May 10
A technical objection is the first refuge of a scoundrel.
Heywood Broun (1888 - 1939), ''Jam-Tomorrow' Progressives,' New Republic, December 15, 1937
Timothy McGee worked in a very strange environment.
Even if he ignored working as part of a team with an ex-sniper, a clown and a Mossad assassin. Not many people had such varied co-workers.
In other jobs, he had rapidly realized his opinion was either encouraged or completely discarded. There was no in-between. Yet as a field agent attached to Agent Gibbs' team, he was expected to speak his mind, however often he ended up following someone else's orders at the end of the day.
And not only was he supposed to tell everyone his ideas, they would actually listen to him and change their plans accordingly if they agreed with them.
It was the strangest experience of his life.
What surprised him the most, however, was that despite Gibbs and Tony's crazy ideas that he inevitably ended up objecting to on so many terms it was almost untrue, the plan tended to work. Whether it involved the lead negotiator in a hostage situation deliberately walking into the middle of said hostage situation, or using a dead body to drive a car, things had a habit of working.
It bemused him. It confused him. And perhaps it was one of the reasons he stuck around, to watch insane ideas work and to learn not to object to something out of hand.