever, but I didn't know it at the time. As a matter of fact, you could fill a yarmulke with the things I knew about my new life in the military right about then.
So, the morning comes for the band of brothers and sisters to report to the dorm manager to work for Uncle Sam and the washout sergeant in charge of our dorm gives us the assignment. We are to go across the field and help empty out another dorm that is going to be renovated.
Pardon my digression but I have to explain the washout sergeant. When you are progressing in a military career, earning stripes and responsibility, there are requirements in testing and merit that you must adhere to in order to progress, stay in your career of choice, and not get kicked out. Well, if you can't pass muster in one way or another, or maybe you piss off someone in leadership they will find a "Siberia" to send you to. One of those no-man's-lands is being a dorm manager.
Our group of about 20 or so men and women ranging in ages from 18 to 25 looked like that old Cocoa-Cola commercial "I want to buy the world a coke". We didn't really talk much and stood in the cold, morning sun outside the building we were directed to waiting for someone to come and guide us. After about half an hour another washout sergeant came out and divided us in to groups of 8 and directed us to separate floors.
The instructions were simple. Empty all the rooms of everything but curtains and carpet.
That was it.
The only other statement was that we had to be done by 4 pm.
I asked the tall guy next to me if he wanted to pair up and he said yes. We walked down the 3rd floor hallway about halfway and turned in to a room on our right. We started grabbing mattresses, bed frames, headboards, dressers, coat racks, night stands, lamps, and anything else that wasn't nailed down. We would walk down the hallway, get to the outdoor staircase, carry everything down the three flights of open air riveted steel steps. He and I were able to empty a room in about 45 minutes.
It was 10 o'clock and the morning wasn't being kind to us. Everyone we passed or stopped to talk to as we paused, sweating said the same thing...we aren't going to finish this in six hours. There was a sense of desperation, of confusion. Me and my partner paused at the bottom of the outdoor stairs where everyone had begun to lay down their furniture. A menagerie of items piled up in no discernible order. I stood there panting and thinking.
Just then someone threw a book off the stairs on the fourth floor. As the wind and velocity tore the pages from it and fluttered to the ground I pondered something. 
My eyes passed from that fourth floor open door down to the stacks of furniture and piled mattresses.
Then I got it! An idea! We would finish in time after all!
I asked my partner to help me pull all the mattresses to the center right under the stairs off in the grass. As we got them in a pile similar to a bonfire I announced my plan.
He and I would go up to the room we were already emptying and start with the mattresses. We will toss them over the stairs and down the three flights to the pile we made below. If everything went without a hitch we would try heavy furniture. If that went well, we would tell everyone.
I can't say for certain about my partner but I know I was giddy. I ran up those stairs and down to the room. When he grabbed the other end of the mattress we almost trotted down the hallway. When we stood at the edge of the stairwell with a mattress stood on end I leaned over and yelled out "LOOK OUT BELOW!" as he tipped it over the edge.
A slow motion real whirred to life. The mattress made two revolutions around itself before striking the pile we had made below. When it struck it bent violently in half and then sprung back to shape and popped up in the air like a cheerleader after a goal. Again it fell back to Earth and laid on the pile and created a short bridge to some dressers.
I announced it as a success. Me and my partner went back to the room for a dresser. When we returned to the stairwell he was going to yell to clear the way and I was tipping. Several of the groups had stopped working after hearing our cries and the quick buzz that was spreading of what we had done. Half the workforce stood by as I lifted the dresser over the rails and dropped it down the many feet below. It made a nose dive and hit the pile center. It didn't bounce but twisted quickly on to its back and rested off to the right.
We had a plan!
Everyone was in!
Soon it wasn't work anymore. It was a line of people standing on the staircase with their respective pieces of furniture waiting for the chance to drop. Mattresses went flailing and then were pushed back in to the center of the newly burgeoning pile of furniture. We all took turns making walls of dressers around the mattress center to avoid any undo destruction. It took a few heavy furniture drops from the fourth floor for everyone to realize that anything hitting at the wrong angle could turn in to a projectile. Several times a group of people had to dive for cover as a 150 pound chest of drawers came at them after striking off center.
We lost a few pieces. Sometimes a night stand or dresser would land in the middle and stay there before being cleared when the next item was dropped.
What a mighty explosion of wood it would make. Some clapping and laughing would be had after such "accidents".
It took three hours for us to clear the whole building.
No one came back to check on us so we sat out in the grass for the remaining hours laughing and reminiscing about the best of the bounces, explosions, and scattershots.
Eventually both of the dorm managers came back to check on our progress. Their shock lasted for minutes. They walked through the building. The stood at the pile. Mouths agape.
Finally, one of them came to his senses and barked at everyone to line up in the parking lot...NOW!
We stood there as he walked the line yelling: WHY! WHO DID THIS! I WANT ANSWERS!
I stood firm and raised my hand. I said it was my idea and that I convinced everyone to follow along.
He yelled in my face for a good 10 minutes about the dismal state of the Air Force, their recruitment practices, my mental capacity, my mother's choices, my facial expressions, how I smelled, what he was going to do to me, what the Air Force was going to do to me, how much money was just wasted, how much trouble he was in, and how much trouble I was going to be in as long as he worked in the dorm and I lived there.
Eventually an officer showed up and dismissed everyone.
We went back to our rooms and cleaned up.
I waited for the other shoe to fall.
I waited for a police escort.
Gingerly I went to dinner at the chow hall. When everyone was clapping me on the back and laughing at dinner telling story after story I knew it was going to be alright.
Oh, dear reader, how I wish you could have been there.