Day 307 - I Just Need Your Signature

by  ben g 

It wasn't just in Abu Dhabi that I heard that phrase as a paper was handed over by someone who obviously expected me to sign it without looking at it first. But it happened more often there. Initially I decided it was another example of the difference between military regs that spelled out the steps that must be taken vs. the civilian regs that spelled out what should be done.

It happened a lot in Barbados, too, but then the requests came from first tour officers in the consular section who hadn't been acquainted with the full range of government regulations yet.  I know the consular training drilled in the responsibility that only a consular officer has to decide whether an applicant is eligible for a non-immigrant visa, but perhaps the training overstated how only a consular officer has this level of personal and professional responsibility. I am sure no consular officer would accept a form shoved under his or her nose by an applicant with the statement, "I just need your signature." After all, evaluation and deliberation by the consular officer is required.

Yet, when the form was a request for a petty cash reimbursement, no one seemed to think my signature required any review, evaluation, or deliberation.

But things got a mite more complicated in Abu Dhabi.  My first year there, 1996, was the year that ICASS, or International Cooperative Administrative Support System, was introduced. ICASS was the successor to FAAS, or Foreign Affairs Administrative Support, which was the successor to SAS, or Shared Adminstrative Support. Each of those systems was an attempt to come up with a fair way for all the agencies at posts to get services from State and pay their fair share of the costs to State. Each version started out as a good and fair system, but over time the lines between what we State adminstrative staff must provide and what the agencies expected got blurred. And because the calculations for determining each agency's costs were based on workload counts during a predictable period of time, some agencies would make sure no requests for sevices were submitted those weeks or months to keep their costs low.

Even that manipulation of the calculations wasn't the worst aspect of FAAS, the system in place when I began with State. The worst aspect of the system was that the final decisions about the distribution of costs were made during annual conferences held in Washington where State compromised with other agencies when those agencies' representatives were more persuasive than State's reps. The bottom line was that we did the work overseas, we had to justify with every agency head at the embassy every workload number that went into the report sent back to Washington - always a contentious scenario - and in the end, neither we nor the agency reps knew what the final dollar contributions were.

 by  isafmedia 
Image of a Council with military and
civilian representatives

ICASS was intended to solve some of these problems. First, all the agencies at post had to form their own ICASS council which would make decisions about what services were required and what the performance standards for those services should be. Each agency at post would then determine what level of those services they needed - 100%, 60%, or 30%. All workload counts for each service were to be agreed upon up front. And no side deals would be allowed. It was the side deals that spelled the death of FAAS because they were the reason so many compromises had to be made in Washington.

My predecessor in Abu Dhabi predicted ICASS would be a catastrophe with the military agencies dictating everything. His prediction was based on the numbers - 9 military agencies vs 7 civilians agencies. Each agency got one vote in the ICASS Council and the head of the largest of the military agencies was elected to serve as ICASS Council Chair. But my predecessor's predictions were not realized. It was rocky to get ICASS set up, but it was far from catastrophic.

So what does all of this have to do with that statement, "I just need your signature"? ICASS changed the rules. That's what.

Before ICASS, there was little clarity concerning just what we in the administrative section could and could not do for our other agency colleagues. It is likely that getting that signature took longer than the requester thought was necessary because the signer had to do some research to be sure the signature was proper. It is very likely that signatures were provided when they shouldn't have been - not for any devious reasons, just because the situation wasn't clear. Those military regs sometimes gave them impression that once steps 1 through 5 were completed, the signature, step 6, was automatic. But civilian regs allowed for some variations which left that final signature as the one that affirmed all the steps up to that point were proper. 

My bottom line: if you just need my signature, I just need the time necessary to review the paperwork to be sure it is complete and proper.

With the introduction of ICASS, we had to create a document that spelled out each of the services we would provide, within what timeframes, based on being provided correct and complete information needed for that step. And then we would only be able to provide those services to employees of an agency that had subscribed to that cost center at the level that included that service. I needed a flow chart to figure out when I could sign the form and - and this was the biggest difference - when I couldn't because the agency had not subscribed to the service.

Most people were not used to being told we couldn't do what they asked. And we had to get used to explaining - sometimes in excruciating detail - why we couldn't.

Here is an example. One agency did not subscribe to leasing and residential maintenance services because they discovered they could save money at post (but not for the agency overall) by providing their staff with a Living Quarters Allowance (LQA) instead of leasing residences. The cost for leases came out of their operating budget. LQA was an allowance paid out of the agency's Washington-based personnel budget. I argued that this savings would cause hardship for their 3 staff members because they would have to negotiate their own leases and work with the landlords directly to have repairs done. We, the administrative staff, would not be able to help them if the agency did not subscribe to those services.

Two of the first three of their staff members ended up leasing apartments in the same buillding where the embassy had other leases. So the landlord knew if something needed to be done, he would hear from the embassy. We made sure embassy staff members knew they had to bring their concerns to us first because sometimes what was a concern to the employee was a personal preference which we would not require the landlord to address.

So when one of the two members of the non-subscribing agency had a problem and brought it to the attention of the landlord, he ignored it, assuming that if it was important enough, the embassy would call.  But we couldn't.

ICASS is still around. In fact, I work for the Washington office of ICASS one day a week. It is a good system. I just happened to be in Abu Dhabi during the teething phase.

Day 305 - Us vs. Them

There always seems to be an Us vs. Them going on in life. In childhood, it was us cowboys vs. them Indians or us cops vs. them robbers. A few years later it was us Moorheadites vs. them Fargoans, then us Concordia Cobbers vs. them Moorhead State Dragons.

by  Randy Levine

  by  Randy Levine 

In Abu Dhabi at the embassy the Us vs. Them divide was between the military agencies and the civilian agencies. There were 16 agencies represented at the embassy, nine of them military. So we civilian agencies often felt beat around the head by the military agencies. We each had our versions of "the regulations." The funny thing was that each set of regulations started from the same laws, but the military agencies seemed to write regulations to provide step-by-step instructions for how things must be done, i.e., the regulations were to be followed to the letter, while the civilian agencies wrote regulations to provide guidelines for how things should be done, i.e., allowing some flexibility so long as actions followed the spirit of the regulations. And that led to some folks in the military concluding that we civilians were just a bunch of wishy-washy bureaucrats who couldn't make a decision and stick with it.

