Wex of Arabia

The arrival of a certain asshole in our offices today (we can call him Kim So Douche) reminded me of a story I’ve been meaning to tell you for some time.

Two months ago I went on a business trip with the Kims. (There was one other foreigner on board, but he doesn’t count. He’s such an obsequious kimchi-lover he might as well be a spokesman for the Fan Death Association). We went to the Middle East: Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

That’s right, I was in Saudi Arabia. Why has it taken me 3 months to write about what I did in “the Kingdom”? Clandestine services demands a three month post-op grace period these days.

Saudi was a rather depressing dump, at least the part of it I saw. No sign of the largesse of oil wealth – just a developing country in a desert with a lot of half-finished buildings and creepy unlit highways. I imagine Riyadh must be more impressive, but we were on a trip to the industrial coastline.
So, what’s a business trip like with the Kims? At times it’s like taking your grandparents to Times Square. My boss generally shuffles around blithely, without ever seeming to take much in. But once in a while he’s confronted with something foreign and needs to be shepherded, like how you have to drag grandpa away from the hookers on 8th Ave. Or when you have to convince Grandma that there’s nothing to fear from the pre-op trannies pouring out of “Don’t Tell Mamas” on 43rd.

In general the Kims prefer to stick with what they know. This is why we ate Italian food in Saudi Arabia, and Korean food in Abu Dhabi (after two whole days without pickled cabbage, the Kims were starting to wilt). They’re constantly seeking to compartmentalize the unknown or to break it down into manageable bits that can fit on a powerpoint slide. In preparation for this trip my boss asked me to read a little book on Saudi culture called “Don’t they know it’s Friday”? He wanted a powerpoint overview of how Saudis do business differently. I of course refused to waste my time in such a manner (I’m very popular around the office thanks to this attitude), but to mollify him I did agree to look at the book. I am now the Saudi expert, having read a book by some old British wanker about not shaking hands with Saudi women.

This is pretty typical of Korean business culture. Nobody is prepared to develop any real expertise but they’re quite happy to create pretend experts who can deliver sound bites of knowledge lacking any real depth… but I digress

The real reason I started writing this piece was to tell you about how this asshole I saw today conspired with my idiot boss to screw us all out of $1000. Here’s the situation: as the youngest and lowest ranking member of our business delegation I was given the task of making sure we had hotels booked in Saudi and Dubai (where we had some other meatings). I’m pretty sure there’s an office somewhere downstairs that’s supposed to deal with hotels, but I’m equally sure that it’s staffed with drooling imbeciles – so I thought it best to handle it myself. I told my boss that I’d take care of the hotels, in consultation with this asshole from a different team who lives in Dubai. I had not yet met the asshole – Kim So Douche – but he was meant to be a source of advice on which hotels to choose. I called him and he recommended two hotels.

I booked the hotel for Friday night in Dubai and had one in Saudi for Saturday night. We had to then come back to Dubai on Sunday and Monday, so I made a separate booking for those nights – at a Hotel recommended by Kim So Douche. I told my boss we had reservations and even offered to print him up his own copy. We stayed the first two nights of our trip without incident.

Upon arriving at the Dubai airport on Sunday I discovered that, without ever consulting me, Kim So Douche had booked a separate hotel for our final two nights in Dubai. He had done this the night before – while we were staying in a hotel that I had booked. I later learned that So Douche had consulted with my boss about whether or not I had already booked a room for Sunday. Even though they knew I had booked the first two nights of our trip, it somehow seemed possible to them that I had forgotten to book the final 2 nights. Instead of waiting to confirm this completely ridiculous possibility with me, they double booked the hotels – eventually forcing us to cancel one of the reservations. Since these were nice hotels, the last minute cancellation cost $1000.

Despite the fact that this was completely my boss and Kim So Douche’s fault, they somehow seemed to regard it as a mere miscommunication. I said no – it was clearly my job to take care of this, as evidenced by the fact that we spent the first two nights in the hotels I booked – not to mention the fact that my entire team was well aware that I had booked the hotels (including the useless American who was with us on the trip, and with whom the Kims also decided not to consult before double booking the hotels). Besides, what kind of idiot would only book hotels for half of the trip?

No big deal, u might be thinking. I mean, there’s no way my boss, a Vice President, would ever ask a lowly underpaid assistant manager to help pay for such a mistake…right? Plus, isn’t it part of Asian culture that the older, richer guy has to shell out for the poor young guy? Not this time. The bastard made me and the other American guy cough up $250 a piece to pay for this error. He paid for $500. My boss refused to ask HR to compensate us for the Hotel, which they certainly would have done. He also refused to even ask Kim So Douche to chip in, even though it was his hotel hubris that caused the problem. His reasoning was that it would make us look bad if other people in the company found out about the gaffe. As for justifying taking my money – he claimed that it wasn’t really my money anyway, since we all had a per diem for the trip and I hadn’t spent all of mine on food. Apparently my unspent compensation is up for grabs. Next time he goes on a business trip I’m going to drive his company car off a bridge – it’s not like it was really his car after all.