 I'm the course director for eight years, and I absolutely love my job. I don't actually get to do protocol anymore because I'm actually teaching everyone in the Air Force as many as I can from the Protocol Fundamentals course. I'm retired. I spent 28 years in the military. I retired as a senior master sergeant, didn't quite get to be a chief, but you know what, I'm honored to be standing here in front of all this leadership. It just really warms my heart to see all of you, and I know you're all out there doing great things for the Air Force. My butterflies are flying around. I haven't got them in formation yet, so anyways, and I absolutely loved my career. If I could have stayed in forever, I would have, but eventually they make you go away because you get old, and so here I am, so anyways, we'll talk a little bit about protocol, which is everyone's favorite topic, right? Because everybody really understands all the rules that go along with protocol. Okay, so this is our overview because we always have to have an overview slide in AETC, so we're going to talk about my course a little bit. Our protocol references, some of them have recently been updated, and we're going to talk about why some of them have been updated. What is protocol, and what is it that we do? We'll talk about professional image a little bit, some social functions, some dining, some dress, and then some updates, so just a few things, okay? They gave me 30 minutes, I'll try to stay in that time frame. Okay, this is my course right here, it is seven days long, it's here at Maxwell at Acre Center, like I said, and the objective of our course is to teach people that are new in protocol, or even have been in protocol for a while, some of the updates that we have, or the people that have never, that can't even spell protocol. They come in, they have no clue, and we get them spun up so that they can come back to their bases, or they're going forward, they're deploying, and they're able to at least put flags in the right order, put people in precedence order, and all the different ceremonies that we do, and seven days we try to give them as much information and encouragement as possible, and it's also an opportunity for them to network with each other, because a lot of the deployers that come to the course are coming to the course with somebody that they're going to be actually deploying with, because we work our classes around the buckets that you have four times a year, so that these people can actually meet each other ahead of time and spend some time together and get to know each other prior to deploying. Okay, so, and we teach them lots of different things, like I said, administration, meetings, escort duties, seating, the whole nine yards. So the criteria for the course, and this has gotten to be kind of a difficult topic lately, because we have, protocol deployers are our number one folks that we get into our course, and we usually have 10 to 15 in every single course, and since protocol, and I don't know if most of you know this, we no longer fall under FSS per se, so it used to be that the enlisted and the officers in force support were the ones that did all the deployments and pretty much were the ones that worked in protocol. That is no longer true. It's anybody that wants to deploy or work in a protocol office, it does not have to be force support, it can be anybody that wants, and maintainers, transportation, medics, it doesn't really matter, anybody can do it, and we try to get them spun up. So it's no longer falls under force support, it was a little difficult at first when we first started this new program pulling out the force support, because the deployments would come to the base, and since it's open to everyone, a lot of commanders would say, oh, give that to force support, because they're the ones that are supposed to do it, no, it's anybody, anybody can volunteer, anybody that wants to. And then we go into the folks that are actually sitting in protocol billets or protocol seats. So if they're working in an office in a protocol billet, they're the second people that can come, or if they're working in a protocol office, because if you're at wing level, you know that most protocol offices at wing level have one funded billet, and that's usually the chief's billet. And everybody else that you have is somebody that we call out of hide. So we borrow them from another squadron for about a year, hopefully two if we can, and they come in, but they're in protocol offices, so they come next. Then we do the Guard Reserve, other DoD, other branches of service, and we haven't been able to get anybody but the top two in for probably the last year and a half, because we have so many people that are now doing the special duty that we have, protocols now with special duty, AA, and also because there's a big turnover in protocol because it's open to everyone. So before, when it was FSS, a lot of the FSS people had already worked in protocol, so a lot of times they didn't need to come to the course. Until now, since it's anybody, a lot of them do actually need the course. So that's what I do for a living right here. These are our protocol references. This is our Bible. I carry mine around with me everywhere I go, especially