There was one aspect of being with the civilian agency of State, however, that the military really wanted - our diplomatic status. Those military members assigned to the embassy were not granted diplomatic status; instead they were granted administrative and technical status. We civilians with State were issued black diplomatic passports. Those in the military serving with the embassy were issued red official passports. Those of us with diplomatic status had duty-free importation privileges for the entire time we served in the country. Those with administrative and technical, or A&T, status could only import items duty free for the first six months. Those of us who had diplomatic status had diplomatic immunity. Those with A&T status had no immunity, but felt they should. Every time someone with a military connection ended up in a fight in a bar downtown that resulted in an arrest, we heard about how unfair it was that those of us with diplomatic immunity would not be arrested, while the military members were. But to my knowledge there were never any cases of someone with diplomatic immunity getting into a fight in a bar downtown to face the possibility of arrest. Sometimes it seemed as though the military thought diplomatic immunity was a magic wand that could be waved to erase all sorts of misbehavior.

We, the civilian agency reps, kept making the case that the relationship of military members - those under a commander in the field, not those working at the embassy - and the local government was a matter for a Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA. The basis for Diplomatic and A&T status is the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, not U.S. regulations or handbooks. So while the military saw us as wishy-washy bureaucrats on the one hand, they saw us as obstinate and stubborn, unwilling to compromise on the issue of privileges and immunities. It always came down to someone thinking it was us vs. them.

We also tried to convince the military members that if one of them was arrested for just doing his or her job - the basis for diplomatic immunity - we would take all possible steps to get that member released. Diplomatic immunity is not intended to excuse poor choices or poor judgement in a diplomat's personal life. It exists to protect diplomats who must meet with people the host government would prefer they not meet, actions that are in the nature of diplomatic work. Diplomatic immunity is not a get-out-of-jail-free card; the U.S. government will waive a diplomat's immunity if the grievance against him or her is for actions taken outside of official duties and/or is irresponsible and reprehensible, such as if a diplomat is involved in a death as a result of an accident while driving under the influence. Diplomatic immunity is not a magic wand.

There were times when the differences between military and civilian cultures seemed greater than the differences between American culture and the many different cultures our local staff represented. Maybe that's the Cultural Guide we should have tried to compile.

Day 304 - Cultural Forum of Abu Dhabi

Huda and Mackawee

Both Huda and Mackawee were from Yemen, the southern half of the now reunited Republic of Yemen. They had both lived in Abu Dhabi the majority of their adult lives. Mackawee came on his own as an adult for work.  Huda came to Abu Dhabi with her parents and brothers. By the time I met them, Huda's parents had both died, at least one of her brothers had left Abu Dhabi for the United States, and at least one brother was still in Abu Dhabi.

They hadn't been married long. I learned very shortly after arriving in Abu Dhabi that Mackawee had had a heart attack a few years before. At the time, he was not yet married, so going through the recovery without a close family member to care for him turned his thoughts to marriage. He had known Huda and her family for many years so he approached her father to propose marriage. Huda's mother had recently died. Huda told me one of her regrets was not having married while her mother was still alive. Instead of marriage, she had stayed with her parents, helping to care for them since her brothers had all married and moved out of the family home. She agreed to marry Mackawee and her father approved.

Huda and Mackawee had been married about five years when I met them. By then, Huda's father had also died. If she had not been married, she would have had to rely on her brothers for support. And something had come between them that kept her from relying on her brothers, something that would make it difficult for Huda if she had to turn to her family for support. Mackawee was ten years older than Huda and he was concerned that he needed to take steps to ensure that Huda would be able to live on her own in case something happened to him. He was convinced the future for Huda lay in the United States, not in Abu Dhabi or Yemen. So he approached me about the possibility to obtaining a special immigrant visa while he was still healthy enough to start over in the United States and before he had no choice as he was approaching Emirati mandatory retirement age. Huda had lived in the United States before, but she was hesitant about starting over.

I had no doubt that Mackawee would succeed, and I was certain Huda would also find life in the United States a positive experience. But she had reservations. I thought of a way that would help not only Huda become more comfortable with the prospect of moving to the U.S., but also provide a forum for professional development for others at the embassy.

Initially, we met on Mondays (Gulf Wednesday) during the lunch hour and we called ourselves For Women Only, not at all an unusual idea in the country where men and women were routinely separated for social events.

We began by working on resumes. I knew Huda would need to write a resume, and I also knew that several of the American wives who would be returning to the U.S. the following summer would benefit from updating their resumes to account for the foreign work experience they now had. I made the point that while there are bad times to have to write a resume - when the need for getting a new job happens suddenly or is immediate, for example - the best time to update a resume is when you don't need one. So we reviewed articles about effective resume writing, we wrote drafts for ourselves, and we then critiqued one another's to improve them.

We then moved into other aspects of job hunting, including how to dress for success, whether success at an interview or success on the job. I don't know where we found the rule of 7 plus or minus 2, but I have been following it ever since. That rule gives points as follows:

• 1 point for every piece of clothing that isn't the same fabric (i.e., the skirt or slacks and jacket that make up a suit are just one point because they are the same fabric).
• 1 extra point for each fabric that has a pattern.
• 1 point for shoes.
• 1 extra point if the toes are open.
• 1 point for hosiery.
• 1 extra point if the hosiery has a pattern.
• 1 point for each accessory (belt, scarf, necklace, earrings, broaches, rings, hats, handbags) that are not worn every day (i.e, a ring or watch that is always worn gets no points).

Sandra modeling 7 plus
or minus 2

Huda modeling 7 plus
or minus 2

The goal is 7 points, plus or minus 2, making the range of 5 to 9 acceptable. We also ran across an article somewhere with tips that included avoiding wearing white or floral patterns at work. That tip ended up in the embassy newsletter, unfortunately released on a day when the ambassador's secretary was wearing a white dress with a white sweater, white shoes, and white hosiery. I think she took offense.

After covering that topic, we held discussions about how to advance professionally. Throughout this phase, we continued to include only women. It was this group who organized the embassy iftar meal. After that event, some of the men at the embassy pointed out that they wanted to participate as well. So we changed our name from For Women Only to The Cultural Forum (or as some of the men called it FKAFWO (for Formerly Known As For Women Only, an homage to Prince).

Each Monday as the time for the sessions came closer, I began to wonder how we would maintain the momentum. Each week I thought perhaps this would be the final week we would meet. But at the end of each Monday's session, I walked away knowing we would continue for at least another week. More significantly, I saw that I was gaining energy from the discussions.

Because we changed our name, we also shifted our emphasis away from professional development (at least as an explicit goal) and more towards greater cultural awareness not only of the United Arab Emirates, but also of the many nationalities that the local staff represented. We learned from the Indian employees about the holidays of Holi (the festival of colors) and Diwali (the festival of lights).

