If you don’t like it, there are many others who want to take your place

When I got my final warning for disrespectful and aggressive passenger I got to know the ultimate extent of management’s incapability to do their jobs and negligence towards their staff.

Moreover, when I’ve had my meeting with Mr Mattar (DSVP), who claimed that grade 4 and 5 “are happy” I was sure that either something is wrong with internal communication between managers (someone is making false reports to higher management) or managers are simply denying the fact that they have a huge problem, because they:

1) Don’t care

2) Don’t want to admit a mistake 

Of course, no one in this upside down world of selfish and egocentric people don’t want to admit a mistake. Especially if the warning or advice is coming from someone they consider “lower grade”, “some grade 1” or , simply, on a lower monetary, and hence, intellectual level (?!).

As my final warning appeal I’ve written 5 pages e-mail about the fact that the Emirates Airline turned into a dying empire, since every empire in history of mankind disappeared for not knowing how to manage their magnitude. Of course, I knew that this will be accepted as very controversial. I was told that “in this company I am not HR manager but check in agent”. It’s very true but it is also a pure vanity argument.

It is, also, something else: the person who told me this (HR manager from Dnata Ms Maria Escobar) expressed her unconscious elitism and hints of something called “disposable staff policy“. She told me that she has a lot of experience in other companies and it was her ultimate argument why she is right and I am just talking nonsense. Maybe I could even agree with her if I didn’t know that good HR manager never puts educated and experienced employees down or competes with them in education and experience. Good managers listen to their front line employees and they never underestimate their intellect or capabilities.

Disposable workers, disposable company

So, Emirates Airline recruiters go around the world (to troubled countries mostly) and hire highly educated and/or smart and hard working people (often in need of money) for entry positions. For people who never worked in aviation this is fine. You work your way hard from the lowest positions and then gradually advance and learn more and more. At least this is how it should be. Don’t forget, Emirates recruiters are, actually, doing their job very well. They have unmistakable instinct for talented and honest people. It is just that those people are not appreciated once they arrive in Dubai.

Disposable staff policy means that those people were not hired to be nurtured as company’s future. They are squeezed until their last drop of blood and their health and youth are exploit in order to make huge profit for high management only, while staff’s salaries remain on the same level for years.

This brings us back to my famous question about Ms Anoma’s (DVP) salary. Yes, asking for someone’s salary may be “inappropriate” or considered as “rude” but only in the cultures where there is social and economic justice (Mr Mattar mentioned Stockholm on our meeting, so I will give the same example). People in Northern Europe know that profit is mostly shared fairly and accordingly to everyone’s role (I am not using the term “position” on purpose) in the company, so there is no need to ask for their manager’s salary. They are happy with their own pay cheque  and sure that their work and knowledge are not exploit in order for someone to get sick rich.

Position hierarchy, as one in Emirates Airline, exist only in discriminative and retrograde societies where people are not self confident and self assured, so they identify themselves with a position of a “boss”. Once there, these people stop growing mentally and spiritually (if they had ever grown in such a way). When this happens there is the end of all prosperity and everything starts to die.

How else would you explain the fact that DVP Ms Anoma Manuel proudly introduced new check in system before it was properly tested and before it had all the functions needed for operation? Moreover, she never listened the negative feedback from her employees, forcefully cancelling previous system to everyone and causing chaos at the airport and dissatisfaction among staff?

Disposable staff policy means that there is too much negative staff selection and too much positive one.

Negative staff selection happens when these incapable “bosses” prosecute and torture smart and educated people just because they don’t understand what wealth in human resources they have in the company and they have no idea how to put them in use for the benefit of all and company’s future.

Positive selection happens when there is a system of promotion that favours employees by racial or national key (although, positive discrimination of local people in Dubai is acceptable until some extent) or by wastas (which became primary way of promoting people in Emirates Airline).

Disposable staff policy means that managers will intimidate staff with punishments and warnings and threats of job loss because this is their only way to control the situation since they don’t have leadership skills and charisma so employees could love them and follow them voluntarily.

Disposable staff policy means ignoring staff’s needs and pleas. This is why I am not surprised that His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed AlMaktoum did not answer the open letter yet although I am sure that he read it. I would like to think that he is enlightened above the average in his company but I still do not have proofs for that.

Disposable staff policy means (also demotivated?) administration which makes mistakes in dealing with staff’s rosters and leaves, and HR managers who stay at HQ and rarely come to the airport to speak with staff, communicating with them via surveys that almost everybody is afraid to fill in.

A roster mistake, which made me work more and then fight for my overtime hours to be paid.

Disposable staff policy also means that staffs are completely unprotected in dealing with aggressive and rude passengers and any conflict with them is an automatic and certain punishment for staff.

If this is happening for years, then, at the end, we have sick and rotten environment which chases away, tortures, demotivates or prosecutes smart employees and keeps lazy and incapable ones. In these circumstances it is only natural that disposable staff policy will be almost official. Higher management is denying the truth (or they are not communicated with the truth) and lower, incapable, management is treating newcomers like kleenex.

If you don’t like it, there are many others who want to take your place (This is Ms Anoma’s favourite message to her employees who are, mainly, more educated than her). She is, obviously, forgetting that her staff invested their health, knowledge and experience in that job and no one likes to invest in something and than just let it go.

Managers like these are simply incapable to lead or to see the bigger picture. In this case, bigger picture is the one where picture is falling apart in the sea of blind managers incapable to make long term plans and visions. It’s gone with all the good and under appreciated employees who resigned from the hell they were trapped in or who stayed, but demotivated and unhappy. It died in greed and incapacity to learn from mistakes. Like every big empire did.