So after getting out of the military and going to work for a private company I was hoping there would be a lot less BS and stupidity from who I was working. But I have found out the hard way the last several months that this is far from the case. It all culminated about 3 or 4 weeks ago during my R&R.
I am a security contractor working for a large security firm that will go unnamed. Since taking this contract in Afghanistan only a week after I got out of the Army I was happy at the prospect of working for a large well respected company, but things quickly went downhill. After the initial training and pre deployment processing there were several red flags that I continued to ignore just hoping that they were isolate incidents that amounted to nothing more than a bump in the road. Before we got in country we were issued six month work visas for Afghanistan. Because we flew in on a military flight the visas never got stamped. Those of us on our crew mentioned it several times to our bosses but we never got any kind of resolution. This was a problem to use because we knew when we went on R&R and came back it would be via a commercial flight. On top of this we sometimes have to go out in town and get stopped at checkpoints. Being in a country, technically illegally since our passports weren’t stamped, and being stopped at a checkpoint is always an interesting experience. During the six months before my R&R came up our unstamped visas eventually expired, making a bad situation even worse. Eventually our boss collected our passports saying he would take care of it. When it was my turn to go on R&R I was told they would get me on a military flight out to avoid any complications. Ok, I said, but what about the return trip? Well get it taken care of was the response.
So I finally get home and am enjoying a wonderful month off spending time with my wife and taking care of little projects around the house. Finally about five days before I’m supposed to fly back I get an email from the company telling me to over-night my passport to the east coast so they could get a new visa issued by the embassy. Wow, five days; what a bunch of geniuses! That’s not even enough time to get it taken care of and catch my booked flights in a perfect world. And of course this isn’t a perfect world. Any one care to guess what happened during those five days? That’s right, Super Storm Sandy. I honestly had barely turned on the TV and didn’t watch the news while I was home up to this point so I didn’t know the full extent of what was coming. But I learned quickly. After all the destruction, loss of life and heartbreak the storm caused on the east coast, it was hitting me right between the eyes in the middle of Texas. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in any way trying to compare my plight to those that were actually in the storm. But this was me and I’m several thousand miles away and didn’t think it would affect me in any way. I was quite wrong. It cost me another five day. Now, most would think an extra five days at home would be a great thing and I should just stop my whining, right? Well when you get paid by the day and only get that when you are in country doing your job it adds up very fast. Especially after home improvements and just having a good time money goes pretty quick since you don’t have any income during that month you are off.
So because of the wonderful planning of the geniuses at the company I work for, I lost well over a $1000 on top of the money I wasn’t getting the month before. And to top it all off, while I was on a lay-over in Dubai our expediter that was driving me around was telling me how some of the execs were emailing back and forth wondering why I had missed my original flight. Because you forced me too and you had to book another one!! They completely forgot they even screwed up! Also, he told me the embassy in Dubai could have gotten me the passport in one day, two tops. So why didn’t they just send me to Dubai and take care of it there? Because I work for a bunch of geniuses.
Hopefully only the students in the class have access to this blog and/or nobody from the company figures out whom I am, etc. Or I could have real problems.
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