  Image of Holi by  jeremy.nicoll 

Observations of Holi end up looking a lot like today's Color Runs. We were all just a bit too proper to go through anything as undignified as being sprayed with paint, but learning about the holiday which marked the beginning of spring was a natural progression to learning more about the Iranian holiday, Now Ruz, which also marked the beginning of spring. A number of local employees in both Abu Dhabi and Dubai celebrated their Iranian ethnic background, although their families may have been living on the southern side of the Gulf with two names for generations.

Diwali lights
by  KennardP 

Diwali is an autumn holiday that was a bit more obvious than Holi as the shops were festooned with colored lights that most of us would have referred to as Christmas lights for the weeks leading up to Diwali. Exchanging gifts is an important part of Diwali, so shopping for Diwali gifts looked a lot like Christmas shopping as well. At the embassy, in the year of The Cultural Forum, we brought candles in holders to set on each desk for part of the day, to observe the holiday in solidarity with the local employees from India and Sri Lanka.

The biggest project The Cultural Forum took on was to write a Cultural Guide to the United Arab Emirates, following the outline of the existing Cultural Guide to Saudi Arabia, that same guide that erroneously led me to expect to have nothing to do in Qatar and therefore advised that I bring every book I ever wanted to read, every movie I ever wanted to watch, and every game I enjoyed playing with me to fill in all those empty hours. We decided that any Cultural Guide of the United Arab Emirates had to describe not just the culture of the Emiratis, but also the cultures of all the expatriate workers in the country who make up 83% of the population. It was a noble project, unfortunately unfinished when I had to leave Abu Dhabi.

Day 296 - Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz

Image of a Diplomatic license plate from an Arab country
(see the "CD" in the license - the Arabic letters are the same)
by woody1778a, via Flickr.com

We had our five-year-old Plymouth shipped to Abu Dhabi. Unleaded gasoline was available in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, although not always in the more out-of-the-way places or in neighboring Oman. But we figured we could get by without risking damage to the catalytic converter so long as we stayed close to the two main cities.

But Alex knew he would likely end up having to travel to those out-of-the-way places for work, so we started looking for a second car. And that's when we started facing the differences between our life in Abu Dhabi and our expectations based on previous experience in Doha. The biggest difference was that Alex had been hired and brought into Doha as an employee of Qatar National Telecommunications. That meant that he had a work permit, but no diplomatic status. In Abu Dhabi, on the other hand, he had been recruited to come into Abu Dhabi as an employee, but he didn't need a work permit to arrive. He had a diplomatic visa in his diplomatic passport. And the Emiratis had trouble figuring out just how to deal with him.

The first issue came up with his new job. When he showed up in Abu Dhabi without needing Etisalat, the telecommunications company of the United Arab Emirates, to buy a ticket for him and sponsor his work permit, they decided to give him a different job than they had at first planned. The job he understood he would have involved liaison between Lucent Technologies and Etisalat as Lucent installed telecommunications lines and equipment for the Emirati military. Etisalat were concerned that Alex's connection with the embassy would result in him being pressured to provide their military secrets to the embassy. The face-saving explanation for the switch was that it would be difficult for Alex to get around to all the sites since he wasn't familiar with the country. They assigned another Brit who had been in the country for several years to the job Alex had expected.

In the end, Etisalat insisted that Alex enter the country on his tourist passport so that they could issue a work permit for him in that passport. So Alex flew out of Abu Dhabi and into Doha where he applied for a visa in his tourist passport and returned the same day. In the end, Etisalat managers learned that this extra step didn't give them the control over Alex they had expected, but that's a later story.

When we began looking for a car, the issue of Alex's status came up. As a married diplomat with the embassy, I had the right to register two vehicles with diplomatic plates, but again Etisalat was not comfortable with the idea that Alex would drive onto work sites in a car with diplomatic plates. They had official vehicles he could use once he arrived at work each day, but those vehicles couldn't be driven home at the end of each day. And it was always possible that Alex would have to drive directly to a site at the beginning or the end of the day.

We had to find a solution that wouldn't upset Etisalat management without jeopardizing ownership of the vehicle.

Alex began looking at old cars, cars that we wouldn't have much invested in if it became necessary for us to leave it behind. He could then get it registered with his status as an employee with a work visa in a tourist passport. It looked like he had found a great deal on a 20-year-old Mercedes Benz.

Image of Mercedes Benz by datenhamster.org,
via Flickr.com

And it was a great deal - if cost was the only factor. In fact, the car was in such bad shape that Alex decided right away that only he would drive it. He wanted to have a second car for the following summer when our son would be visiting us, but he also declared that our son would not be allowed to drive it.

When I was in Stuttgart, many of my colleagues bought used Mercedeses. But each of them who did had arrived in Stuttgart after having served a tour in a hardship post where they were able to put away a good amount of cash. Stuttgart was my first assignment and I arrived with money I had to borrow from a friend. I had to pass up that easy access to Mercedes Benzes. And now, in Abu Dhabi, where both Alex and I were working, getting good salaries, with housing provided, we ended up with a Mercedes Benz that I couldn't even drive.

But it was red!

Within a year, Alex was no longer working for Etisalat. He was working instead for Lucent Technologies, overseeing the communications installations at Emirati military bases, the work that Etisalat was not willing to have him oversee from the Etisalat side of the relationship. And Lucent provided him with a vehicle that he could take home at the end of each day. That meant we no longer needed the Mercedes.

Getting rid of it was not easy. For some time it looked like we might have to pay someone to take it away.

But I'll always be able to say we owned a Mercedes once.

Day 250 - Mr. Saitsky's House

Mr. Saitsky's House

The Department wasn't alone in wanting us to get out of hotel rooms and into leased housing. So long as we were in hotels, we had no control over the temperature. Chişinău had centralized steam heat for all office buildings, government buildings, schools and apartment buildings. Normally, the heat was turned on October 1, but during our first year that date came and went without the heat coming on. The construction throughout most of the streets that revealed the steam pipes that should have been covered was one clue that all was not well.

Our trip to Iaşi was one way we dealt with the cold. Most weekend days we chose to go to work instead of staying home because we had oil bath heaters in the embassy - not enough - but we moved them from room to room as each warmed up.

Since Walt arrived in mid-December, we had had plenty of cold days and we welcomed his assistance. One of the first leases he helped negotiate was Mr. Saitsky's house just down the street from the embassy. I had met Mr. Saitsky earlier since he had been in contact with David almost the first day the embassy opened. He was eager to rent his house, still under construction, to the embassy. David told him that we couldn't negotiate to rent the house until it was complete. Still he returned often to ask questions such as what type of wallpaper we wanted him to put up.

