KSA in Four Words: 4. "Halas"

"Halas" -  Finished; All Through

It's hard to get my students to do very much work.  There's lots of eye-rolling, lots of excuses, lots of complaints.  When work does actually get done by the select and diligent few, the answers get passed around quicker than lice in a 3^rd grade class room.  It's hard to blame them though.  Their whole educational experience, especially language education, has been a farce.  They've been spoon fed answers, basically allowed to cheat.  Their teachers were very strongly encouraged to pass them because if the students are failing, it's obviously because the teacher isn't doing a good job.  This explains why my students, most of which are in their EIGHTH year of English, can barely use the simple past verb tense and why some of them have to turn to their neighbor to translate "How are you?".  Most of them just want one question to be answered in the affirmative.  "Halas, teacher?  Finished?" 

Their work environments won't be much different.  I recently asked a class of mine what they wanted to do for a job when they are halas with University.  Most hadn't given it much thought.  "I don't know, teacher.  Maybe I help people.  That would be nice."  I'm told most will get high-paying jobs, either working for their fathers or in an upper-management position somewhere.  They won't have to do any actual work of course.  Jordanians, Egyptians, Pakistanis.  Those people are brought in to do the actual work.  They manage the companies and make the decisions.  The Saudi's however, because of an increasing trend, the "Saudification" of the workforce, are in very high demand nonetheless.  Every company is required to have a certain percentage of Saudi employees.  So, these guys will graduate and take a cushy job (and "cushy" doesn't even begin to cover it) where they will literally be paid to show up, sit in a chair, and collect their check.  They'll pass their time playing card games on their computers or texting on their blackberries (not unlike the way they'd prefer to spend their class time) until the moment finally comes around when their boss will turn to them and say one word:  "Halas."  And they’ll head home.

Now this isn't the case for everyone.  Some are motivated to work hard and accomplish things professionally, probably from what I can tell because they don't have enough wasta based solely on who their father is.  And for the most part the recipe for it is this:  1)  You get permission and money from the government to start a company; 2) You go to the visa office and secure 100 or so visas for foreigners to come work for you; 3) You hire the best professionals you can find from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, the U.S., the U.K, etc. to come and manage your company; 4) You sit back and relax in your villa on the French Riviera, go skiing in Switzerland, or hangout in your 100 million dollar tent in the desert ‘cuz your working days are halas, my friend.  That's all you gotta’ do.  What motivation is there to be motivated?   Why do any work?  That's what you pay other people to do.

 This wasn't always the case.  It used to be, with a plentiful supply of oil and a relatively small population that a lot people didn't even have to work at all.  They were sheiks in their own right.  My students' parents’ generation basically got paid to do nothing-- profit distribution.  Very few have any sort of higher education under their belts.  Nowadays, with a rapidly increasing population, there is less money to go around, but still quite a bit... for now.  So the formula today if you don't have enough wasta is that you have to go to school, get hired by a company, and then collect your check or checks.  The real concern will come when the population increases so much that there isn't enough money and aren’t nearly enough jobs.  This is a country that outside of the oil and petrochemical industries produces almost nothing.  What can you grow in the desert?  There are very few other natural resources and you have a population with almost zero domestic workforce.  Not even considering "peak" oil, so even if there is plenty for the foreseeable future, the profits can only get split so many ways, and with all the money that comes in being sent right back out, and nothing being produced domestically the opulence of the past will be exactly that, of the past.  Or in other words, halas.