Just in case anyone’s suffering from the temporary insanity of considering working for this company, you might want to be filled in about a few things. http://www.alsalam.aero/ My info is a few years outdated but it will give you an idea of what kind of operation they’re running and what kind of people they are. And since the economy has gotten worse and a lot of people are hard up for a job, it’s only reasonable to expect that the job's gotten worse, not better.

When I first got to Saudi, Al Salam and Boeing tried to steal $3000 from me. They gave me a contract that had a salary that was less than the one on the offer letter they had sent me before I left the US and said, “Sign this or we’re putting you on a plane and sending you home!” This was after they had already lowballed me to begin with. I had to fight them just to get the money they originally promised me. The result was that they continually harassed me over the course of two years. I later learned that it was Al Salam’s common practice to bait and switch their employees the same way they did me. They also have the bad habit of placing employees into jobs/positions that they’re not qualified for, because it makes them more money to fill a slot that the RSAF (Royal Saudi Air Force) will pay them more money for. Of course, if your boss gives you a hard time because he doesn’t think you belong in his section, then that’s your problem, not theirs.

Al Salam is also one of those employers that take your passport from you just in case you’re thinking of running off after being continually mistreated. Further, they’d promise married people that they would bring their wives over but later renege on the promise (only after blowing their employees off for months and sometimes even years), because they didn’t want to have to pay to fly the wives over. But if they were lucky enough to have their wives eeeevvvvveeeennnntttuuuaaaallly “inshallah” brought over, then it was at the expense of their single coworkers, because the married employees were told they could use the company cars more often than the single ones. Some of the more unscrupulous employees used their married status as an excuse to monopolize the company car for private and recreational uses.

Regarding the housing, the compound in Riyadh was managed by a Brit who didn’t even like Americans. (Many of the contractors working for Al Salam are Americans). His popularity rating by the compound residents was in the single digits. And the Bangladeshis, Indians, Pakistanis, and Filipinos working on the compound often went 7 months without even seeing a paycheck. Once they even locked the gates shut in protest. We had to have our generals at the RSAF call the main Saudi manager who was lollygagging in London to get the lazy fool to cut his employees a check, just so we could go home for the evening.

Furthermore, Al Salam’s site management next to RSAF HQ would often simply not answer the phones, so we’d have to walk over there in the 115 degree heat only to find them chatting, reading the newspaper, smoking, drinking tea, eating dates, praying, or talking about their latest fling with their girlfriends. Keep in mind they were all married. But the worst thing they did at that office was that they took the cars that the RSAF gave them to transport all their American contractors to work and back, and they decided to use our cars for their own personal whims. This meant that we had to drive what was left over and share company cars with coworkers. It should be no surprise that this led to lots of infighting.

Oftentimes the people we were sharing the company car with worked in different buildings and had to come to or leave work at different times. This meant that some people had to get to work even before the doors had been unlocked in their section and wait around after work for their co-riders to finish. Also, some people would try to monopolize the use of the company car at the expense of the people they were supposed to be sharing it with. Consequently, people who would have otherwise been casual acquaintances became hated foes.

Just to blow some more sand in our faces, to save money Al Salam had us living with roommates. The problem was that one of the bedrooms was substantially bigger than the others. When you combined that with the fact that most of the Americans working on that compound were former enlisted grunts from the military (and hence authoritarian in nature), the result was that there was even more infighting. One roommate, who had brownnosed the management, even tried to get me fired because I moved some furniture around. Those are the sorts that get their way. Guess who was harassed and had to move?!

Oh yes, and the age discrimination… I had a coworker who was illegally fired simply for being too old and having too many health problems. Even though he had been working for the RSAF for 18 years, once Al Salam received a letter from the RSAF that he was being pushed out, they didn’t even bother putting up a fight for one of their veteran employees. They just told him tough luck and you’re outta here.

Finally, after being jerked around ad nauseum, and listening to my coworkers bitch and moan month after month, I just went up to Al Salam’s main office and told them I wanted to speak to the CEO. Of course, he “was too busy to meet with me,” but I did meet the vice president. All I’ll say about that experience is that the disdain he showed for his American employees was palpable.

All in all, my memories of Saudi are not positive and this company and the environment of working for a military contractor in Saudi Arabia in general soured the whole experience. It’s a shame too because I did meet plenty of friendly Saudis. It’s just the dishonest ones that play the game are the ones who become managers and ruin the experience of living and working in Saudi Arabia for everyone else. Proceed with caution!