This is a daily one hour cleaning period announced by the OX over the IMC. This can be done at shore facilities as well as on board ships. This can be done any time during the day, but is mostly called in the afternoon. Our ship never did have an XO’s happy hour while I was on board. He mostly left it up to us to make sure our spaces were clean and inspection ready at all time. IF, we ever had to be told to clean our space, you were in trouble.

About two to three times a week I would wax the deck in my passage way. Once a month I would strip the old wax off and start over again. I even went so far as to paint my passageway and super detail everything, just to keep the XO at bay. Other sailors just let their spaces go down hill and they paid for it. Most of the time they were not told to clean their space until we pulled back into port. Then they were told, clean it then you can leave.

The reasoning behind the happy hour was to keep things inspection ready all the time. While watching the PBS special on the Nimitz they talked about the happy hour. The Command Master Chief was walking around and would find guys sitting down not cleaning. Needless to say they did not stay sitting down.

Larger ships might need to have a happy hour daily. Smaller ships can get by with doing so less frequently. Every morning just after everyone was woken up we held sweepers, cleaning. That normally took us about 10-15 minutes.