I'm really hoping this will be my final installment on The
Passport Lady. Honestly, I kind of feel like this blog has been one big whine-fest
about her, and I am quite tired of dealing with her. I'm tired of talking about
her. I'm tired of even thinking about her. But I have had a couple dozen people
ask for an update so here we go.
First, I wanted to let some time lapse between when I had had
enough and when I wrote about it on here. My fuse is long; I can put up with a
lot of nonsense. But when things get absolutely stupid, I can't take it
anymore. And things got that stupid.
On Day 28, I was running through my PCS checklist as usual. I
couldn't shake the nagging feeling that the no-fee passports simply were not
going to make it back to me in time, so I emailed Passport Lady. I explained to
her that the 6-8 week process time happened right when we were going to leave
our current duty station for a short vacation. I asked her what would happen to
our original documents that I needed to submit in the application process, and
our no-fee passports, should we need to leave before the passports arrive. I
informed her that I had already applied for our tourist passports, and we were
authorized to travel on them.
She wrote me back the next day telling me that we couldn't leave
the country before the passports arrive. She also told me to not worry; I would
simply have to change my flights to accommodate the situation. Seriously. She
said that. I asked her several times, over several email interactions, why I
couldn't leave. She would never answer my question. Instead I was told several
times, over several email interactions, that she couldn't tell me when I could
expect the passports to arrive.
At one point, she asked me for a copy of my power of attorney from
Sweet Baboo. I told her that I had already submitted that, and let her know
that I knew it wouldn't suffice for our purposes. I also explained to her that
I had a digital copy of the 3053, but that the State Department wouldn't take
it for a permanent passport. As a result, I got a tourist passport on a temporary
basis with a strict deadline. I need to file the proper paperwork when we get
to Korea because of our extenuating circumstances. She responded by asking if I
could get Sweet Baboo to send over an original power of attorney that
authorized me to get passports for the girls. Frustrated at the stupidity of
that question (the 3053 is essentially just that... and I had told her several
times that we were not able to get original documents from Sweet Baboo in
enough time), I wrote to the Post Commander.
Now before you get all judgmental on me, I don't run to the CO
every time I have an issue. I literally waited until an Active Duty Major, a
Retired CWO-4, a Retired LTC, an Active Duty CWO-2, the wife of a Retired COL,
and the wife of a CSM told me that the CO needed to hear my story before I ever
considered going to him.
The Colonel is a lovely man. I never felt foolish or whiny for
bringing this situation to his attention. I didn't feel like his brain was
elsewhere when I was speaking to him. I felt like he was listening with both
ears, and considering all avenues to help me with my problem. Mine was a 20-minute
appointment on his schedule, so when I left his office 75 minutes after we
started talking I felt bad. He asked two gentlemen to accompany me to
the Passport Office to clear up any miscommunication and get things moving. The
two gentlemen were very supportive of my plight, and they assured me that I was
not the first to have problems with Passport Lady. When I asked if I was the
first to bring it to the CO's attention, they couldn't answer that question. I
dropped it.
When we arrived at her office, Passport Lady was especially
colorful in her attitude. Luckily for me, she made my stories to the COL and my
two new buddies seem like I was under describing the
situation. Had I not had my two new buds with me, I'm quite sure a few f-bombs
would have been dropped... along with a few throat-punches. But I had two
people who were there to support me, and who spoke for the COL, so I just
needed to look at one of them and ask for help when she got foolish. And
foolish she got!
At one point, she asked me where my common sense was (as she was
literally waving her head in my face). She all but shouted to me that she would
forward my documents directly to my apartment in Korea if they arrived after we
left. When I asked if she had our forwarding address she said no (with no further response). I asked her
if she would prefer that I email the address, or write it down... she stared at
me. My buddies had to remind her several times that she had
to answer my questions. She continued to dodge my questions outwardly
by asking about the shirt I was wearing, “That is a really pretty shirt! Why
are your thumbs poking out of holes in the end?” and telling me that I was her
top priority. Again, she told me that she didn’t know when everything would be
finalized. Buddy #1 firmly stated that she needed to stop dodging my questions
and do things to be helpful. She slammed down the paper for me to write down
our forwarding address, stormed around her office, and continued to outwardly
refuse to be helpful unless we forced her.
As Buddy #1 started talking to her, she got up and walked out of
the office without saying a word to him. She returned with a gentleman who
waved at us to follow him. We all crammed into his little office and he asked that
we fill him in on what was going on. Buddy #1 started describing what he had
just witnessed and Passport Lady cut him off. New Fellah asked her to not
interrupt so Buddy #1 could finish his story. She literally told him, "No.
I won't. I could lose my job over this, and I want to make sure the right story
is told." They went back and forth for several moments before New Fellah
finally asked Passport Lady to leave his office. Shockingly, she refused to
leave. Another few moments of going back and forth passed before she
reluctantly exited the office.
I was confused as to who the heck New Fellah was, and why we were
in his office. I didn’t dare ask because Passport Lady was doing a fantastic
job of proving my points to everybody in the room. But New Fellah obviously had
no authority over Passport Lady (otherwise she wouldn’t have been so outwardly
rude to him, and she would not have refused his requests). But we were in his
office, discussing Passport Lady at her request, so he had to be somebody… right? To this day I’m still
confused.
Even after Passport Lady insulted me by asking where my common
sense was, she still proceeded to prove her lack of competencies at her job.
