You can't command respect that you haven't earned, and just the mere fact that you're someone's superior doesn't mean you've earned anything. After all, there are plenty of people in positions of authority who have achieved that position for all the wrong reasons—usually because another person with a misunderstanding of leadership has granted it to them. You'll come across plenty of these authority figures in your life who wield their authority with impunity, demanding respect when they don't deserve any of it.
This petty officer ran into one of these people, a commander who was one of the duty officers on the nuclear-powered warship where he was stationed as a corpsman during the Gulf War. The commander took issue with the fact that the petty officer never referred to him as “Sir” as a sign of respect; instead, he referred to him only by his rank as required by military courtesy. When the commander asked the petty officer why this was, the petty officer had a very frank and direct answer prepped—the kind of answer you usually only come up with in the shower hours later.
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