By the time Walt arrived, Mr. Saitsky's house was still not done, but it was close. Walt was impressed with the progress he had made given the shortage of building materials in the country. The initial lease began in January, but we explained to Mr. Saitsky that we would not pay him any rent until he finished the house inside. Some of the issues were:

• A triangular-shaped gap in the parquet flooring in the corner of the living room where Mr. Saitsky envisioned a fireplace would go;
• An 8-inch gap in the glass at the top of the windows that lined the back of the house overlooking what Mr. Saitsky referred to as the orchard, but to us was just a mud patch;
• The 6-inch gap between the water faucet in the tub in the master bath and the tub itself; and
• The absence of rods in the closets.

Mr. Saitsky assured us he would correct all these problems in addition to installing a divider in the middle of the living room to form two rooms - living and dining rooms - in ten days. Ten days came and went but the work wasn't done. At that point, we explained, through a translator, that we would pay him if he completed the work within ten days, but if the work wasn't done, we would not pay until it was done because we couldn't have anyone move in until it was ready. At the same time, we had laborers from the embassy working to correct other issues, such as covering all the walls with wallpaper because the paint Mr. Saitsky used brushed off like chalk on everything that touched the walls. We also had to have the outlets in the kitchen raised six inches so they wouldn't be behind the kitchen counters.

Our friend Jim and the ambassador
helping us clean Mr. Saitsky's house
 when we moved in.

At the end of a month, the house still wasn't ready. We pressed Mr. Saitsky and he completed the few items we insisted he complete within the next two weeks. The workers from the embassy also completed their work, so six weeks after the start of the lease, Alex and I moved in.

Here is what the house looked like:

The front yard was mud. The side yards were mud. The back yard was mud.

There was a divider in the middle of the living room, but it was only waist-high and it wasn't anchored against the wall. In the middle of it, there was a door frame with a door that didn't close. We didn't need the door because we could step over the divider on either side of it.

The tub in the master bath had been constructed from concrete blocks and covered in tiles. It was large enough for either of us to lie down with hands extended above our heads and barely be able to touch the ends with toes and fingers. But the hot water heater couldn't produce enough hot water to put more than an inch of water into it. There was no shower head, so in order for us to bathe, one of us had to sit on a stool in the tub while the other used the hand-held shower head that served to extend the faucet to reach the tub itself to rinse the other.

The previous gap in the glass on the windows was filled with a second piece of glass with nothing between them. Cleaning the windows invited sliced fingertips.

Two of the four outlets in the kitchen - Mr. Saitsky was very proud of the fact that he had installed one on each wall - were in the corner right above the kitchen sink, making them far too dangerous to use.

Then there were the aesthetics. Each of the three bathrooms was tiled, but instead of one tiled in blue, one in green, and one in pink, each one was tiled partially in all three colors.

Finally, at the far back of the land was a separate building which Mr. Saitsky had wanted us to rent as well. It was a narrow, two-story building with one room on each floor on each side of a central hallway. To get to the second story on either side, there was a ladder, not stairs. It was more like bunk rooms or a playhouse than a two-story building. Since we declined to rent this extra building, Mr. Saitsky decided to use it for his office. There were two ways to get to that office - through a beer garden to the west of the house or through the house itself. Mr. Saitsky kept a key to the house and that was the route we discovered he continued to use.

We moved all of our furniture as well as all the embassy's furniture into the house. Two weeks later, Mr. Saitsky learned that we had withheld rent for the six weeks we weren't able to move into the house. The translator we had told to explain our plans to do that admitted that she hadn't told him because she thought it would be impolite. So Mr. Saitsky decided he would rather not have us as his tenants. Alex and I moved out and back into one of the suites at the Hotel Codru, now our third residence within six months.

A few months later we learned that Mr. Saitsky had leased his house to the Israelis as both their embassy, on the ground floor, and the ambassador's residence, on the second floor.

Day 239 - Collective Guilt

Image of a lease by Jess and Colin, via Flickr.com

The flip side of community responsibility is collective guilt, something that most of us experienced long before we saw how important community responsibility was to Bajan culture. We saw it whenever we went looking at houses to rent. Because the number of landlords on the island is limited, most landlords had some prior experience with staff at the U.S. embassy from which they drew conclusions about all other staff at the U.S. embassy. Even those who were new landlords knew someone who had rented to someone from the embassy. Everyone had all heard the stories. It didn't seem fair to those of us who just arrived to be judged on the behavior of those who were no longer in country. What did we do to cause such negative reactions?

Well, remember that high level of curtailments? That meant landlords who expected to have the same tenant for at least two or three or sometimes four years ended up with no tenant - and often no rent - whenever an American left ahead of schedule. Even those who stayed what the Department considers a full tour - those first-tour staff members who were only assigned for two years - looked to landlords like they were slipping out of town early. When the Department assigns someone for two years, any partial month spent in the country counts as part of the time. An employee who arrives on the last day of August is considered to have completed 24 months in the country if he stays until at least the first of July. But even someone leaving earlier than that is excused if the departure is within 60 days of arrival, making a departure on June 1 to be acceptable. Then it takes up to two months for the new employee to find a place to rent. We always insisted that staff members have a diplomatic escape clause in the lease, so the landlord couldn't hold us individually responsible for being ordered to leave the country before the lease expired.

My situation is a good example. I arrived in Barbados after Thanksgiving in 1989. But I didn't move into my house until New Year's Eve. I didn't bring up my curtailing to get into the summer bidding cycle when I moved from the consular to budget office and my extending by a year when Alex got his job in St. Lucia with my landlord because it wouldn't affect him for at least another 18 months. But then when I was assigned to Moldova in response to a volunteer telegram, I ended up leaving in August of 1992. I considered that a full assignment since I was leaving within 60 days of October 1. My landlord, on the other hand, responded that he had expected me to stay for a full three years, not two years and 8 months.

Image of bars on a window
by Rob Young, via Flickr.com

Then there were the landlords who really felt burned by American embassy staff when they installed those bars on the windows that the regional security officer insisted be there. The bars became an obstacle when the landlords tried to rent their houses to others. One landlord in particular had made it well known around the island how unhappy he was because his house was on the east and north coast of the island, as far as it was possible to be away from the embassy. While the staff member who lived there liked the privacy, he only stayed a few months before he was pulled out of Barbados for some questionable behavior, possible because he was so far away from watching eyes.

There were also automobile dealers. Barbados follows the British road system with cars driven on the left side of the road. Because it costs much more in Barbados to insure a car equipped with the steering wheel on the left side (something I failed to learn until it was too late and our car was delivered), many people chose to buy a car in Barbados at duty-free prices. However, only vehicles that were still in bonded warehouses could be purchased duty free. Cars on the lots had already had their duty paid by the dealer. The dealers could get the duty returned, but the Bajan government operated at Caribbean speed which meant the delay could be up to a year. One kind-hearted dealer many years before had agreed to sell a car that had been released from the bonded warehouse to a member of the embassy staff, on the promise that the person would be in Barbados at least a year - the time required for a vehicle to be in the hands of a diplomat without duty being owed. You probably already know the rest of the story. The staff member left Barbados within a year, the Bajan government refused to return the duty paid by the dealer, and the dealer was out of luck.

