Will that be chicken or pasta?

It has been rather hectic here at HangGlide Baghdad Central lately. I work at the JMMT, which is the Joint Military Mail Terminal, not to be confused with a regular post office. The area where I work receives mail for all the Coalition Forces units based in Baghdad, and hands mail to the units when they do mail call on a daily basis. Yesterday, during the peak period, two of us, handed mail to 40 units. Some of the units got a lot of package mail, and some didn't. The packages are sorted, and then placed into "tri-walls". A tri-wall is a cardboard box open at the top, and about 3 feet deep. It sits on a 42" x 48" pallet. Now that the Christmas crunch is over, most of the units only get one tri-wall each day of packages. There are a few that still get multiples, as many as ten tri-walls on any given day. It doesn't sound like it should be a big deal to pick up a tri-wall of mail and hand it off to someone, until you do it for a few days. I've lost about an inch around my waistline in the last month from doing this job.

When I arrived here, we had 3 pallet jacks, and need eight, and had about a third of the staff we needed. We were about 5 days behind on getting the mail sorted and out to the units. The previous supervisor, and several of his foremen had been relieved of their duties (forced to make a choice between chicken or pasta), because they had not seen the Christmas rush coming, and the company was trying to play catch up. The trucking division was at 125% on staff levels, and the mail was at about 35%, so the new supervisors offered to take some of the excess truck drivers. They were also able to commandeer warm bodies from other job sites, not related to mail service, and put them in the mail. The military offered to assist to help us get caught up, and management resisted taking the help, until we were no longer losing ground. When we started making headway, they finally got us some more pallet jacks. When we finally got caught up, management decided to make us do box lunches at the job site to cut down on the time we were away for lunch. Each box consisted of a sandwich with 2 deli style (thin) slices of meat with one slice of cheese. Most of us would take 2 boxes, and make 1 sandwich, throwing the extra bread away. There was a lot of grumbling and complaining, and talk of quitting over the box lunches, but no one quit, which surprised me.

I saw it as a "Chicken or Pasta" push, and still believe that is what it was. If you aren't sure of what I am talking about with the "Will be chicken or pasta" question, think about what the airlines serve for meals on the longer flights. I talked to one of the main supervisors about the whole deal, and she didn't deny that it was a chicken or pasta push. I asked her how high up the person was who made the box lunch decision, and she said the person was pretty close to the top. I started watching the people who were complaining the loudest, and came to the realization that if most of the whiners left, my workload would not appreciably increase. There were one or two that could leave and actually decrease my workload by their leaving. I discussed this new supposition with her, and she commented that I was a little slow about noticing things. She worked several days helping sort mail, in addition to her regular duties to see what was going on. During the time I have been involved with the company, I have seen this dog and pony show in varying forms before. When they are overstaffed, they start with a lot of bull s*&%t to get people to quit. There was one supervisor (2 years ago) who took us all down to where the trucks were parked, after hearing a lot of grumbling (about signing paperwork every day) and told all the drivers "If you don't like it, and don't want to sign these same forms every day, I'll buy you a f*&%$#g foot locker and have you on an airplane this afternoon." My theory is management now realized we were now overstaffed, and some personnel needed to be eliminated, so they started the box lunch deal. I think they were afraid to start the box lunch deal until we were caught up. They started bringing in office staff from other sites here in Baghdad to fill in gaps left from transferring people out to other jobs, partly to see what the fall out on the service would be.

Within the last week, they caught one of the employees with alcohol, and stolen property. In case you weren't aware, the possession of alcohol or pornography by anyone in the US military, or anyone who is a contractor with the US military, are both prohibited items (among other things) in Iraq, by the agreement between the US military and the Iraqi government. He had stuff in his possession that had been reported stolen by his room mate, in addition to some alcohol. He was sent home. The managers decided to do a search of everyone's quarters for contraband, and ended up with somewhere between ten and twenty per cent of the total staff getting a choice of chicken or pasta. There were a few that voluntarily made the choice before they got busted, but most left at the request of management.

This opened up some of the housing options, and several of us living in one of the two 12 person tents or in the bus station (Yeah, it really used to be the bus transportation office), which also sleeps about twelve were given the option of moving into a "hooch". Most who were in the bus station opted for the hooch, but many of us in the tents, said "I don't think so". In the tent, I have about thirty two square feet that I do not have to share. The hooch that was offered to me would have reduced my "personal" space to about 16 square feet, which would have been my bed, and half of a closet half the size of the one I have to myself. I would have had to keep my suitcase and footlocker under my bed, and lived out of them, instead of being able to hang my clothes up, and keep my socks and underwear on a shelf in a cabinet. Because of the layout of the hooch (door at one end and bathroom on the other end), I would not have been able to put a rug down, without the room mate having to walk on it. No big problem, unless you are next to the door, and it starts raining, or if you are next to the bathroom, and the shower puts a lot of water on the floor, and gets your stuff wet. Neither choice seemed like a good idea to me. The guy who is the evening housing person, was talking like I had no choice, but to move into the hooch. If I still had to get up in the night to go the the bathroom a lot, it might have been worth it to have a bathroom in my quarters. I came very close to asking for the pasta, or maybe a salad. (I don't eat much chicken, as I have been to 2 or 3 too many chicken plants in the trucking industry.)

I'm taking my New Year's day holiday today, and enjoying the time off. I slept in until 5 am, instead of getting up at 3:45 am like I usually do. I walked to breakfast, and sat down at a table to eat, inside a building with lights turned on. Doesn't sound like a big deal until you consider the normal deal is hurry thru the breakfast line to get my stuff in a "go" plate, hurry back to the bus, and eat in the dark with the plate on my lap on the bus as it bounces along. Several parts of the road on the thirty minute ride to and from work each day are about as smooth as the upper half of the road to Commodore. I tend to wear a lot of my breakfast. If I didn't need the money, I think I would find some other way to pass the time, than work for the company. The only good thing about this gig, is that I help the soldiers get their mail, and I like to think I help them get it a little sooner, and in better condition than they would if I weren't here. If I sound like I'm whining a lot, I apologize for sounding that way. There are moments of enjoyment here, just not a lot of them. The housing situation with the company is much better than it is for the people (from India, The Phillipines, Nepal, and several other countries) who work for companies that are subcontractors to the contractors here. Those guys get rice and a small piece of chicken or fish for their meals, and have about the same amount of personal space that I would have had in the hooch they tried to put me in. They also make about a tenth of the money I make. Granted, what they make will go a lot further in the home economy than my money will go in my home economy, they still have it a lot rougher than I do over here.