when you're working in a protocol job, because people tend to disagree with us, so to speak, and say, no, that's not how you do it. We do it this way. Well, we try to do it the right way, and sometimes we get challenged. So if we get challenged, we can pull out the AFI and we can say, hey, it says right here, this is how we do it. Most protocol people know what they're doing. They have the AFI, they've had enough training, so cut them some slack. So our first one's AFI 34-1201. If you want to take a picture of it, these are great guidelines to have. This one kind of talks about the policies in protocol, the flags, transportation funding, and it kind of gives guidance on all of these areas. And then 34-1202, the Guide to Protocol, actually mirrors 12-01, and it kind of gives you the how-tos. So that would be the place you would go if you were doing a retirement ceremony for someone, or a change of command, any kind of ceremony that you would do. That would be the place that would tell you exactly what the sequence of events would be. And it's a guideline. You don't have to do everything that's in the sequence of events. It may have an invocation. Maybe somebody doesn't want an invocation, so you don't have to do that. It'll say post the colors or present the colors. Me personally, I always have them presented. We have to make sure that everything in colors takes way too much time, and we want to make some of our ceremonies, you know, you don't want to sit there for three hours during a ceremony, to wait for them to bring the flags up to the stage when they can just come in, they're already on the stage and they can present them. So it makes things a little bit easier, less moving parts, less opportunity for protocol to get in trouble. Because we get in trouble a lot. We can do 100 things perfectly. Every event is just precise, wonderful. And then that garbage truck drives through your static display. And that's what people remember. It wasn't my fault, I promise you. But the wing commander looked at me and said, why did that garbage truck drive through there? And I'm like, I have no idea. The maintenance group commander promised me that it would be quiet hours. And I don't know what happened. So I think, Colonel, I won't say his name. You might want to ask him. So I'll take the blame for a lot of things, but not a garbage truck driving by aircraft that close. Okay? The reason that the first AFI changed on 9 June of 17, if some of you remember, we used to have an official flag folding ceremony. How many of you remember that there was only one flag folding ceremony that we could do? A few of you. Like two of you. Three of you. Okay. Well, it used to be we could only, years ago, you could do any flags folding ceremony that you wanted to do. And then people were doing, I'm not going to say, I would say just different things. Okay? You know, this fold is for my grandma and this fold is for my aunt Susie and this fold, you know, and the list would go on and on and it just got completely out of hand. So we came up with an official flag folding ceremony. And we had the verbiage for what was to be said at the ceremony. Well, a few years ago, if you've been on YouTube, there was an incident at a retirement ceremony where someone had went up and began doing an unofficial ceremony. And then a couple military people went up and tried to, instead of just letting it go, sometimes you just have to let it go. Okay? The ceremony has started. It was this individual's retirement ceremony. They had planned it that way, but apparently two individuals got up and started trying to escort this individual out of the room. It caused a huge controversy. So that's why in that particular AFI there is no longer an official flag folding ceremony that we have written in the AFI. Okay? And then our last, our Air Force AFPD 3412, which is only three pages long. I cannot yet figure out why we just don't put all of these together, but I'm not in charge of this. But anyways, and this one really is just a three page. It talks about DVs. DVs are general officers and above. Breeder generals and above. So if you're a wing level, is your wing commander a DV? Darn right he is. And don't tell him otherwise. And when colonels come to your base, they're DVs, predominantly most of the time. Now when a colonel goes to a MAGCOM, unless it's a command chief or chief master under the Air Force, they're probably not going to be a DV. So when people come here to Maxwell, a colonel is not a DV. I think it's three star and above for Maxwell, because we have so many DVs that come here. But in our AFI, it does say that it's Brigadier General or higher is official DV, but we all know that's not true. But I just threw that out there for you. Okay. So what is protocol? We create a distraction-free environment so that our leadership can do their jobs. And if you notice, I threw in a couple pictures of Chief Bright and General Goldfein, our newest, well not our newest, our current leadership. So they can do the job that they need to do, or at any level, at MAGCOM level, at wing level, that they can do what they need to do without being distracted. They're not doing itineraries. They're not planning lunches. They're not planning transportation. They're