Oh, did I forget to mention that duty on vehicles in Barbados was 100% of the value of the car?

When American staff members' tours were curtailed, we would have to send a diplomatic note to the Foreign Ministry to request that the unpaid duty be waived. Most people who left early didn't want to take a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car for where they were going next, but even those who brought in cars with steering wheels on the wrong side of the car for Barbados didn't want to take them with them because there was no unleaded gasoline in Barbados. Rarely did someone pay to have the catalytic converter removed from cars before leaving for overseas because of the bureaucratic headaches of getting paperwork the garages in the U.S. needed to remove them, and the Department wouldn't reimburse employees for the cost of removing them - they only reimbursed employees for the cost of reinstalling them if the car was brought back to the U.S.

Every time one of these diplomatic notes went to the Foreign Ministry, they would balk at waiving the unpaid duty, but there was usually some compassionate argument to get them to agree. Until one was requested for me.

I had brought in a car from the U.S. and I had been in the country long enough not to have to pay duty for it, but the summer before I left Barbados, the summer when I extended my tour for a fourth year, Tim*, the new employee who received the first pencil from the staff of the Budget and Fiscal office,  had brought in a nine-year-old Nissan Stanza hatchback. It had been his mother's car and he brought it with him to Pakistan, his previous assignment, where vehicles were only duty free if they had been in the country for three years. That meant he couldn't sell his car in Pakistan without someone, either buyer or seller, paying the duty. Tim had the car sent to Miami where it sat in a warehouse while he was in Washington, D.C., studying Spanish for that assignment that was broken so he could come to Barbados instead. The Nissan had been sitting in the sun, waiting to be shipped for nearly a year.

Image of a Nissan Stanza in much better shape than
ours by rscottjones, via Flickr.com

By the time it arrived, the paint was faded, there was rust developing, and Tim thought he might need a better looking vehicle for all those times he knew he would be driving to representational events around the country. When I saw the car, I agreed with him. He decided he would rather pay the duty for the car and then buy a new one as his one duty-free car. But I offered him something better - at least for him. As Alex and I were now married, I had the right to have two duty-free vehicles in the country. And I expected to be in Barbados for another two years. In addition, our son wanted to learn to drive. He didn't want to keep taking the bus to school when his friends all drove. I offered to buy the Nissan from Tim. It looked like a win-win. Tim wouldn't have to worry about paying the duty. Our son would have a car to drive to school and then down to the beach with his surfboard sticking out the back window after school. It wasn't a woody, but it was good enough.

But then, eight months later, I was assigned to Moldova. Because I had little time to get ready for the transfer, when the Foreign Ministry refused the request for a waiver of the duty free because this transfer did not look to them like there was any compassionate need, we sent diplomatic notes to both the Foreign Ministry and the Finance Ministry to request information about how much the duty would be if the vehicle were sold in Barbados. We got a response from the Finance Ministry. I paid the duty, and then I sold the car to one of the local employees of the embassy.

Six months later, the general services officer at the embassy in Barbados contacted me to tell me that I needed to pay more for the duty on the car. The Foreign Ministry informed the embassy that the Finance Ministry did not calculate the full amount. The additional amount they requested I pay was almost to the penny what I had sold the car for.

Instead of paying the additional amount, I requested that the embassy ship that now nearly 11-year-old Nissan to Moldova. The story of what happened to the car there will have to wait for a later project.

*a name, not necessarily the right one

Day 238 - Work Permits

Image of men at work sign by Red~Cyan (Pro),
via Flickr.com

The Barbados government was very interested in having people come into the country to invest. There were many westerners, both North Americans and Europeans, interested in moving to Barbados to set up businesses. It sounded like synergy, but there was a disconnect between those two visions. The Barbados government's vision was foreigners depositing money into Barbados banks and then turning the business over to Bajans to do the work. The vision of the foreigners, however, involved hands-on management, or what the Barbados government considered work. And there is the catch. In order to work, foreigners need work permits. Employers are responsible for applying for the work permits. That makes it tough for a prospective self-employed foreigner.

The situation was probably more complicated with some other options, but these are my observations.

In Alex's case, it took 18 months for the government to issue a work permit, based on the application from the Barbados Telephone company. We will never know what the reasons were for the delay, but it seemed typical.

Image of a mini moke by kenjonbro, via Flickr.com

We met three couples whose experiences were different because they were their own bosses. The first were Canadians and owners of a rental car company specializing in renting mini mokes to tourists. Both husband and wife were present at their business all the hours they were open. But they were told they couldn't do anything. They couldn't answer the phone. They couldn't write up a lease. They couldn't sign the lease. They could only oversee.

The next couple, British, owned a pub and restaurant. Like the Canadian couple, they were warned not to do any work. They could not cook or serve food. They could not take orders or serve drinks at the bar. They could only oversee their employees.

One afternoon, when a delivery truck arrived, an immigration employee either saw or was told that the husband pushed a dolly with the supplies on it from the truck to the back door of the pub. That began their troubles with immigration which led eventually to their departure from Barbados.

The tea shop

The third couple were American and British, Martin* and Anna.* They had work permits from a small hotel they had managed before we met them. While they still had work permits, they opened a bakery and tea shop. They opened every morning by 8 and they stayed open until they sold everything they had baked that day. That ensured that everything they served was fresh and they never had to work too late in the day, making up for the early hours they kept to bake their goods. We used to have breakfast there Saturday mornings which is how we got to know them.

About a year later, Anna's mother fell ill and Anna had to travel to Florida to be with her. Martin kept the shop open, but a few months later it became clear that he would have to travel to Florida for awhile as well. He left the shop in the hands of their staff for a month. We continued to have breakfast there on Saturdays, but the quality of the baked goods was not the same at all. Instead of light gingerbread mini loaves, the loaves were heavy and stodgy,  and there was nothing flaky about the pastry of the Cornish pasties, making the convincing case for there being more to baking than just following a recipe.

While Martin and Anna were in Forida, their shop was robbed. Only their specialty kitchen equipment was stolen. When they returned to Barbados, their staff began to complain that they didn't understand why they shouldn't share in the profits of the shop since they worked there. Then when Martin and Anna applied for their work permits to be renewed, there were unexplained delays. They stuck around for a few more months until they decided to pack up and move to Florida.

