This week I will have the huge pleasure of going home, I say the huge pleasure because it has been a very long time since a work assignment has been so trying; I believe the last one was in China in 2004. This assignment has been that tough on me mostly because of the culture difference between me and my customer, it has affected the work relationship.
Once I was here, I have quickly realized that for the local population nothing matters much. It usually is a good thing on a day to day basis because the people will be more relaxed but it can quickly become quite frustrating when it comes to keeping a work schedule and finishing a project at the expected date. Each time I would ask for something I learned to always specify a time constraint not to wait indefinitely for it. Even with this time constraint I would still need to go check how things were going. Whether I ask for something simple or complex to be done I would never get it done straight away. I would sometime get the feeling that what I asked was forgotten as soon as I was walking away, I even have the confirmation of such a thing when I would get in the office of the one I asked and he would jump out of his chair to go where he was supposed to do something for me as soon as he laid his eyes on me. In many cases I would get a “sorry sorry” (I will take care of it right away because I forgot) and the person would go back to internet surfing as soon as I would walk away. There is no point in getting angry because they simply wouldn’t understand why I would get angry, what matters to them is that I would get what I asked for; when simply doesn’t matter. I would have a hard time explaining that I can’t stay all my life on their island because they are incapable of meeting a time limit. With all the work I had, I took the time to go check the progress of each of the tasks I gave. I would go check the status when coming to work in the morning, I would check again just before or after lunch break and I would check again at 4PM before everyone would start to go home. I know it seems a lot but trust me, in a lot of cases it wasn’t even enough.
My company has taken care of every aspects of previous project with this customer and would only leave when all would be up and running. As this project is only an extension the customer has to participate in the setup of new services. He is so used to not having to do anything that the change is very difficult. When I ask something it goes a little bit like this:
- You’re not taking care of this?
- No it is completely out of my domain, I don’t know anything about this.
- Ok but usually your company takes care of this.
- Yeah well, this time there is no one to take care of this and you guys have people whose job it is to take care of this.
- I’m going to see what we can do
- Ah you can’t see what you can do but you have to do it otherwise it will never work
- Ok when do you need this?
- Right now.
When I say now, I know I will never get anything the same day, work stops at 4:15 PM here so work days are very short, when I ask something for the same day I may have a chance of getting it 2 days later.
Here is a variant if I ask for a cable to be put between 2 machines:
- Do you have the cable for this?
- You don’t have any?
- We have to check.
They in fact have the cable needed but they have to look for it, it is easier for them to ask me first if I have some.
On a few occasions when the customer has difficulties providing me with something I asked, the person will come to me and say something like: “we are doing our best and in case we can’t do it your company will help us with that”. I always feel like answering: “I really don’t see what my company can do for this, it is not our job”. I feel like the customer relies completely on us and as soon as they can’t manage something it is our duty to takeover. They relied a lot on me to help solve the problem they faced while I was here. I could have told them not to bother me with stuff out of my domain but if I really wanted to leave this place I had to takeover. When I do fun is over and you better do what I tell you otherwise I might throw you out of a window. Some guys from the customer had to stay till 8 PM because I wanted them to finish a task before going home. I didn’t make friends but put yourself in my shoes: I haven’t seen my wife for more than 2 months, the project I am working on is not moving forward and it is not my doing, the only way to get out of this is to push the ones who are not doing their jobs for reasons I just don’t understand. I am certain that each guy from my company who came to Kiribati before me was faced with the similar problem.
During my stay I understood that the reason why things were not moving forward when I was asking something to be done: they are so used to have someone take care of everything that they simply don’t understand how the stuff works.
Every foreigner I have talked to agrees with me, you can’t stay more that 2 weeks on this island. I am so lucky!
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