not planning lodging. They're not doing any of those things. That's what we do. That's our job, to make those things happen. And if they did all that, our lives would be great, but they would just be super, super even more busy than they are now. Okay. Our areas of responsibility, number one is precedence. Precedence is the baseline for everything that we do in protocol. If we don't have precedence, we can't do anything. We can't seat people. We can't introduce people. We don't know where people go. So we have a couple AFIs, or not AFIs. We have DB lists or precedence lists. And you can get these from your protocol office. We have the Air Force protocol precedence list, and it puts everybody in order. The President is number one, so obviously. And then we have the Department of Defense order of precedence as well. And this is so when we have other branches of service, we know how to put them in order. And we want to make sure that we put people in the correct order because they know what order they're supposed to be in. And if we put them in the wrong order, we will hear about it very, very quickly. So we try to put people in the correct order at all times. Now, sometimes we run into, we call it a gray area. We may have a function that there's a couple people that don't like each other. Every couple spouses don't like each other. And the commander knows that. And will let us know so that we make sure we don't sit those people together. Because we don't want unhappy people at our events, right? We want everybody to be really happy and have a really good time. So precedence is really, really important in what we do. It's the very first lesson that we teach so that they can understand how to put people in the right proper precedence order, okay? We do ceremonies, pretty much all ceremonies that are done on the base are done by us. But keep in mind, if you're doing a retirement ceremony at your squadron level, group level, and the wing commander is not coming, and I'm just using wing as an example because a lot of you could be Magcom or above, we don't necessarily get involved in those. If we have time, we'll review your scripts, your programs, your invitations, those type of things. But keep in mind how busy we are just taking care of our commander. So a lot of times we can't get too far down into the weeds and do this for everyone because we'd have to have a staff of 20, 30 people and you know that's not going to happen in protocol. It's just not, okay? We do all the event planning for the base, flight line protocol, lunches, dinners, socials, meetings, conferences, DV visits, all the customs and courtesies. We do everything, really. To be quite honest, we do it all. We do it all. We're really, really busy, busy, busy people, okay? Let me go back here. There we go. And at the bottom, I've got protocol makes memories and that's one of the, on the first day of the class is what I talk about, is we make memories for people. For instance, it's someone's retirement ceremony, okay? And if we don't make sure that the look over a script or help you guys out when we can, but we always try to, retirement ceremony, you get one. You get one retirement ceremony. You don't even get to do it twice. You got one. And we want to make sure that it's the best that it can possibly be and that we make a memory for that person that retired. Squadron change of command. It's their first time being a squadron commander. You know, how exciting is that? And if that turns out, and we do, it's done incorrectly, that's what they're going to remember. It's not that first time that they become a commander to be special and we want to make sure that they have a good memory of that. So we make good memories most of the time. Sometimes things happen, but we try not to do that, okay? So your protocol office at your location, no matter where you're at, they plan official ceremonies and DV visits, as I talked about earlier. If a ceremony is not official and if you look in our AFI, we tell you which ceremonies are official and which ones are not. So make sure you know that. If it's not an official ceremony, volunteers, action officers, or somebody like that, we'll put that event together, okay? And we will help as needed. And like I said before, normally when we're planning events, if the commander is attending or officiating, it falls under our office and we're the ones that will be taking care of that. And these people that work in protocol offices, and I'm not taking away from anything that anybody else does, because I know everyone is busy, but you know, when you go to a change of command or retirement or whatever it is, and it's a 20-minute ceremony, you have no idea the amount of hours that this protocol office has put into this event ahead of time. If the chief of staff comes to a base, it isn't that the chief of staff comes to the base and we take us, you know, half a day to put that whole event together. It's a constant. It takes us days and days and days and days of taking the itinerary down to our commanders, our commanders looking at the itinerary and going, oh, I don't know. I've changed my mind. I want to switch that. And then you switch that. And then you go back down again and they say, oh, I kind of like the way I