How useless are your staff?
 

I have three - THREE - decent people out of fifteen. That's decent. Not good, not particularly talented, just decent. :unsure:

The rest are backstabbing little ****ers who haven't a brain cell between them. I've had to deal with total incompetence, breathless uselessness and astonishing egos. One guy told me last week that he couldn't make meetings because he was a genius. Really. Another actually sabotaged an edit in a misguided attempt to make me look bad. My news producer (ex, since Thursday) thought two week old stories were news and frequently got the story completely wrong anyway.

I'm thinking of designing a t-shirt with "I'm with stupid" on it and arrows pointing in all directions, including up at my face for agreeing to work with this bunch of reprobates.

Whilst moaning on about this to my mate, she claimed that this was normal in the middle east...

Is it? I'm intrigued to know. Cos Ive certainly never come across such monumental crapness in my entire life.

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

It is. I'm always asking myself whether being made to work alone on a magazine is a blessing or a curse. In the UK, it'd be a straight curse. Over here though, I'm not so sure.

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

Nationalities?

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

stereotypes exist for a reason

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

BRILLIANT..:) Welcome to Dubai...:)

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

:rofl::rofl: Not only dubai, welcome to Doha as well ,-)

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

not wanting to badmouth an entire people : but one might say their is a void of work ethic here

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

The crap people broken down into nationalities in order of crapness

Iranian
Pakistani
Filipino

I would say the Iranians fall into the "backstabbing sabotaging *genius* category.

The Pakistani's and Filipino's into the "bloody useless, no initiative, no sense" category.

But my three best ones are from Iran, Pakistan and the Philippines. So you cant really generalise on nationalities.

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

its also depends on the industrie where they work in. Eg Philipinios have a good knowledge of CNC machinery some of them are able to work in europe!!

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

Count yourself lucky you don't have to work with Lebos and Egyptians...

The cherry on the cake is our HR department which is almost entirely staffed by locals, a more useless bunch I have never come across in 30 odd years of working. I haven't been paid on time once, lost passports, screwed up iqama, no health insurance for months, 10 months wait for expenses to be paid... I reckon 15% of my total working time here has been wasted trying to get things sorted out in HR.

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

Yep. It's normal. When I worked at a certain Sovereign Wealth Fund you had one person for one job. The same job that they had been doing for 15+ years. And they were still crap at it. And when they were off, the job wouldn't get done.

Useless. Lazy. No accountability. Welcome to the UAE :D

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

My old HR department was mostly locals apart from one poor overworked guy.

They were entirely useless.

One of them spent the entire month putting together the email which featured pictures and mini biogs of new recruits. Maybe 4 or 5 people each month. She still managed to spell my name wrong, mix it up with someone else's, and claim I'd learned lighting design in the Phillipines (errr.... not me guv)

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

The guys that work for me aren't too bad, apart from a moments of intense stupidity..

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

You all seem to be assuming that these employees are "useless", "incompetent", etc............ thus implying that they don't know any better.

I actually have a theory that it's deliberate.

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

It is. But having seen their body of work before I joined I can confirm that they have always been pretty crap.

Anyway, had enough. Going home. This lot and the shoreline saga has finished me off. We're outta here by end of Jan I think.

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

Wow, listen to yourselves... Every cliche about supercilious insulated stuck-up deluded British Expats comes to sordid sneering life.

Not in my name!

I look forward now to reading (elsewhere of course) the corresponding forum on "How unbearable are your British Expats?"

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

Code Black!! Code Black....

We are being attacked by Expat Woman..!!!

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

Er... That little blue symbol next to his username should be a clue :whistle:

Miss Anne Thrope = misanthrope, someone who doesn't exactly empathise with any of us...

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

..and, as per the definition, a perfect example of an EW poster....

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

Welcome to the bored. Now, how much do you pay your maid?

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

If it wasn't for the lack of grammatical ignorance and egotistical ranting, I'd suggest this was from the twunt across the pond. No hint of what he does or whether he has staff to manage.

We have a mixture of the usual for out here, and I must say that they're generally a good bunch. Sometimes lacking in imagination, but they compare favourably with the white-collar workforce I've worked with in the UK. However, from a purely empirical assessment, the Pareto principle certainly does apply when connecting ease-of-working-with and certain ethnic groups.

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

you say "your" staff. By that i am lead to believe that you are the boss?

"MY" staff are excellent. they never used to be and hence were replaced..

Dont you have the sway to get these idiots fired?

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

get a grip. We all know this region is retarded and lacking certain work ethics that we take as second nature back home..

Im not sordid, stuck up nore deluded. Ive lived and worked in this region for enough years to know and accept the fact that there are a lot of lazy ****ers around.

Pray tell, what do you do and how long have you lived here?

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

I was in the process... two had been fired. When I started I was told that if I didn't rate any of them then they would be sacked. There were... complications. Like the most useless ones being family of the ultimate big boss. Who is borderline psychotic. I'd be trying to discipline them and get them to work to a structure, impose decent standards etc, and they'd all be round at his fancy pants flat in the Burj K in the evening, bitching, backstabbing and getting him to "agree" with them over programming changes etc. You cant work like that. I cant work like that, anyway.

All academic now anyway as I'm off home at the end of the month. It was the sabotage that got me... never seen that in my industry before. Ever.

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

lullabelle- your off as well?

lots of people offski at the moment :unsure:

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

mine are top lads - would take them all back to blighty if I could

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

and quadruple their wages to get to UK min wage :starsmile:

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

Ahh, its good to see you back.....:goodpost:

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

In out on a job in South Africa right now, I have a spare minute. Noticed nothing much has changed. Still nothing but 'moving to dubai and can't be arsed finding out anything' posts from people who have no real ambition to move here and those who 'want' to get a job in dubai like its the easiest thing in the world.

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

A lot more thin skinned as well, as I found to my cost when I returned a couple of weeks ago....

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

Thin skinned, but thick-headed...

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

Bit late I realise, but I wouldn't want to leave this without a response. Your assumption that I have a maid sums up the colonialist attitude that many - but NOT all - expats seem to adopt here (and, I must say, elsewhere in the developing world where I have lived and visited). This attitude is also encapsulated in the question that leads this thread.

I have never had a "maid" and (in response to another question) I have lived in the Gulf for most of a decade. A lady from a cleaning service cleans my house twice a week and I pay about 70% of what I paid for a similar service in London. As many have commented, it's amazing how essential a maid seems to be to so many people in this region when they would never have contemplated such a pretentious extravagance back home.

This article captures the phenomenon quite well:
http://www.economist.com/node/21541712

The killer quote comes at the end:
"But sometimes the point of having a servant is simply to be a master."

Pertinent also to a thread that assumes that, as a manager, you would be pompous enough to consider the people for whom you are responsible as "your staff"....

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

If your staff is useless , why you accept to work with them ? your acceptance means that you can make them better or you are probably having the same problem !

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

Sometimes you simply have to put up with the staff you have. Competent expat v incompetent local is a non -starter...

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

Its called DO-BYE for a reason :)

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

You strike me as a bit of a knob.

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

I agree with his last paragraph though.

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

Sorry to buck the trend but i have quite a good bunch saying that some of them have been with me for over 10 years so they know whats expected of them and to what standard they need to be at.

Even in times of mundane boredom they're still capable of an almighty fu** up.

Managing people is one of the biggest challenges here and working with sub standard personnel in a stressful environment can be horrendous.

But that's why they pay us the big money people

Re: How useless are your staff?
 

Considering what they are paid, my work colleagues and subordinates are pretty damned good. No complaints whatsoever.