Another Silly Mechanics Question

[jkumpire]

For those of you veteran guys, a question.

When I was first instructed in the "arcane' mechanics of volleyball officiating, I noticed two things:

1. Many veteran officials would always ask captains if they are ready after time outs.
2. Umpires always whistle at the end of time outs then signal to the crowd the TO's left for each side. This is the proceedure in the FED manual.

So, I started asking captains if they were ready, and a bunch of stick in the mud guys say: "don't do that, it's not in the manual." So, I stopped. After a TO, I now will say to both sides: "Ladies here we go", then call for serve.

And where I work, nobody down whistles the end of timeouts. And unlike a lot of guys who are down, I use my whistle a lot in a match.

So, what are things like where you work? Do you ask Captains if they are ready after TO's or not? In your area do most down people call the end of timeouts with a whistle?

To me, asking captains if they are ready after a time is not an unreasonable thing to do, but it is not really necessary. And having the umpire blow the whistle to let the ref know the TO is over is pretty silly, with a 15 sec warning buzzer, and the fact that a lot of teams don't use the full time of time outs.

Thanks for your help, and opinions.