had it the first time. So your protocol office, they are hardworking. They love their jobs. Protocol isn't a job that there's a middle lane. You either like it or you don't. Some people aren't meant to work in protocol because it's just not for them. It's just too many things going on or they just don't like being around people and talking in front of people. And we got to talk in front of people all the time. And they may have a lot of stars or a lot of stripes and a lot of our young kids that really intimidates them. And we try to teach them that it's okay. You guys are people too. You get up and put your uniform on every day just like everybody else. But a lot of our younger troops get intimidated. And the group that we train are anywhere from Airman First Class all the way up to Lieutenant Colonel. So we have a vast group of people that come to our course. Okay. Professional image. It takes about 30 seconds for you guys to make a... for me to make an impression on you. So when I walked out here, some of you probably went, who is this woman and why is she here? Some of you might even see me walk down the aisle and go, who's this woman in civilian clothes? What is she doing here? But you have 30 seconds to make an impression. And you want to make a good impression. So you want to stand tall? I think I'm standing tall. I'm on the stage because I'm too short to be down there. You probably wouldn't be able to see me in the back. Make eye contact. Make eye contact with if it's somebody you're talking to individually, but don't stare at them. I'm going to make eye contact with you. How you doing? How you doing? And smile. Because if you smile, people are going to smile back at you. You know? And they can hear in your voice. Even when you're on the phone, you could be talking to people. And if you're smiling, they can tell that you're a happy person. Okay? So we... you have an opportunity to make a good first impression and usually, usually I say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. But that's usually. Sometimes somebody's sick. They're just in a bad mood. They're stressed out because they're coming out and talking to 500 people. And they, you know, you just never know. So you might meet them again and go, wow, I really like that person. You know? She's wonderful or he's wonderful. I didn't really get that the first time. Okay? Okay, introductions. This is the proper way to introduce someone. Okay? Do we all do it this way? No, but this is the protocol way. Do I do it all the time this way? Probably not. But it's... you're introducing to you, not to you too. You too is a band. And to you, just remember, happy birthday to you. Okay? So, and if possible, mention something about the person. So my example is Chief Master Sergeant Smith. I would like to introduce you to Staff Sergeant Susan Carter from our dining facility where she's the ensue I see of food management. Just a little blurb. And, you know, that gives the Chief some knowledge of who this person is and what they do for a living. And it's just a nice way to introduce someone. Instead of going, hey, this is Jo. This is Diane. Diane, this is Jo. Hey, say hi to each other. You know, I'm not really sure where she works or he works, but it doesn't matter. But this is just the proper way. You can use it if you'd like. You don't have to. All right, handshakes. I need you to come up here with me. And you know what? I'm not doing this because I think you all don't know how to do handshakes. But we all run into these people. Okay? And so I'm going to show you a few little tips. Okay? Chief Yarborough. Diane Scott Cook. Okay, nice to meet you too. And you're a bone crusher. Wow, he is like killing me. Okay, so somebody is crushing you. Like this guy is crushing me right now. I'm probably going to have to go medic in here. So when somebody is crushing your hand, you've got rings on it, hurts. Just let go. Just let go. And when they no longer have something to hold onto, they're going to let go. So that's what you do with a bone crusher. After you, you know, give them an elbow, okay? All right. And then we've, oh no, I'm not done with you yet. I got to keep you up here for a while, okay? Okay, then there is the limp fish. And we've all encountered these people. I hate this one. This one is probably the one I hate the most. So I'll be the limp fish, okay? Hi, Chief Yarborough. Nice to meet you. And it feels weird. It feels icky. It feels like they don't want to touch you. You know, and you really just, you really just want to, you know, have a regular handshake. And we shake hands a lot. So when we get something like that, we're kind of like creeped out a little bit, okay? We got more. So, okay. All right. So then we've got the politician. Okay? So the politician is this, and I'm going to touch you, okay? Politician. Hey, how's it going? You know, I work in your district, you know, I'm going to do great things. I'm going to, I'm going to build these big buildings and we're going to have all kinds of roads and all kinds of stuff. And I'd really like you to vote for me, okay? You got all good. He's going to vote for me. And also this is, they also can love you. It's like they've got you, okay? I'm the politician and I've got you right