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Don’t mess with a Navy Chief’s ‘dirty’ coffee cup

by thebesig••74

Navy sailors noticed that their chief’s coffee cup was dirty, with residue from previous servings of coffee stuck on it. Being good sailors, they decided to scrub the coffee cup, to give it a good cleaning. They figured that their boss would appreciate a nice clean cup to drink his coffee from. However, instead of appreciation, their chief lost his stuff. This is not a single event in the Navy.

From the Military Times:

Sailors, for example, but more specifically those those who have achieved the rank of chief, have one superstition that extends into the unsanitary. They never clean their coffee mugs.

The first time I learned of this I was 23 and working in an office in Washington. The director, a Navy veteran whose cubicle I shared, had a note stuck to his mug that read, “Don’t wash me.”

When I inquired, he informed me that it was something he picked up as a sailor. He’d done this with his black coffee for so long, in fact, that he’d simply grown to enjoy the taste of the weeks, months, or years old residue.

“It adds a lot of flavor,” he said.

“Gross,” I thought, shrugging it off — until now.

Sailors, as it turns out, have an extensive history of keeping coffee cups as grimy as can be. The explanations for doing so, meanwhile, are all over the map.

Some internet users suggest it’s bad luck, others say the dirtiness of the mug is a sign of seniority, while there are also those who simply believe it’s a matter of taste.

“You clean a mug of one, it’s a death sentence for that person,” wrote one Reddit poster about taking dish soap to a sailor’s treasured coffee chalice.

The Military Times has more information here.

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74 thoughts on “Don’t mess with a Navy Chief’s ‘dirty’ coffee cup”

      1. W/O 91/92 season and 95/96 season. Plus 2 summers as a civvy after I got out. 2011/12 Summer and 12/13 Summer.

      1. Nothing was more comfortable than a broken in pair of green canvas “jungle” boots.

        1. I wore those as long as I could. The bonus was it aggravated the hell out of some of those stick-up-the-ass types. Hey, regs said they could be worn “as long as they were serviceable and available”. No wear out date specified. Plus, you only had to shine half a boot.

          1. PLDC/WLC (transitional phase…I claim PLDC, but my certificate shows WLC), Fort Knox, 2006. Young SGT fm2176 has both ACU and BDU uniforms. Regulation permits the wear of Desert Tan boots with the BDU, so for chow one morning, SGT fm breaks out the Frustration Uniform. Everyone knew me as the only one in the class sporting a CIB and 101st ABN combat patch on my sewn-up BDUs with highly shined black boots. The Frustration Uniform? BDUs with pin-on Air Assault, no combat patch or CIB, and Desert Tan boots.

            I grabbed my traditional (for the time) meal including strawberries and cottage cheese, sat down at the table with the most females so I could explain in detail that my meal looked like what the instructors found in the female latrine, and listened to the instructors complain about “I know he has matching boots” without any of them approaching me about my odd, but regulation, uniform.

            That was a fun time. The instructors made a habit of having us do React to Indirect Fire battle drills on the march to the classrooms, so I started finding the largest mud puddle to jump into, spending the next eight hours sitting down in a wet, dirty, and stinky uniform. I’d also stand at parade rest for SFC Dominguez (a cardboard standee Green Beret used for recruiting at the time) and place him behind the podium while the class was waiting for the Commandant. For some odd reason, I was called out by one of the instructors for being crazy. I was just having fun. It was nice meeting that same instructor later (he an E-7, me an E-6), when we were at an Annual Recruiting Conference in New Orleans.

        2. Especially if you went to Da Boot Man and had the steel shanks taken out and Vibram soles put on – they felt like tennis shoes.

          1. I guess the steel shanks weren’t needed when you were no longer in punji stake territory

        3. I had a pair I wore in Ranger School. Took them to the Viet of the Nam and wore them in the bush for the 5.5 months before the 4th ID was deactivated. In my new division, I went on R&R, and while I was gone my hooch mate on the battalion FSB dx’d those beautifully worn jungle boots. I coulda killed him when I found out what he did. He was a leg staff puke who never humped a rifle and a ruck. Eff’n REMF Signal officer.

          1. Kept my jungle boots after I got out of the Army, well stained with the red earth of Quan Loi & vicinity. My parents decided to throw them out while I was away at school. I still miss them….. The boots, not the parents. Still wore the regular boots for years–very comfy, very practical.

    2. Shane Kunzeman’s “parting gift” from 1SG Carlos (still one of the funniest comments I ever read here at TAH).

      8465-00-165-6838 Cup, Water, Canteen (w/Folding Wire Handle)

        1. I think someone changed the post in the midst of me thinking up a reply to the other post that you all took down. That is what happens when you post mostly from your phone.

          Oh yeah and don’t fuck with Navy Chief’s. Coffee cups or otherwise.

  4. If it’s only black coffee (no creamer, no sugar, no other adulterants) what’s “unsanitary”? It’s only colored flavored water. AND KEEP YER MITTS OFFA MY CUP!
    Work HQ just got us new coffee mugs, I’m just getting started on the “process”, I can still see too much white ceramic. Give it time……

    1. Yup. People who have to adulterate their coffee in order to make it palatable to them don’t really like the taste of coffee anyway so the finer points of a properly seasoned mug are lost on them to begin with.

    2. Same here, when I drink coffee (or tea), it’s only the darkest of dark, untainted by sugar, cream, or other contaminants. If it spills, it ain’t attracting ants, and if I forget it and it sits in the car during the heat of summer, it’s still plenty drinkable when I get off.

      1. My father used to drink tea in the morning. It was so dark, though, that it looked like coffee. In Jr. HS I drank a cup for breakfast on an empty stomach. Big mistake.