Day 234 - Bajan Hospitality

Rosie and Joey

We spent a lot of our time entertaining in our home or being entertained at the homes of colleagues. But we didn't spend a lot of time in the homes of Bajans. This was yet another example of the cultural differences on the island.

There were two couples we thought of as Bajan who we spent time with in their homes, Rosie and Joey and Orrie and Nancy.

Rosie worked in the personnel office at the embassy and was always inviting members of the embassy - both American and Bajan - to their home at the northern end of the island. Their home was at the end of a long and narrow drive with trees lining both sides, draping the leaves and branches over the road like an arch. Every time we drove to their home, I could feel the tension flow out of my body as we got closer to the house.

Rosie and Joey had three cats, four turtles, and about six or seven dogs, in addition to chickens and cows. The cats ruled indoors. The turtles had their own enclosed area in the garden. And the dogs ruled outside. A couple of them were border collies who would try rounding up the chickens if they strayed too far from the coop. I loved watching Joey feed the dogs. He would put down one dish for each dog. The dogs would line up behind a bowl and wait for Joey to pour food into the dishes. There was no fighting or contention. The dogs waited for their turns.

Rosie and Joey's dogs

Orrie was Alex's colleague with the Barbados Telephone Company (Bartel). Alex's project involved inventorying all Bartel's properties in order to recommend properties that were no longer needed or that needed improvements.

We thought Rosie, Joey, Orrie, and Nancy were Bajans, but eventually we learned their experiences on the island were very much like ours. They rarely, if ever, were invited to the homes of Bajans. Rosie and Joey were from Saba, another Caribbean island, although they had lived in Barbados for many years. Orrie and Nancy were from Guyana.

We were invited to the home of one Bajan couple, our next door neighbors, Allen and Elaine. Allen and Elaine moved into their home shortly after we moved into ours. Both houses were the most recently built on the hill. Allen was a veterinarian so there were cars parked on our street every day as pet owners brought their dogs, cats, and other small animals to Allen's office. Most people didn't roll up the windows on their cars so our Sharifa would often end up going for short rides as she would jump into the cars and settle down in the back window until someone noticed her and would return to Allen's to let her out. So Allen got to know our cats before we met him and his wife.

Hospitality at Rosie and Joey's

Our first official visit with Sharifa to Allen's office was the day after Allen and Elaine had been our guests for dinner. There were many more dinners at either our house or theirs. Elaine was also one of my contacts at the embassy as she was a realtor who had been negotiating with the management officer who married the DCM to lease a new building for U.S. Information Agency. When the management officer and DCM left, that project ended up on my to do list.

Allen and Elaine had traveled to the U.S. frequently. Allen had attended university outside of Barbados. As a result, they were more comfortable around foreigners than most Bajans. One weekend, Allen and Elaine told us they were inviting some of their friends for a party. They wanted us to know because there would be some noise. But mostly they wanted to explain that they weren't including us because they knew that their friends hadn't been outside of Barbados and they were concerned that their friends would leave us out of the conversation. They didn't want us to feel uncomfortable.

Even one of the Bajan employees who worked in the Budget and Fiscal office, Angela, told me she didn't feel welcomed by Bajans. She and her husband had lived in England for several years. They married there and their parents remained in England when Angela and her husband decided they wanted to raise their children in Barbados. They had been in Barbados for two years by the time Angela began working at the embassy. In spite of her Bajan citizenship, she said she still felt like an outsider. When she learned that I would be leaving Barbados a year earlier than planned as a result of my volunteer response for Moldova being accepted, she asked if I could help her get a job with the U.S. embassy in London because she and her husband had decided by then that they would likely feel more comfortable in England than if they remained in Barbados. For the sake of their children, they decided they needed to be comfortable in order to be good parents. Shortly after we left Barbados, I heard from Angela that she had been hired by the Federal Aviation Agency at the embassy in London so she and her family were able to return to England.

Day 233 - Good Enough For A Pencil

Image of pencils by hownowdesign,
via Flickr.com

On her last day in the office, Beth, a secretary in the political section, handed out pencils with the embossed message "Don't forget me. Beth." It was a clever departure touch and I thought the idea of pencils with a message might be useful elsewhere.

I ordered a batch of pencils with the phrase "One of the B&F Favorites." B&F or Budget and Fiscal is what the financial management office was called in those days. I gave each of the members of the staff five pencils and told them to look for opportunities to give them away when one of their customers did or said something that pleased them. I had noticed that Bajan staff responded to those who came to them for help as if they were looking in a mirror. If Americans approached a Bajan staff member with a smile, they got a smile in return. If Americans approached with a frown, they got a frown in return. I thought I might be able to encourage a higher percentage of smiles by challenging the staff to look for good behavior. The only requirement was that they had to explain the reason they were giving the person a pencil.

The first pencil went to Tim*, an American who came for help because he just realized that he hadn't been paid for the previous three months. This was a very unusual situation, fitting his very unusual circumstances. He had originally been assigned to a country in South America after his previous assignment in Pakistan. He returned to Washington for six months of language training, during which time his previous post had responsibility for reporting his time and attendance. But somewhere during his language training, his assignment was changed to Barbados. When that happened, he had other training to complete and the hand off between his post in Pakistan and the office in Washington that should have handled the change in assignments was dropped. As a result, no office was reporting his hours and the checks stopped going into his bank account. There was nothing he did - or didn't do - that caused the problem. And until he learned from his bank that he was about to go into overdraft, he had no way of knowing a problem had occurred. He explained these details, smiling the whole time. Given the circumstances, laughing was about the only response for Tim. When he finished his story, there were three members of the B&F staff ready to hand him a pencil for his positive attitude.

Presentation of the framed pencils

The rest of the pencils eventually were given away, and then I began serving as the acting management officer (known then as Joint Administrative Officer or JAO). Now the general services office staff, the personnel office staff, the information office staff, and the community liaison office staff all reported to me, so I ordered up some more pencils with "One of the GSO Favorites," "One of the Personnel Favorites," "One of the IMO Favorites," "One of the JAO Favorites," and "One of the CLO Favorites" on them and gave the staff of those offices the same assignment. Pencils started being handed out all over the building.

We had learned as a result of the cultural orientation after the fight how important it was to the Bajan staff that we all greet everyone each day. But that lesson wasn't adopted by everyone. The embassy was located on the third and fourth floors of a bank building in downtown Bridgetown. The Bajan staff, as well as those Americans in the management function, worked on the third floor. The ambassador's and DCM's offices, the security, political, and economic offices were on the fourth floor.  The ambassador and DCM would come down often to the third floor and walk through the space to greet the staff. The chief of the political office never did. When he was named the acting DCM, the ambassador reminded him that he should also make regular walks through the third floor to talk with the Bajan staff. He did.