here. So just back away. So some people like to get really, really, really close and that's really, really uncomfortable, especially if they have stinky breath. Okay? So anyways. So the correct way to do it is web to web. Just like that. See that? Look at that. Let's give them a round of applause right here. Look at this. Perfect. Okay. All right. Not quite done yet. All right. So this is what we're going to do. We're going to come up. Nice to meet you, chief. We have a couple of pumps and then we're going to let go. But there are the people that like to go, hey, how's it going? I haven't seen you in like forever. And you're going, let go of me, okay? But just, just try to pump, pump. You're done. Okay. Thank you so very much. And shakes are always fun. Okay. And so here we've got this guy here. I got him off the internet. I stole him. I don't know who he is. But look, he's looking directly into their eyes. He's got great posture. He's smiling. And he's got the web to web. Hopefully he's not shaking this poor guy's arm off, which I don't think he is. But it's the ultimate greeting that we do. We teach it to our children when they're doing sports. You know, when they're doing sports, a lot of times they'll shake hands with each other. They'll be five years old. It's something we do in our country that is a way of greeting people. And hopefully we're doing it the correct way. Okay. Business cards. This is my business card. Okay. I don't like a lot of junk on my business card. I don't need emblems, my address. My students are never going to write me a letter. I know that. So I don't put my address on there. They usually call me or email me. So mine is very, very simple. Okay. So some of the things about your business cards, and as Chief Master Sergeant, you all have business cards, correct? Everybody in here have business cards? Okay. You need to get some. Okay. I get mine from this place called GIFsIn. It's all one word. GIFsIn24. And 24 is numbers in 24. Okay. Mine are a little bit bigger. I carry them in a pink case because I like pink. But anyways, make sure that it's clean and updated. Okay. When we move to a new location, we don't cross out our phone number and write in the new one because I've still got 150 cards left. So I'm just going to, as I hand them out, I'm going to change the phone number. Throw those cards away. Vista print, Scott, I think you can get 100 or 500 or I don't even know for like 995 according to their commercial. So just keep that in mind. Okay. The name should be the biggest, the largest print on the card, which mine is, and use high quality paper. Mine are very, very thick and very sturdy. And so when you present the card, you go up to the person and it's not like you go, hey, here's my card. Toss them out to people. Hey, here's my card. When you give somebody a card, you present it to them with your information facing from the top to the bottom so they can see who you are. And in foreign countries, in Japan is a really good example. Business cards are a big thing over there and they always want to present you with their card. And you look at it, you thank them, and then you just, when you're done with your conversation, you walk away. You don't jam it in your back pocket because it's disrespectful to sit on somebody's business card. You don't jam it in your back pocket. You take it with you and then after they're out of view, you can do whatever you want to with it, okay? But have a carrying case for it. And like I said, don't write information on the card. Some good books, and I'm just going to bring this up now because I was talking about foreign countries. Kiss, bow, and shake hands are great, great books to have if you're going to another country. If you're going to be stationed in Japan or England or Germany or any different location overseas, buy the book for the country that you're going to be in because they make kiss, bow, and shake hands for every single country. And you'll find out about gift-giving in certain countries. Chrysanthemums are considered death. And you don't want to go up to somebody and give them chrysanthemums if that's what that means. In some countries, a clock means death that you're running out of time. You don't give that. So if you go to another country, kiss, bow, and shake hands. You can order them on Amazon. I don't get any money for telling it that, but they're actually really, really good books, okay? All right, thank yous. Now, if you had a big event and you're the chief and you had a lot of people do a lot of stuff and you want to thank them, it's probably going to be just the regular letters that we do, letters of appreciation, or something like that. But if somebody does something for you personally, you know how much it means to someone for you to write them a thank-you card, a handwritten thank-you card. We've really gotten away from that in all these years, but when my instructors, I have different instructors that come and teach portions of my class. I write them a personal thank-you note. I remember things that they said during the class, what they did, and I write them a personal thank-you note, and I always give them a gift. So I think that's the only reason they come back, but you know, hey, you do what you got to