This is a story a friend of mine has told me. He lived in America for more than 25 years. One day he was on the street & wanted to call a number from the phone booth. He inserted 50 cents into the machine, but he couldn’t dial the number. No tone. He inserted another 50 cents & the same thing happened again. Using the same phone he succeeded to contact the customer support. The lady from the customer support apologized to him. She tried in vain to help, then she asked for his address. Now here is the shocking part. Few days later, my friend went out to check his mail & surprisingly he found a check from the telephone operator. Guess what? It was a 1 dollar check issued in his name!
My friend was telling me the story & when he reached the 1$ part, I was like oh my God! Delivering the check costed the company 10x its value! The 1 dollar in itself can’t change my friend’s life, but the initiative taken by the telephone operator can -for sure!
This article is not meant to provoke nagging, but to highlight what should be acknowledged, not hidden. Acknowledgement of failures is the first step towards solving them.
Why I’m writing this? I spent 5 hours today waiting my turn to apply for an ID card. Who cares? Last week I had to drive around 100 Km to Um Al-Quwain to apply for the ID card as well. I called the customer support number to ask about the working hours of Um AlQuwain office. I went there to find out that they weren’t receiving any applications during that day, so I went back. The customer support doesn’t bother about knowing when the registration office is accepting applications. I passed today by the bank to deposit a check. The teller wanted to deposit it immediately in my account, but I notified him that there should be a form which I should fill before the check is deposited, because it’s issued by a foreign bank. The teller who seemed unqualified for his job asked me to fill out a wrong form! I did. Later, the bank called me asking that I should come by to fill another form. The man on the phone justified the bank failure by saying: “Sorry the teller is new in this job.” I’ve seen him doing the same job at the bank before! Why should people care if he’s new or not?
As a daily reader of local Emirati newspapers, I can confidently say that the above examples are repeated everyday in different ways with different people (in hospitals, restaurants, schools, companies, etc..) Such news are disappointing especially because they are most of the time only caused by carelessness, lack of qualification, vague laws, & bad planning.
It’s not fair to compare the US to the UAE, & I know that there are bad examples everywhere, but I think that what will always make the UAE a better place to live in, are two things: Being responsible at work, & respecting people.
Aside from this, the UAE, the Emiraties and the other communities here, are awesome!
I am an acrobat performing in a funeral. My job is to make everybody laugh. 
Very interesting read. Really. 
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Very interesting read. Really.