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 A new blog has joined the ranks of the pissed off Dubai leavers, telling a familiar story of being screwed over by a nasty employer.
“’Ominous’ Integrated Creative Consultancy” details the experience of a British art director turned creative director, hired by a Dubai-based marketing agency, and then, apparently, shafted in an unpleasant fashion, leaving him back in the UK with unpaid wages, and now signing on to the dole.
As the anonymous author is still trying to get his money from the agency in question, he hasn’t explicitly named the firm – although there are clues in the blog, and in the original b3ta post
(where the author is a long-time member, under the name “spimf”) as to its identity.
Put it this way, we know who it is. And we’re not omniscient. Nor omnipresent.
Although the story is, of course, completely unverified, it does have a certain ring of truth – and, we’d guess, is probably not atypical of the experiences of people who have been laid off from Dubai companies.
And while the blog is fairly harsh – ok, very harsh – when it comes to its descriptions of the agency, and Dubai in general, it is a revealing look at the Bad Employer’s Guide To Screwing Staff Over.
“We were... encouraged to find a place. We found a lovely little villa, which due to the property crash was now just within our reach. As I didn’t have a chequebook I asked my boss for a company cheque for the deposit and to deduct it from my salary – ‘no problem mate, we’re here to help’,” writes spimf in his original post, after detailing how he had raised concerns over his long-term prospects with the agency.
And then he catalogues the follow-up: “Two days later I was called into the boardroom. ‘Bad news. We’re laying you off, the company is going in a different direction, we’ll pay for your freight back and your flights and give you a month’s notice – sign this’.
“It turned out they had some other person to take my place (as is their way) and that the whole moving the bloke into the flat was to force us out, the help to get our own place only made it easier to dump us. You can’t just evict a family from company accommodation easily – not even in Dubai.”
According to the blog, spimf and his family ended up paying for their own tickets, and are now in the process of complaining formally about the company, in an attempt to get the three months’ salary he claims he is owed.
We have no way of knowing how much of this is true – even if spimf were to name the agency officially, as it were, we doubt that it would comment. But it probably would take notice – indeed, judging from one post on the blog, the agency’s staff are already up to something.
The rise of this strange thing called the internet, and especially easy-to-create blogs, has seen the rise of the self-publishing ranter, and the Middle East has seen a spate of these recently.
It’s taken them a little time to cotton on to the possibilities of the medium, partly because of the generally lackadaisical approach to the web in the region, but also, our cynical minds suggest, because it’s a bit of a conceptual leap for the average man-with-grudge (and it generally is men).
Any journalist knows the joy of receiving an anonymous letter (in crayon, green) or email (in Comic Sans, pink), a random phone call (often accompanied by heavy breathing), or even, for those unfortunate enough to work in an accessible building, the unparalleled bliss of the personal visit, which in extreme cases would necessitate the use of breathing apparatus by the unlucky hack.
No more, though.
Just this year, though, we’ve seen a nice website calling ENG nasty names
for allegedly not paying people on time (apparently this has got a lot better recently), which was promptly shut down, a blog promoting the cause of an American woman apparently trapped in visa cancellation hell
in Dubai, and the now-famous Hostage in Qatar, the story of a Belgian man who has just been sentenced to three years in jail, for complicated reasons.
And this is just on the media and marketing side.
As well as the Ominous blog, we now also have another “whistleblowing” effort, directed at yet another Dubai media and marketing company, by yet another disgruntled former employee.
However, in contrast to Mr spimf and his generally well-reasoned writings, this other blog – whose contents is so libellous, we’re not going to name it, let alone link to it – shows no such restraint.
A few sample quotes, with names removed: “Here's my time to demonise fake humans... Since they had their turns demonising me and made me look the bad guy, I will share you what these devils are all about...
“The guy above, inbred Xxxxxx Xxxxx Pigxxxx, is one exceptional character to break through the poser-infested Integrated Communications community of Middle East.
“This devil's spawn was the mastermind of denying to one of my human rights called – ‘rightful salary’. Hey, bad guys have human rights too??? What can't you pay ‘bad guys' like me?
“Xxxxxx also undermined the demise of the previous [Company] MD.”
Fun times.It's got to be bad to accuse your former boss of being inbred.
Interestingly, the author of this latter blog contacted AdNation, as well as, we understand, a number of other marketing publications, hoping to air his grievances. Evidently none of us was prepared to go into it in sufficient detail, so “Johnonymous” as he styles himself (so original) turned to self-publishing a blog.
Unfortunately, that magic ingredient which traditional journalism can (sometimes) bring to a story – balance – has been abandoned in favour of name-calling and ad hominem attacks against the agency’s staff.
Let’s see who gets the better result out of spimf or Johnonymous. Our money’s not on Johnonymous.
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