do. So, but personal thank-you cards are absolutely wonderful. I give out, I have a great Pyrenees. If anybody knows what a great Pyrenees is, they're 90, 100-pound dogs, they're huge. I have cards with his picture, or with the pictures of Pyrenees on the front, and that's what I use for my thank-you cards, depending on who the person is. For some of my instructors, if it's somebody new, I'll actually use a regular thank-you card, okay? All right. I have this thing right here, and I just, okay. So, okay, dining protocol. RSVP, please. Within 24 to 48 hours, after you get an invitation. Otherwise, we have to call you. And it takes a lot of time to call all these people that are, did not RSVP. And if you do RSVP, and then at the, you know, you can't decide you can't come a couple days ahead of time, let us know, because a lot of times, as chiefs, we probably have a place for you, and a table tent. And then we got to shift things around, and we're already busy, okay? Arrive on time, because if you're command chief, especially, we're looking for you. And we're, because we've got a place for you to sit, or if you're the group superintendent, you're normally going to sit with your group commander. So we're looking for you, so that when we do introductions, if you happen to be in the introductions, we know you're there, okay? The reception cocktail parties are not the dinner time, that's just the time to go, and we chat with each other, and have a little cocktail, or some water, whatever it is. This chair and seating etiquette, this is a pet peeve of mine, okay? So you get to an event, and you want to reserve, you want to sit at this table right here, because there's open seating in the back, okay? For all of us. So you've got your seat, you should put your yaza card, which as you were seated at, if they were giving those out. Your business card, your purse, ladies, gentlemen, if you have a purse, you can put it there. But do not tip the chair against the table. How many of you have seen that? You go around, there's like 50 tables, and all the chairs are tipped. And the reason that you shouldn't do that is because if it's a very formal function, and ladies are wearing gowns, they can very easily catch their gown on that leg of the chair and trip. Or if there's an elderly person there, and they may not see that, or they're a little unsteady on their feet, they could trip and fall. So no, we do not lean chairs against the table, okay? You'll probably all go back and lean your chairs against the table. Don't place your napkin over the back. The napkin stays on the table until you sit down and you put it into your lap. Okay, entering the table. Okay, so here's your chair. I hear it. This is the right side of your chair, okay? So if everybody at the table, you know how you go to those events and it's crowded, and you're packed in there like sardines, and you're going, oh, my God. So they say, please be seated, and it's just a mad people are here and people are over here and people are tripping over each other. Well, if everybody does it the correct way, it just works out perfect. So you pull your chair out, you go up, you put your left foot in, and then you sit. And if everybody does that, it works perfectly. And then when you get up, you pull your chair out and you put your right foot out. Like the Hokey Pokey. Remember the Hokey Pokey from when you were a kid? Okay, so that actually makes it so much easier to get in and out of, especially these small cramped tables that we end up sitting at, okay? Another pet peeve is the moving of the table tents. Well, I don't want to sit with that person. We set those tables in the way they are set for a reason. And normally we show our bosses where we have seated people and people will come in thinking, or came in and saw that they were seated somewhere, and then they come in to sit down to eat their dinner and realize that their name tags are gone because somebody came in and moved them to another table and they don't know where to go. So they're wandering around. They find protocol and they're like, well, where's my seat? I saw my name. And then we're trying to get people to shuffle and move and it just gets difficult. So don't move table tents, please, okay? Table etiquette, bread. This is probably one of the big things is when you eat bread, you don't make bread sandwiches. We're dining, we're having a nice dinner, okay? We're having the annual awards of the Air Force Fall. We're having a nice dinner. We don't break open the bread, slap the butter, throw some of that dried chicken on there and make a little sandwich, okay? We take a piece off the bread, we butter it, and then we delicately, delicately put it into our mouths. Okay? Talking at the table. You know, everybody has something to say, but there are a lot of people that really don't like to talk to other people or really, it's hard for them. You may have a young troop that's sitting at the table and they don't really know what to say because they don't, they, you know, you guys are intimidating them with all these stripes on your sleeve. So bring them in. Ask them questions. Hey, are you married? Do you have children? Do you have a great Pyrenees? You know, questions that will get them engaged. You