Although i am supposdly a graduate, I’m doing my final course along with my internship this summer, & i must admit, it’s the laziest state i’ve ever reached in my academic life! there’s this thing about me that’s pretty annoying actually. When I hate something/someone/somewhere, then it’s over, don’t even try to change my mind.
I’m currently doing my internship in a BANK, some might think it’s AWESOME, & the more sane people would agree with me that it’s the last place they’d want to spend 7 weeks of their lives at. I tried to be optimistic about it, i really did, but i just know this place is in no way fit for me.
Being 1 of the very few Arabs, Emiratis or even females at that department, means that i spend almosy 7.5 of the 8 hours on MUTE. And being on that mode means i spend my time observing people around me.
I remember the first day i walked in, the secretary pointed at the staff and whispered to me: “You see all these people? they’re all busy acting busy!”. This must’ve been the most truthful statement i heard since day one at the bank, because from the first minute, i noticed how every employee is glued to his/her seat, staring carefully at their monitors that have been on the “Screen Saver” mode since God knows when! I’m talking about 80+ monitors playing the same screen savers here :P!
Out of the 80 or so employees, only 7 are Emiratis, 2 Eygptians, 1 Jordanian & 2 Philipinos. So that amounts to 12? Well the rest of them are all either Indians or Pakistanis, so all day long, all I hear is Urdu and Hindi spoken, which means i have no idea whats going on around me.
Don’t get me wrong, i have no problem with Indians & Pakistanis, on the contrary, i have good friends from these nationalities, but the ones at that bank have some things in common:
1) if you’re a UAE nationl, they won’t speak to you, because you MUST be after their jobs
2) if you’re not after their job in particular, then you’ll surely become their boss
3) if they will eventually speak to you, they will be VERY careful to not teach you anything worthwhile, because you see they can’t live to see you become their boss!
4) they will not stare away from their monitors even if you point a gun at them, they must appear as workaholics, they just must
5) if the job requires a day, they’ll spread it across a week or so, because you see, they can’t stare at the screen all their lives, now can they?
i have worked with different nationalities before but never really felt this type of behavior much towards me as an Emirati, but theres something wrong with this place!
and the funny thing is when they go on asking my supervisor : Who is she? Why is she here? is she here to stay? I can’t believe an intern in Abaya can make them suffocate like that. I told my advisor to tell them that I am the new boss, & that they’re just in the process of arranging me new office! 
i couldn’t help not saying that, because you see I’ve been treated like a queen ever since then! haha
Ok it’s not really funny, i don’t like being a threat to anybody, but i guess some people should get over the idea of us Emiratis being after anything they have, because at the end of the day, if you think of it, you’re entitled for a job in your own country aren’t you?
There are things i noticed about people of my nationality at workplaces, you may not agree, but it’s only my personal observation.
1) they don’t have the “I won’t teach you” mentality.
2) they’re not wicked by nature
3) they’re talkative
4) they can be pretty naive and end up resigning without even claiming their rights
at the mid of all this, i must say, 2 things really chear me up :
1) escaping early
2) hearing my Philipino cubicle neighbor answer phone calls so soo politely! God it makes my day! after hearing Urdu spoken all day long, you have no idea how the English Philipino accent becomes so dear! and no i am not kidding! it brings happy tears to my eyes!
God give me patience to wake up at 6:00 am for the remaining weeks, because i am failing misrably >_<’
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I am not too sure if I can agree on all the things listed there. See, I am an Indian too but when we had a new emirati team member I did notice that rest of the team members had this sort of attitude towards the new emirati girl but you know at the end of the day, nationalities cannot be generalized.
I remember providing help at whatever step it was required to this local colleague of mine because I know what it feels like when you are and are totally clueless about whats happening. Oh and trust me even within the Indian circle there’s a lot of discrimination even in the office based on which part of India you belong to. If you are from southern side then Mashallah you are blessed because in every department you would find somebody volunteering to teach you how things work..
It is a sorry state, but hey, there are some indviduals out there who are slightly different than the ones you’ve worked with. Get my drift? I hope so. Great post btw
LOL LOL LOL
Allah ye3eeeench cuzn,, yala haaaaanat ;D
hmmmm… i somehow could not relate since i’m still not yet in the real world.. you know like working so I don’t have any idea. Maybe I could attest to what you are saying when I go back to UAE and work with them… or even with locals. :p
other than that… as a Filipino I smiled when I read about your office mate. try to hear those “ilonggo” (filipinos from ilo-ilo, a province here in the phils.) where they are known to have a sweet intonation and accent even though they are already mad. they speak differently from the rest who happen to be living in Manila or somewhere else… :p im sure you would really love to listen to them talking all day. :))
well i just hope you could survive your internship. <3
you make me feel miserable as well !
i feel sorry for you .. to be honest .. you really don’t deserve that kind of internship job 
specially when i see u coming back from your work place without any expression more than feeling depressed
anyway continue acting like a boss as long as you’r their i’m sure you’r going to gain a lot by knowing how the people act around their bosses
This post is so true. I was working with that nationalities, and even though I REALLY WAS NOT RACIST before work (I had friends from urdu/hindi at university), but at work THEY ARE different. As you said, they have a thing against teaching arabs, when they are stuck with their own nationalities, masha’Allah, but ARABS…In the end I had to resign (without wanting to know what my rights are), because I saw my career going nowhere, as in, if they give me work, they give me work without guiding me through it so I don’t know what I’m doing, and if I ask for work and they don’t have anything to give me, they tell me to do secretarial work…imagine u spend four years of your life with your head over engineering books and you beat not only the guys in exams but the professors themselves in their own game, and then you end up printing and filing for a living… 7ata law ilrateb kam prestigy ma kan yisma7. (plus, I didn’t have except one girl to talk to over the day and over lunch, so there was nothing about work to look forward to….You can read all about it;
http://ahechoes.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/business-is-business/
My friend was the printress….
http://ahechoes.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/the-printress/
And this is when I resigned;
http://ahechoes.wordpress.com/2010/05/31/graduation-no-unemployment/