Ok, no problem Sir

As I have mentioned before the UAE has a demographic that is surely unique in the world. Emiratis make up the ruling class and 20% of the population, relatively rich western expats make up maybe 10% and the rest are expats from Asia and the Subcontinent and have their own layers of class divide.

Australia is a relatively classless society. If you disagree with this statement, as I may well have before coming here, I recommend you go and live in an oil rich Middle Eastern Sheikhdom for a while and then reassess your opinion. Here class is basically broken down using nationality. Most jobs advertised in the paper here clearly state the nationality of the person they want to hire, with the salary modified accordingly.

Top of the heap are the rich as balls Emiratis, below them are the rest of the Emiratis then the Western Expats and Gulf Arabs, then the rest of the expat workers from Asia and the Subcontinent.The result of this is that if you are a bottom of the heap worker, you do what you are told. No questions, no arguments, you do what you are told. So you do this even if the following scenarios hold true; it is a stupid thing to do, it is pointless, it is unsafe, your are completely unqualified to do it, you will clearly fuck it up if you attempt it.

They do this because if they don’t do whatever retarded thing they are told to do then their boss will yell at them, or possibly fire them. Fair enough, I’d do it too. But this works on the next level too. For example;

The only reason their boss is yelling at them to move those twenty tonnes of gravel twelve metres to the left is because the boss’s boss has yelled at him because the gravel is in front of a truck, and the only reason the boss’s boss wanted the path cleared in front of the truck is because the boss’s boss’s boss yelled at him to get the truck round the front of the building, the only reason the boss’s boss’s boss yelled at him to get the truck round the front of the building is because the boss’s boss’s boss’s boss wanted a truck in some photos he was taking, which, in fact, would look much better with a pile of gravel in front of it. “Oi, move that gravel pile in front of the ....”

Officially around here things work according to best practice, protocol and common sense... but really they work according to once simple question “Who would I rather be yelled at by?” I first realised this a few months ago.

I had just gotten back from a work trip to Paris and as part of the airfare my work had arranged a car service back to my apartment. It has been booked a week in advance and I had a booking reference in my hand. I get to the team of people out the front of the airport directing cars and show them my booking number and I am assigned a place in the ‘queue’. I wait... wait... wait...

Many, many people get a car in front of me. It is 40 degrees and humid as hell and I lose my temper. I walk up to the lady running the show and I raise my voice at her “What is going on here? I’ve been waiting for an hour now and people who have arrived after me continually get into cars before I do. [In my desperation I yelled] Do you just give the next car to the person who yells at you the most?!”. “Oh no Sir”, she assured me.

I got the next car.

I clicked then just how this country works. Yell, argue and be rude to get what you want. I’ve got to say that I find this difficult because, well, I'm not a total arsehole.

This culture of fear encompasses pretty much every aspect of UAE employment. So the majority of people that you deal with are probably so used to being yelled at by their boss that they will do whatever that crazy bastard wants to avoid it. This leads to extraordinarily low levels of customer service and workmanship. Examples:

I wanted to buy a TV when I got here. A salesman saw me looking at TVs, asked me what TV I liked, talked up a certain TV, acknowledged my interest in said TV, gave me the price of said TV and when I asked to buy it he said it was not in stock. I asked what TVs were in stock and basically the entire store was empty of stock. Why would he go through that whole spiel with me if he had nothing to sell? Well because his boss would yell at him if he wasn't working, and me getting annoyed at him for wasting my time and talking for 20 minutes trying to sell something he didn’t have was a better option than the boss yelling at him.

The result, and the title of my post, is the phrase ‘Ok, no problem Sir”. This is what you hear from downtrodden salesmen, unqualified electricians, out-of-stock distributors and uncomprehending security guards. The reason you hear it is because they hope it will placate you for long enough for you to go away and stop causing them trouble and if it pisses you off that's ok because they would much rather you yell at them (in all your western pussy glory) than the hardcore BMW 745 driving Emirati bossman.

So they say “Ok, no problem Sir”. This means anything and everything from “Your dry-cleaning will be four days late“ to "I have no training but me and the boys will have a crack at installing your split-system" to “I know that sewage pipe is going to burst any minute but if I don’t get this ute back by 4:30 I’ll be deported”. It’s a catch all phrase that, on initial entry to this country filled me with confidence, but now makes me double-check where my passport is.

That and Insha'Allah.