know, what's your plans for the future? Do you plan on making this a career? Are you just doing this for four years? Are you going to school? I mean, all kinds of stuff. You guys know how to talk. So, you know, bring everybody in because that person, if you don't bring them in, then they will not say a word. They'll just sit there. Okay. Purses do not go on the table, ladies. Okay. I see women put purses on the floor. You know, the floor is like the most germ-ified area because everybody's walking on it. They go in the bathroom. They come out. People set their bags or their little purses on the floor. And then they're going to set it on the table. Ew. Okay. That's just really, really gross. And the ladies that like to touch up their makeup, you know, the eating and their lipstick has come off. Okay. You don't take your little purse and just pull out your compact and pull out your mirror and pull out your lipstick and, you know, just lay your whole assortment of makeup right there on the table and then go ahead and fix your face. Go in the restroom and do that. That's not the time or the place to repair your makeup. And you probably still look beautiful anyhow, so. Okay. Arriving at the table. Don't enter the dining room. And this is just certain events that we have the doors closed, like dinners that comes to mind. Certain types of dinners. If the doors are closed, that means you don't go in. They're going to let you know. Dining in, dining out. We have the chimes that let us know when it's time to go in. And obviously, if you go in before you're supposed to, you know where you're going. You're going to the grog because you went in there before you were supposed to. Find your table early and hope somebody doesn't move your table tent and so you're not walking around looking totally lost. Like, where am I supposed to be? Where's protocol? I need them to help me, okay? The napkin. The napkin is folded. You fold it in half. So the fold is here. And then the two open ends are outside. And the reason for that is, let's just say you're eating a piece of meat and it's got a little fat on it. You don't like the fat on the meat. And you don't want to leave a big hunk of fat that you've already chewed on your plate, right? You could always hide it under the plate. But it's a way for you to quickly just put your napkin up to your mouth and put that in there and set it back down in your lap. But it's not up here. It's down here. And you can roll the napkin up so it doesn't get on your clothes, okay? If you leave... Of course, your napkin stays in your lap. If you leave the table to go to the restroom or something while dinner is going on, just set your napkin in your chair. And then at the end of dinner, you do not have to try to figure out how to fold the napkin back up into a tuxedo, a rose, or whatever it was that they had. As your napkin fold, you don't have to do all that. Just put it back on the table and be gone. Okay. So we're sitting in a dinner and we're like, oh, my God. Especially at a crowded table. So it's like, which bread's mine? Which water's mine? I'm not really sure. So just remember BMW, and for those of you that may have a BMW, be easy to remember. But its bread is on the left. Your meal is in the middle. And then your wine glasses are off to the right. So you sit down, BMW, and then tell your neighbor, that's my bread, that's my water. And tell them BMW and spread it around the table so everyone knows whose food is whose. Okay. Because you could eat your roll that's on the left-hand side and then you could reach over and grab your neighbors. I didn't know that. Okay. So I'm going to go with BMW. All right. What do I wear? Again, we'll talk about first impressions. They're hard to change. And you don't want to wear anything that your mama would be ashamed of, do we? Okay. We've all been to those events where some people are not quite dressed appropriately. Okay. And I'm not putting anybody down. I'm just saying that you just go, all right, we'll just move along here. Remember, workers work and play is play. Okay. So this is kind of a guideline. If you want to take a picture of this, I'm not sure if they're giving you all the slides after to take home with you, but if you want to take a picture of this just for your own. White tie would be a mess stress. Black tie would be a mess stress. Black tie optional would be a mess stress. Semi-formal would be a mess stress or semi-formal. Business would be your service stress. Now, I'm talking about events that are military events. Business casual, long sleeve blues, and then casual or depending where you're located, because we have all these casuals now. We've got beach casual, western casual, a low-hawk casual. So in that case, if it was a military event, you could wear short sleeve blues, uniform of the day or civilian clothes depending on your role. And here's some examples. The yeses. This lady, she's beautiful in her long gown. She's covered. And this young man looks very handsome in his white tie. And then over here, we've got the young lady that's a little exposed. That's how I'll put it. A little exposed. And he should have a bow tie on as opposed to a regular tie. Okay, black tie, mess stress. He's got his bow tie. She's got a