Imagine being at sea for nine months. This was the exact experience of civilian Navy talk boss Kari Bell, and she sat down with Libby Collins on today’s WTMJ Conversations. In today’s conversation she shares what a “talk boss” actually is, how she had a specific advantage going into the job, and how it was a little more than she had bargained for. Listen in the player above.
A partial transcript is provided below, courtesy of eCourt Reporters.
LIBBY COLLINS: Let’s talk about your position on the Harry Truman. You are the talk boss.
KARI BELL: The talk boss. I didn’t know, it’s celebrity status. I didn’t know. I’m like, oh, I’m going to be a civilian therapist on a ship. I didn’t know there was only one talk boss for 5,000 people, what am I doing?
LIBBY COLLINS: You didn’t know that when you went?
KARI BELL: I did not know. I mean, I thought, you know, maybe there’s a few of us. And there is only one talk boss, it’s also called a Deploy Resiliency Counselor, or sometimes you’ll hear DRC. Most generally, it’s like, Talk Boss, as like your name while you’re on your ship.
LIBBY COLLINS: For those of us in total civilian life, what exactly is a talk boss?
KARI BELL: So, there’s a lot of bosses on a ship, it just means, hey, you’re in charge of this thing. There’s the air boss, there’s the big boss, like CO, there’s — people get nicknames. There’s a psych boss, which is a psychologist, which is actually part of the Navy, he’s in the Navy.
But the talk boss is the DRC, the civilian that comes on board that is just, I’ll say it, the mom. I’m like the cool kid. Like, I’m a civilian, I don’t have a bunch of things on my lapel, so you can tell me stuff and I’m going to act like a normal human being. So, it becomes a really
popular position because I think sometimes it’s, you know, the office looks a little bit more like home.
One for 5,000, I think the benefit that I had — every carrier typically has a talk boss, most of them are not prior enlisted.
LIBBY COLLINS: That means you were different than most.
KARI BELL: I was very different, because I could speak to what was it to be an E1 living in the bottom of a ship. And, moreover, it was — when I was active duty, only 5 percent of the Navy were female, now it’s 20 percent. So, there’s been a lot of change. I thought, you know, my accommodations were great, because I was used to, you know, the last time I went underway, it was like sardines, you know, you’re stacked three high and 60 women in one small space, and everybody gets a little territorial.
My first birth — we call it the birthing area, right. My first birthing area was what we called day sleeper, so you were not allowed to turn on the lights, just the red light is shining all night long. When I got a stateroom and only one roommate, which she’s the fun boss, she’s also a civilian —
LIBBY COLLINS: Fun boss.
KARI BELL: Yes, she has to do activities, like it’s tours set up for when we go into port. She makes sure that everybody is staying active and having a good time in the downtime, clean, good fun.
So, there’s only two of us, that was like moving on up to the eastside. Oh, my gosh, I went from an E1 to O5 without anything in between other than being a civilian. I mean, that would be the equivalent
for the GS position, so who does that. I was sitting in the wardroom next to people that went into boot camp the same time I did, and here we are. I’ve had all these years of being a civilian and they stayed in, and I’m sitting at the same table 20-some years later. It was wild.
