From Toilets 2 Towers...

Now I don't think I could beat it into anyone any more than I all ready have about the idiots running this place. Well the next story I have to tell will blow you away. I would say the one thing that is most important about having LN's work for an American based company getting paid by OUR tax dollars is that they at least speak and read English. Now under normal circumstances the need for this may not apply, but given that our job is to support the US Armed Forces then I would say it does. Now I do not have any problems with those that work with us, they are just trying to survive the best way they know how, my problem is still with our management. Now I may not fully feel comfortable having so many LN’s and especially on such short notice, but there isn’t much I can do about that.

Not so long ago we had 2 tower guys (that are no longer with us) that were local nationals and they did an ok job from what their American counterparts said. The problem was that neither one was fluent in English which means that a lot of what was instructed to them has to be done by an interpreter. I use to work with interpreters when I worked at AT&T (which seems so long ago). The one thing you have to watch out for is the small subtle differences in the 2 languages. My point of saying that is simply out an instruction can be completely misinterpreted if the one relaying the message isn’t clear himself. The problem here was that both of the tower guys hired not only couldn’t read or write English or even speak it well, but they couldn’t read or write in Arabic either. In case you are wondering Arabic is the language spoken in the Middle East. Still do not have a problem with that, because they were hard workers, but their level of standards would never make it in a commercial environment.

My point of bringing this up wasn’t in any way to do harm to Local Iraqi’s they are only playing the hand they were dealt and doing it admirably on top of that. I brought it up to show the continued idiotic decisions made by those that take our tax dollars and waste it on the good of the company not the good of the country. The sad part of all of this is I haven’t even gotten to my point. Mohammed (Our custodial engineer) is a bright young man about the age of 19. As far as I know he has no father that he speaks of, he is Muslim with a Catholic girlfriend, and has a fixation with physical gratification (layman’s terms that’s sex). Now Mohammed as I have mentioned in the past makes $15 a day which adds up to a wonderful $360 a month bringing his annual salary to just under 5 grand a year. Now this is actually a very good salary for an Iraqi national. Now as far as I have been told the “LN technicians” are getting $40 a day, or just under $13,000 a year. I could be mistaken in the numbers, but I fairly certain that I am not. Well our kind hearted hard working janitor has received a promotion while I was away on break. He is now our local national tower hand, from custodial engineer to telecommunication engineer. Not exactly the kinda of transition you would see in the commercial world, at least not any I have ever worked before now.

I have found it increasingly difficult to continue to deal with this place when there is nothing but donkeys running the show. I swear to ALMIGHTY GOD if there was someone I could talk to I would, because this mess is getting out of control. I worry less about bombs and more about the complete ignorance of our managers and that can have a dangerous affect especially given my location. I am not much of a manager nor have I ever really wanted to be, but as I have said before monkeys could run this place better…

Keep hope alive…

Maybe we will get a chimp for a new manager…

Doubtful they are too smart to come here…

KO