beautiful gown. Over here, we've got maybe a little too much here. And he is kind of not really matching. He's in a white suit with a pinkish-colored tie, so that's not appropriate. Again, black tie optional slash formal, which would be a mess stress. We've got these ladies looking really nice. They can have short or long gowns depending. And then we've got the no. We've got this young lady over here, maybe Lady Gaga or Mariah Carey. I don't know. But you know, that dress is really not a proper dress. Oh, none of you have that dress, but okay. And then we've got the individual with his mismatched suit. He's just got some like khakis in a jacket. Semi-formal, casual. The time of day is going to dictate the formality of this. So a lot of times it's going to be a short, nice dress, a suit, nice tie for the men. And the no is predominantly no jeans, no short, tiny little dress that barely covers up or lower. And then we've got business. So we've got the business suits, kind of like what I'm wearing today, a business suit. Again, no jeans. The strapless dress, those sort of things are not really appropriate. And then business casual. That can be where you can wear khakis in a jacket, open collar. Ladies can wear a dress. They can wear slacks. We're not wearing jeans in our hoodies. That's not business casual. Nor is a young lady over there in her jeans. Or this girl here, I'm not even really sure what she's doing. She's got short skirt and long, I don't know if they're boots or if they're tights, but they're not appropriate. And then we have smart casual. Smart casual always cracks me up, because smart casual is like what, there's dumb casual? But smart casual is like a new word we've probably used for the last 10 or so years. So smart casual is kind of like you're dressing casual, you're dressing smartly casual. So this young lady here, she's fine. She's got shorts on, but they're longer. She doesn't have the booty shorts on over here. So she looks appropriate. All right. This young lady, she's in some slacks. This girl over here is in jeans. This one here, she's in a dress, nice and covered. This one here, she's sharing her girls with everyone and her dress is really kind of short. He's got his flannel shirt on. He's getting ready to go out and go hunting. And this guy up here, look at him. He looks fabulous. He's got his khakis, his polo. He's got it tucked in. He's got a belt on. So he's looking appropriate. All right. Name badges. Where do they go? On the right hand side. They go right here. So when I'm shaking your hand, your eye will automatically come right here and you'll be able to see what my name is if you don't know who I am. And I'll be able to see what your name is if I don't know who you are. But we see people all the time. They just slap them on. Normally protocol gives out name badges and we will usually tell you it goes on the right hand side. Some people listen to it, some people don't. It just depends. And if protocol gives you the little magnetic ones, make sure you return those. It's not a free gift. It's not like a door prize you get to take home with you. Give them back. What we usually do, we'll stand at the door and we will take it off you. We need our name badge back. Could we have that back? Okay. Now, this is an update and a lot of SM&W type funds. Their AFI was 34-201, NAFIC expenditures. This was just updated at the end of last year. It's now AFMAN 34-201. And there's changes. This is one page of the changes. Okay. So, insignia stripes and similar items used to be authorized that they would pay for those. Remember that? There's a promotion ceremony. You get a little money. You go get some stripes or whatever. That's no longer authorized. Okay. Light refreshments. They're authorized, but there's limitations now. Okay. Corsage, boutonniere or memento for the spouse for a promotion ceremony. Used to be a $20 limit. Now it's none. Okay. Retirement ceremonies. Used to give out a $20 memento. No longer can you do that. Light refreshments. You can still have them, but there's a limit. And then Corsage, boutonniere for the spouse. Used to be a $20 limit. And they're obviously, there's no change to that. They still actually give that out. Something that, in protocol, we kind of, it's not on the slide, that we are kind of happy about is we no longer have to put baskets in DV rooms. You know, the little baskets with the crackers or the water or the chips or whatever fruit, whatever it was, we no longer have to do that. And that saves us a whole lot of time. Because a lot of times, if somebody's there for one night, they're so busy, they don't have time to eat the stuff. So we no longer have to give out baskets. So if any of you become command chiefs and you're going somewhere and you're visiting and you don't get a bag, it's because we're not allowed to. Okay. All right. So summary. That means that we are done. These are all the things that we talked about. And I probably ran over my time because I always do. Is there any questions? If not, then I thank you very much. Congratulations to all of you. It was a complete honor to be able to come and do this for all you chiefs. All you chief selects. Congratulations. Great job. Way to go. Thank you and have a wonderful day. Thank you.