  6. Yeah, my coffee mug was cleaned once. I think it was during the Carter Administration. Never again.

          1. Ok. 📱 1-800-B-E-R-N-A-T-H

            *Ring*

            The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected. No further information is available. Goodbye.

            1. I did not see that coming. Incidentally, that was probably Bernath’s last thought as his windscreen filled with the earth.

              1. Yeppers. Although, these days, the Canaryville Irish are probably drinking Miller Lite. 🤣

      3. I always found a mix of brandy & frangelico worked best in my coffee – as long as you didn’t overdo it on the brandy, your breath just smelled like hazelnut coffee.

  9. That’s a “seasoned” mug. If you wash it the coffee tastes nasty! No need to wash a mug if the only thing ever in it is straight black coffee. If you add cream or sugar (a sin if you ask me) you better wash it…that crap breeds bacteria that can make you sick.

  10. Here’s the straight dope:

    7350-00-272-9359 Drinking Cup, 7.5 oz, China, trimmed with gold and blue lines and the Navy seal, appropriate for the Flag Officers Mess.

    (P.S., not for microwave use) / s

    1. Only 7 1/2 oz? Puny! A healthy cup of anything should be at least 12 oz, maybe even 18 oz. GAK!

  11. Still, to this very day, KEEP YOUR D**KSKINNERS OFFA MY COFFEE CUP! You clean my cup and they will read about your suffering ten thousand years from now.

  12. Bagram, March 2002. Our supply sergeant, SGT R comes over to aid with our increased logistics needs. She disapproves of our cleaning habits and starts working on the coffee pot. SGT K tries to stop her, explaining that it’s bad luck. She shoos him away and sterilizes it. We got mortared that night. She never cleaned the pot again.

    1. Why did she never clean the pot again? Because she was hit in the mortar fire? Or because she “saw the light” (metaphorically speaking)

      1. She’d have slapped a mortar round out of the way. Toughest Mexican woman I ever met. We were in the field one time near the Tombstone airfield. CBP drops by, warns us about a group of illegals in the area. She grabs her rifle, gonna charge out and capture them. Had to explain that it was probably a bad an idea for an armed Mexican woman to be running around in the dark while CBP was in an active pursuit.

  13. As a retired CPO who now works in the civilian world, my coffee cup has become somewhat of a legend/mascot in our office. New employees come by my desk just to take a look at the cup they’ve heard so much about. I’m working from home today and this will be old news by Monday so no picture. Sorry.

    As another commenter mentioned, it’s seasoning. It’s like a cast iron skillet or pot. If you wash them, you ruin the seasoning and have to start over.

  14. Waaaay back in 1978, between my USAF and US Army careers, I was working at Armadale Castle on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Chopped out the overgrown rhododendrons, stooked hay, dipped sheep, etc. That day I was working in the tea shop so I decided to be very industrious and cleaned all the stainless steel tea pots.

    Big mistake. I was not “chewed out” … just yelled at. Okay, I was semi-politely chewed out. One of the local workers explained that cleaning out the pots with a scrubber and soap removed the built up flavor inside. I guess it masked the stainless steel flavor?

    Anyway, lesson learnt!

    1. Not only does cleaning with soap and water remove the built up flavor out of the vessel, it also (no matter HOW thoroughly you rinse) leaves a soap residue taint in the flavor. And THAT takes forever to remove, even with repeated usage.

            1. And now we know why she is an ex. I woulda needed bail money. You are much better off, My Brother. We will raise a glass of Jameson, chased by a mug of Guinness, Sacred to The Memory and in Honor of, The Dutch Oven

              Down heah…it’s a hanging offence.

      3. Old aquarium trick – scrub the inside with table salt. Destroys the soap film completely, and rinsed clean. Says the guy still using the cup he got for Christmas…’86.

    1. Back in ’88, I knew of a HM that messed with our Chief’s coffee cup (it was as NH Corpus Christi). Went in his office when he was on leave, cleaned it out and sent it to CSR to have it gas sterilized. All HOLY HELL broke loose when the Chief came back to work…

      Last I heard, the guy was still doing field day of the entire hospital (now clinic) building.

      Almost sent a couple of HM’s to Range 400 at MCAGCC for thinking about messing with my coffee cup… the LPO pulled them aside and beat some sense into them real quick.

  17. A lot has to do with the coffee itself. Midwatch and in-flight “all night burner” 90 weight coffee in not consumed for pleasure. It’s drunk black as sin for a reason; I’ve watched creamer curdle in the stuff.

    A cup stained with that is hard earned over a long time. I cried when mine broke.
    *grin*

    1. Wow, that’s awfully kind of you. I have a clock that needs cleaning. I’ll send it on over!

  19. Never had someone try to clean my coffee cup but I had to clean it myself every couple or three months. I’d leave in a rush on Friday with some coffee left in the bottom and by Monday morning, particularly in the heat of a Virginia coastal summer. There’s some kinda fungus that just loves it some extract of coffee beans because what grew in that cup was sometimes too big to pour down a sink drain. And no, I did not add cream, sugar, non-dairy fat substitutes or any adulterating agent to that special wine-dark liquid that comes from a large U.S. Navy issue percolator.

  20. Guys in A-Div. carried their empty coffee mugs on their belts and we also had an electric coffee urn in the Diesel engine repair shop with coffee mug hangers on the bulkhead.

  21. Some people say a good cup of coffee is one which you can see a dime at the bottom of the cup.
    My idea of a good cup of coffee is where you can see the dime dissolve.
    Wash my cup, travel mug, or my coffee pot at your own peril.

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