My farewell gift from the embassy

One day as I was walking with Brenda, one of the Bajan B&F staff, the acting DCM came through and after he passed us, Brenda commented on how much he had changed since being named acting DCM. But then she added, "but not enough for a pencil."

My farewell gift from the staff of the embassy was a framed page with signatures from most of the staff of the embassy. Also on that sheet were four pencils, from the B&F, GSO, JAO, and Personnel offices. Nothing could have pleased me more.

*a name, not necessarily the right one

Day 230 - Curtailments - The Rest of the Story

Mapps College, a private secondary school for boys

I hadn't noticed the high curtailment rate while I was in the consular section, but once Natalie volunteered for the African post, her assignment was curtailed, and I moved into her job, I saw things from a different viewpoint. The reasons for the curtailment requests were all different. The methods and strategies employees used to get their tours shortened were varied. The only common factor to most of them was that life in Barbados didn't turn out to be what people had thought it would be. The result was what we saw at that 40th birthday party in our first few weeks, at least one unhappy person in every couple.

Natalie's was the first curtailment I knew of. She left Barbados within two years of arriving. And within weeks, Ed, the personnel officer, was the second curtailment, following the same pattern - he responded to another volunteer telegram for another position in Africa. He also left within two years of arriving. Then Rich, the general services officer, left. His curtailment resulted from his wife's fight with his boss' secretary. He didn't want to leave, but the Department sent a compelling message that it would be better for his career if he and his wife left Barbados. They hadn't been in Barbados a year before they left.

Entrance to USAID in Bridgetown, Barbados

The regional medical officer (RMO) requested a curtailment within six months of his arrival when he decided to retire instead of serve his full tour. The regional security officer (RSO) requested a curtailment when he and his wife made the decision to separate. They had a young child so he wanted to return to Washington in order to be near his child.

Then the administrative officer for another agency at the post requested a curtailment after just five months in country. He and his wife didn't find Barbados to be what they had expected. Barbro, the deputy chief of mission (DCM), one of the few people who had previously served in Barbados, decided we needed to look more closely at what was leading to so many early departures. She formed a Task Force. I was a member.

Diplomatic parking lot, downtown Bridgetown

Because so many people seemed to expect their tour in Barbados to be a vacation on the beach, we concluded that we needed to remove all the tourist brochures that were being sent to those assigned to Barbados so that we didn't contribute to that impression. We also looked at the slides that were available in the Overseas Briefing Office and discovered that they also emphasized the tourist side of life. We pulled out all the slides of sail boats, surfing, and beaches. We removed the brochures from Plantations nightclub (the venue of the Miss Barbados pageant), Harrison's Cave, the Animal Flower Cave, the Jolly Roger Party Ship, and anything else that sounded like fun. And we set out to find replacements that would answer the questions about aspects of living on Barbados that most of us were unprepared for. We put together a video of life in Barbados to replace the tourist slide shows, including photos of the schools, the grocery stores, the commissary, the diplomatic parking lot, and other everyday sights that would be more common than beach scenes to give those preparing for a Barbados assignment more realistic expectations.

Embassy commissary

One of the political officers requested a curtailment because of an incident at his 13-year-old daughter's school that made him decide his daughter needed to return to the U.S. for school. It was mid-way through the school year which made it very difficult to find a boarding school alternative. Curtailment was the only practical solution in their case.

Another disappointment for many families was the limited number of opportunities for spouses to work. There were very few jobs within the embassy, and there was no bilateral agreement to make it easy for Americans to get jobs on the local economy. A bilateral agreement would eliminate the requirement for Americans to get work permits. It took Alex 18 months to get a work permit. Most spouses weren't willing to wait that long. So employees requested curtailments.

Every curtailment left us with a staffing gap. It was more than a year before the regional medical officer position was filled after the previous RMO left the island to retire. The new RMO, Stuart, decided he was going to make it his private project to figure out why so many people requested curtailments. But before he had time to come to a conclusion, his 22-year-old son in the United States was diagnosed with cancer so he and his wife left just six months after he had arrived. Another curtailment.

Barbados car wash

A new DCM secretary arrived just after Christmas after having spent several weeks in California getting her father settled in a retirement center. She chose Barbados because she had heard of State Department employees assigned to Ottawa or Paris, where living quarters allowances were used in place of leased housing, who had purchased a home. Up to 10% of the cost of a home could be covered through the living quarters allowance each year so she looked forward to her three years followed by an extension of a fourth year at the end of which she hoped she would have had the U.S. government pay 40% of the cost of a home where she could then retire and remain in the Caribbean. She also planned to bring her father down to Barbados to live with her.

What she didn't know was how much the real estate market in Barbados differed from those other countries. Sellers expected to get paid cash, and the banks didn't offer mortgages to foreigners. So her plans fizzled pretty quickly. On top of that, a week after she arrived, her father died and she had to return to California for his funeral.  When she requested a curtailment, however, the Department decided to hold the line. They wouldn't approve her request; they insisted she return to Barbados. But within six months, she had made life for everyone around her so miserable that her boss, the DCM, took the one step she had the power to take to shorten her secretary's tour - she sent in a loss of confidence telegram so the Department ordered the secretary's return to Washington.

Grocery store

Within a month of the arrival of Alex K, the successor to the management officer who approved my move from the consular section to the financial management office, he and the DCM became involved. The DCM and management officer positions are the two that ambassadors and the Department are eager to maintain some separation. Under normal circumstances, the management officer reports to the DCM who reports to the ambassador. That reporting structure makes it difficult for an ambassador to manage the rest of the mission if the DCM and management officer are married. So when the two of them married, the ambassador requested that their tours be curtailed so that he could have a new DCM and management officer assigned.

One of the information management officers traveled back to the U.S. on her Rest and Recuperation trip and while there she applied for a job with another federal agency. Within three months of her return to Barbados, she was offered a position with that agency, so she resigned and her tour was curtailed.

There was one person at post when I arrived there, Dave, the information programs officer, who had stayed through his entire three-year-tour and then extended for another year, definitely an exception. Before his fourth year ended, he requested a second extension, but the Department denied the request. So he left and was replaced by Tom*. Eighteen months later, half way through his tour, Tom requested a curtailment because his Brazilian wife wasn't comfortable in Barbados.

Antoinette, the successor to Margaret, the Deputy Consul, arrived in Barbados with her husband who worked for USAID. USAID didn't have a vacant position appropriate for her husband, but they did put him on a one-year contract. At the end of that year, when USAID couldn't extend the contract or come up with another assignment for him, Antoinette requested a curtailment.

