The process of redissolution*
Step one: go from this…
to this…
In pretty much everywhere else I’ve worked – the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, so most definitely not an ideal world – leaving a job has been a relatively simple process.
Of course nothing is that simple in Abu Dhabi. In truth, the bureaucracy here is not that bad and enough IT hacks have coined it by providing government departments with expensive and over-engineered but ultimately functional systems that are able to handle most things.
I’d started going through the internal part of this process two weeks earlier, which involved an exit interview from a woman wearing a full burqa so I could only see her eyes.
Then I had to traipse around half a dozen admin offices within Abu Dhabi Media Company getting signatures to say I no longer had such things as laptops or Blackberries or company accommodation etc etc. Despite the fact I’d never had any of these things, I was actually surprised when their records agreed, removing the Sisyphean hurdle of returning something I’d never possessed in the first place.
Then I tried to close my bank account.
This should be simple. HSBC is an international banking group rather than some podunk outfit but it ended up being a two-day process that made the refinancing of Dubai World seem simple by comparison.
When I posted a message to that effect on Facebook, I received a flurry of salutary tales from others who had gone through this. Some quotes:
“Make sure you get an NOC (Non-objection certificate) from them or letter stating your account is closed! they told me they closed mine and ended up leaving my credit card ac open and charged me for the pleasure!”
“The longer I live here, the more convinced I am that we should just squirrel away our money in shoeboxes under our beds. It’s not as if I am earning any interest on my accounts, what with interest being un-Sharia-compliant and all. Funnily enough though, stupid fees such as Dh100 for a letter are perfectly Sharia compliant.”
“I’ve been trying to close my HSBC current account and car loan account for about six months. I’m temporarily ignoring its existance until forced to do otherwise.”
“After several days trying to close my account, I gave up. I changed mine to a free account and took everything out. And now just pretending it doesn’t exist.”
“I foolishly tried to close an account for a third person. From ‘No problem Sir, just bring documents A, B and C’ it went to ‘We will look for you and find you if the account is not closed in person’ when I brought in the documents they had first asked for. Can’t wait for their visit!”
After two days of negotiating the bureaucracy, I had a wodge of cash in my pocket and thought I was about to get the letter declaring that I had no liabilities. Here the word “thought” is clearly operative.
It’s not as though it’s not already mind-messingly complicated: the bank charges $55 to write a letter saying you’ve closed the account, which I needed to get the clearance from work to get my final pay, which can’t go into the account because I’ve closed it, as explained in the $55 letter. And that’s the bit that’s both simplest and most logical. If Kafka was alive today, he would set all his works in the UAE bureaucracy.
(And when I said that in my Facebook update, another friend wrote: “John Henzell awoke to discover he had turned into a cockroach. It was a step up for him.”)
And the letter? There’s a three-day waiting list. But apparently there is a subclause covering customers who are about to go postal because after several toys were thrown out of the cot, I had my letter.
There was another departing ADMC employee, an Australian subeditor called Mick, at the bank at the same time. We greeted each other with the nod of the oppressed.
An hour later, I met him again in the ADMC payroll office as we presented our account-closed letters. The crucial person who was supposed to work out our end-of-service payments was missing and had taken the day off, despite having earlier advised he would be there today.
Then we met again in the ADMC human resources office, where we tried to resolve the issue by talking to the eyeslit of the same burqa-clad woman who’d done my exit interview.
As she was attended to this, I whispered to Mick: “Who knew there were actually nine circles of Hell?”
He leaned across and replied: “And counting.”
* Sounds so much better than the more-accurate rebumification.