Wasta wins EVERY time fellas!
K
I actually sent an e-mail to AAR during my last days as an EK employee. I was complaining on AS DVP Anoma M. He never answered, of course, but I had a goal - I wanted someone on higher instances to read that e-mail and just be aware of her influence on employees. My goals are always long term and I wanted to plant a seed.
It was a fun game for me, actually, because no one at the top knew how to handle me and it was so obvious. I had my disciplinary meeting where I explained everything about labour law, long working hours, how all the lousy conditions will affect EK at the end of it all (I wrote that to AAR and compared EK to Roman Empire
) and they looked at me the way I expected they will - like I was crazy.
Two years after and she "left" the company. I've got a comment on my blog from someone inside suggesting that she didn't exactly leave, but was "forced to leave". Everyone in AS were glad to see her back.
So, she had wasta, the word on the street was that AAR was her good friend and protector. But she left anyway and she left quietly. Wasta didn't win.
EK managers don't know how to play long term games. This is why the whole company is falling apart.
Although I was only a check in agent, I have a master's degree and was not interested to work as a check in agent for years. But EK managers don't have any develoment strategies for talented employees, they have only wastas and passport logic. And they play only short term games of exploiting people. But that game ends quickly. And it ends badly, because there are limits of how much you can pressure people to be your slaves. And there are limits of how much you can disrespect and even torture people with working conditions, which is specifically dangerous in airline businesses.
To make the long story short: nothing will change without radical moves. EK became a tool of TC's will for power. That was the begining of the end. A company should never be an instrument of one man or woman to achieve their personal sense of being powerfull.
Stop the company's irrational and greedy growth (which is only the manifestation of TC's ego), be satisfied with certain status quo, position and profit, fire extra managers (especially wasta managers), improve internal communication and organizational culture (not much is needed here, actually - just a little motivation in the form of respect) and give the AAR a sensitivity training - he needs it badly. Oh, and yes - close Costa in HQ.
After that - think for a while. Does brutal capitalism have a future? Do you want to have a future? Do you think that your wasta and punishment culture pays off at the end of it all? Do you think that your managers are afraid to do their job because of all the restrictions and threats? Why you don't allow and why you punish criticism? Can you benefit from a criticism? Do you need smart and skillful employees or you will continue to employ managers based on their wasta and passports? Do you actually understand that you don't have a company without good people to work with you despite of what brutal capitalism's propaganda and new world order's logic of exploiting people are telling you?