Barbados didn't meet the expectations of those assigned there. And those who didn't stick around long enough to recognize what Barbados had to offer instead of what was expected missed a great opportunity. I will freely admit that we stayed in Barbados because it wouldn't have been fair to our son to pull him out of school again. He had already been in the secondary level in two other countries - England and Qatar. We stayed so that he could finish the secondary level. I'll always have that to thank our son for.

*a name, not necessarily the right one

Day 227 - The McDonald's Model

About six months into my tour in the consular section, our offices were moved from the third floor of a downtown building to a standalone building about a mile further away from the embassy. The main reason was security. Consular sections need to provide easy access for the visa and passport applicants who visit them, but they also need to provide security for the staff. In a mixed use building the former is possible, but the latter is complicated. At that time, there wasn't pressure to collocate (that's the way the Department spells it; I prefer co-locate) all U.S. government operations in the same building. That preference came later.

The layout of our new consular facilities was touted by management in Washington as the model for all future consular sections at other locations. Someone in the upper levels at State was supposed to have said, "If McDonalds can use the same building layout everywhere in the world to provide their services, we can do so, too." Once we moved into the new offices, I concluded that it was the wrong model, but no one ever asked me my opinion.

This statement reflected the Department's desire to shift away from having all embassies designed by expensive, internationally known architects in order that they fit within the local settings because those buildings were so expensive to build. Following the same layout inside was an initial step in the direction of standardizing, expected to save money when purchasing furniture and equipment.

image of an open plan office by jasra, via Flickr.com

Most of us had never seen the new location before the Friday when we packed the contents of our desks into boxes and watched them removed from the building, put into trucks, and then driven down the street. It took us all of the Friday normal business hours to pack up our offices, the storeroom, and the common area but we were expected to be open the following Monday so we had to spend most of Friday evening and much of the weekend getting unpacked and set up in our new quarters. Even putting in those extra hours wasn't enough, but we had to open so we limped along the rest of the next week, juggling visa interviews with office setup.

Our old offices had been one large square space divided into quarters with one quarter serving as the waiting area, the two quarters adjoining it were large rooms with multiple desks without partitions between them and the fourth quarter had private offices for only four of the Americans - the Consul General, the Deputy Consul, and two of the Vice Consuls. My office was a desk in one of the common rooms. The advantage was my proximity to the windows where I could enjoy the sound of the rain.

image of cubicles by Michael Lokner, via Flickr.com

Our new offices were entirely an open floorplan with cubicles for everyone except the Consul General and the Deputy Consul. I looked forward to having cubicle walls around my desk so that I would have more privacy. Our desks, however, were more like tables. There were no drawers to put the things we had packed up. And the desk surface area was smaller than what we had in the old location, making the option of stacking things on them inadequate. There was also a problem with the outlets in our cubicles. The phone jack was on one of the cubicle panels but the electrical outlet was on the opposite panel. That made positioning the desk to allow for both a telephone and a computer challenging. We ended up using extension cords draped over the cubicle walls so that the desks could be against one side without running a cord across the floor that might trip someone.

But the cubicles proved to be a big cultural challenge for us. We Americans saw cubicle walls as providing privacy to anyone within them. When we walked by the cubicles of our local staff, we respected their privacy and walked by without disturbing them. The Bajan employees on the other hand saw that behavior as very rude. They expected each person to greet every other person every morning. We had followed that rule in the old space when we said "Good morning" while we walked through them to our office space, but we Americans stopped following that rule in the new space because we really didn't know about this cultural norm. In the new building, our respect for the staff's privacy was seen as our being impolite and the local staff set out to prove this to us by their walking around the building first thing each morning and popping their heads into each of our cubicles to say "Good morning," even if we were on the phone or speaking in person with someone else in our cubicles. "How rude," we all thought.

All of this happened before the fight between the Bajan secretary and the wife of the American General Services Officer.

Even without the benefit of our later cultural sensitivity training after the fight, I saw one aspect of the new layout as very disrepectful to the local staff, although I didn't discuss it with any of them. At this point, not many of the local staff seemed willing to talk to me about anything and I wasn't eager to rock the boat.

Here is what I thought showed disrepect to our staff:

The new consular section was one very large rectangular room, divided into two parts by a wall of interview windows the full length of the space. The smaller portion, roughly one-third of the space, was the waiting room which had its own entrance with a walk-through-metal-detector and package Xray machine, to improve the security of the space. We employees entered through a separate entrance that did not have those extra security measures. There were chairs in the waiting room, but once we called an applicant for the interview, they stood on their side of the windows. No chairs were provided for the applicants at the windows because it is more difficult to encourage someone who is seated to leave when they are told we would not issue them a visa than it is to encourage someone who is already standing.

That meant that we consular officers either had to stand all day on our side of the window or our side needed a raised floor so that we could sit. The latter design option was selected, but instead of raising the floor of the entire work area, only enough of a platform to allow a row of chairs was created. Then, because it was a safety risk for us to be seated in desk chairs with wheels on the platform, they added a banister at the back of the platform so that we wouldn't roll off and get hurt. That was a good thing, but there were only two places along the row of 13 interview windows where there was a break in the banister to allow us to step up and squeeze our way through to our windows along the very narrow space behind the chairs. Once we each took our seats, we pretty much stayed there until all the applicants in the room had been interviewed, four to five hours later.

Here comes the culturally insensitive part. In those cases where we decided to issue the visa, we had to get the passport and application to the local staff behind us. The options were:

• Get up out of our chairs and make our way to the steps at the closest break in the banister and go to the table where the local staff worked, then making our way back to our window;
• Put the passport and application on the floor behind us which would require that the local staff bend over to pick them up;
• Place the application and passport on the banister, hoping they will balance there until one of the local staff collected them; 
• Keep all the passports and applications at our desks until the local staff asked for them or until we finished our interviews when we would then hand over the work to the local employees who now would have less time to complete their part; or
• Raise a hand and snap fingers or shout to get the attention of one of the local staff in order that someone would collect.

The first option disrupted the other consular officers and interrupted the flow of work. The other four options seemed very disrespectful of the local employees, especially since all of the American visa interviewing officers were white and none of the local staff were.

Image of McDonalds in Japan by Akoaraisin, via Flickr.com

I've never worked at McDonald's, so I don't know if there are aspects of their employees' workspaces that show so little respect to one group of them as I saw in our model consular section space. I felt strongly enough about the cultural factors that should have been taken into account in the new consular layout that I drafted a telegram to share those thoughts. The Department uses draft instead of write because not everything that is drafted gets sent. My draft telegram remained a draft, never sent. The pessimist in me (I let that side show every now and then) thinks it doesn't matter because it would likely never have been read either.