The Importance of Being on-Time

The Importance of Being On-Time

[Name Ommited]

Time. It is the universes theoretical constant that governs, sometimes with an iron fist, the everyday lives of humans. Time has many different measurements. There are stellar measurements, such as the phases of the moon or the rotation of the Earth around our Sun. There are extremely long measurements of time, like the geological epoch that can span for tens of millions of years, and there are very small measurements such as planck time, a unit commonly used to measure events in quantum mechanics and is so small that a single unit of planck time is the equivalent of 10-43 seconds.[3-5]

People have always measured time in one form or another. Beginning with our ancestors, who began to measure the phases of the moon almost 30,000 years ago, to the Egyptians who began to measure time using shadows cast by large Obelisks, effectively being the very first sundials.[1,2]

Today, we use a common standard of time in our day-to-day lives. Sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-four hours in a day, three hundred sixty-five days in a solar year; but time has always been used to measure and record important events. This has never been more evident as it has been in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this era of human history, punctuality is one of the key elements of our workforce, and particularly in the military.

In our world, being on-time carries more with it than just a smooth operation of events. Here, being at the right place at the right time can mean the difference between life and death. As members of the United States Navy, we have made a commitment to obey our unique laws and regulations, of which precision and conscionable timing is reflected. In our Uniform Code of Military Justice, timeliness is addressed under our Punitive Articles.[6]

Chapter 10, Article 86

Any member of the armed forces who, without authority–

(1) fails to go to his appointed place of duty at the time prescribed;

(2) goes...