Wednesday, 25 July 2012

The Hastie Saga...

…and upcoming holidays

After much deliberation, our next holiday and what would be our final ‘long’ holiday together as a couple was booked, before the arrival of Twiglet and what going forwards would  be considered ‘family’ holidays.

The destinations of choice was a fly-bye catch up in London and Bristol, with friends, family, Molly and the houses, before heading on to the much anticipated Big Apple, somewhere both Mark and I have always wanted to go…

As I mentioned in my last post, all was on the up for Mark and I.  After 1.5 years of uncertainty and not really being able to put roots down in Dubai as yet, things were finally coming together.  Mark had a new job to come back to and I was continuing to ride out my time at Hastie before I would head off on maternity leave in about 4 months.  But…there always has to be one…continuing what seemed to have become a tradition within my company… every time I go away some big changes seem to take place…it was unsurprising that this occasion was no different.  The changes that took place however, occurred somewhere between our last holiday to Jordan and just before we were ready to head off to London and NYC….

The company had been in a bad way financially for some time, but new management had come into power a few months before and were trying to rectify the situation.  But unbeknown to me and the rest of the staff, time was running out far more quickly than anticipated, with no improvement…

So one day we all came into work to find a memo from our (new-ish) Head in Australia, announcing that the company had gone into administration.  Most of the Senior Management of the Dubai office, had all left/fled the country to avoid becoming personally liable for the AED ‘000,000’s of dishonoured cheques that were about to be cashed by irate suppliers. 

The law in the UAE makes you personally liable for any cheques you have signed that become dishonoured, whether they company or personal cheques.  So as to avoid jail, they all fled, leaving the company and its employees in a bit of a sticky situation.  Thankfully we had just been paid until the end of the month (May, yes this is how old this post is), and the Administrator that had been brought in from Hong Kong, told the staff that we were under no obligation to stay, as the company had no money to pay us anything further.  Loyalty for some reason remained and many people worked (including myself) until the end of the month and some even beyond the end of the month of May, regardless of the fact that they wouldn’t be getting paid for it. 

The saga continued (as we headed off on our holiday) and the story made the local paper here in Dubai, as well as the Australian headlines (considering the company was headquartered in Australia), together with stories of money being transferred from the Dubai company to the Australian company the day before it was announced to the public (and staff) that the company would be going administration.  Stories circulated both within the company and the paper that two of the Management Team in Dubai had taken a substantial amount money each from the safe in the Dubai office for their own personal use to get out of the country…  Scandaal!!

To cut a long story short, the remaining Management (i.e. generally those who weren’t accountable for any signed cheques) thankfully remained to try and close off and end what they could as amicably as possible, between, clients, staff, contractors, suppliers etc. Thankfully this eventually resulted in a final months pay and part of the gratuity owed to the staff, which we received over a month or so later (outstanding medical claims, expenses and the rest still pending).

Whilst it wasn’t the best time to loose my job (is there ever a good time?), being so close to going on maternity leave… things could still have been a lot worse.  So we reminded ourselves that there were those in a far worse situation than us and we still needed to be thankful that Mark had secured his new job (not even 2 weeks before the announcement was made).

Not quite being ready to become a housewife as yet, I was a little worried about who would take on a pregnant lady for a 3 month contract role (which is all I would need by the time we got back from holiday), the fact temping is not really a big thing here in the UAE and not to mention that I had also lost my medical cover with the job, (not great when you 4 or so months pregnant) which meant I would be without medical for a couple of weeks until Mark was up and running in his new job (and even then it was uncertain as to whether his new medical company would take me on so far in my pregnancy).  

Having said all that, we still had a wonderful holiday to look forward too…where we could put reality, out of sight and out of mind (at least for a little while longer anyway).

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