New Fellah told me that according to law, they could not forward my documents directly
to my apartment in Korea when they came back from the State Department. I had
two options, though:
1. The Passport Office can forward all documents and the no-fee
passports to the Passport Office in Korea when they arrive.
2. Have a friend pick up the documents and ship them to my
apartment.
Never mind the logic in this. A friend can send everything to me
directly, but the Passport Office can’t? But I suddenly had to decide which of
my friends I wanted to subject to the abuse and blatant disrespect of the
Passport Lady. One person came to mind… she is still on Active Duty and takes
crap from nobody. But the idea of subjecting any friend of mine (regardless of how strong-minded, and full of
authority they are) to this unnecessary step just seemed like superfluous
abuse. And after some thought, I really didn’t think Passport Lady needed to
have anything to do with my
application or personal documents any more. So on Day 45 I wrote another letter to the
COL.
Y’all, it was 17 pages. Single spaced. In 10 point font. I had a
lot to say, and I wanted to make sure he had the opportunity to know the entire
story. I copied emails, gave details of in-person communications, and offered
my opinions. Because of the length of the letter, and the knowledge that the COL
is a very busy man with many things on his plate, I gave a BLUF (Bottom Line Up
Front). I’ll copy it and paste it for you here:
I have zero trust in
[Passport Lady’s] capabilities to perform her job as it pertains to our
situation. She has told me several times that she is not a Subject Matter
Expert, and her knowledge of how to perform the duties within the scope of her
job proves this to be true. I would like to request that another qualified
employee follows up and finalizes the paperwork needed to obtain no-fee
passports for my children and myself. If the need arises, I would be happy to
work with the passport office in [our next duty station in Korea] (or any
surrounding passport office in that area). I would also encourage you to
evaluate [Passport Lady’s] behavior in her job, along with her reputation on
Redstone Arsenal, and decide if she is the best fit for the position she fills.
Truly, if Passport Lady’s attitude and lack of effectiveness
in her job can be fixed with some training, I would be pleased if her superiors
would simply train her. I know that payroll is an expensive line in the budget,
and having a high employee turnover means you spend more time searching for
qualified employees than you do letting them do their job. So if I hear that
Passport Lady is in the same job in 2 years, but is doing a much better job
because of proper training and counseling, I’ll be happy. I wasn’t out to get
her fired (unless her superiors had done everything they could before I had my
experiences with her)… I was simply trying to ensure the Leadership knew how
difficult the task of getting no-fee passports was, and I wanted to allow them
the opportunity to fix the situation.
After sending the 17-page email (with not one single f-bomb…
I’m seriously proud of that) I realized how much I just wanted to get to Korea
and finish this process there. I did not want to have Passport Lady’s office
handle our no-fee applications at all, regardless of whether she was involved
or not. So when the COL emailed me back to inform me that Passport Lady’s
supervisor was briefed on the situation, and to expect an email from him, I had
made up my mind.
The gentleman who emailed me back was not New Fellah, though
New Fellah was assigned my case. It doesn’t fall into his current job
description, but he is qualified to assist me with my application because he
was trained in the process by the State Department. When I gave him a very brief backstory on where I thought
we were in the process, I neglected to put anything in about Passport Lady
except to say that she is to have absolutely nothing to do with our
applications. I asked a few questions and got very prompt and helpful answers.
One of my questions was this: Can I just put the process on
hold for a week and pick everything up where we left off when we get to Korea?
I’m more than happy to head over to the Embassy with my husband in tow so that he can personally sign all documents
and we can get past this catastrophe. (For the record, I did not refer to the
situation as a catastrophe to New Fellah… though I was thinking about it as I typed my letter).
His initial response
to this idea was to tell me that we would have to start the process all over if
we were to do that. In all honesty, I was perfectly happy to follow that path!
I just needed to know one thing: would the State Department send our
applications and original documents to us in Korea so we could start all over,
or could we just put in a reference number somewhere so they knew which
employee was holding our originals when they got our documents.
The day after I asked about the documents as they pertained
to starting over in Korea, I got a call from New Fellah. He was shocked to hear
that the State Department wouldn’t make us start all over in Korea. They saw in
our file that we had extenuating circumstances for our tourist passports, and
connected the dots that those were the same extenuating circumstances for our
no-fees. But rather than trying to rush to get us temporary no-fee passports
before we were supposed to leave, they said to just head to the Embassy and use
the reference numbers. They would be happy to receive a digital copy of the
3053 if it came from the Embassy
directly. We would simply have to make sure the applicable reference
numbers were attached. New Fellah kept saying over and over again that he had
never heard of this type of exception to policy happening.
When I asked him for the reference numbers, he told me that
he didn’t know them. He would have to seek out Passport Lady to find out what
they were. He mentioned that if she didn’t have them in her files, she would
have to call the State Department to get them. I apologized to New Fellah as I
cut him off, then firmly (yet kindly) reminded him that Passport Lady does not
have the authority to speak on our behalf to the State Department, nor is she
to have any further access to our applications. If she has the appropriate
reference numbers in an email from the State Department, New Fellah could ask
that she give them to her. But if she says she doesn’t have anything, New
Fellah would have to make the call. He respected my stance on the situation and
we hung up. Thirty minutes later, I received an email with the reference
numbers.
New Fellah was a pleasure to work with; his professionalism
shined through as he was asked to step away from his typical duties to fill in
for Passport Lady. He was thorough in his responses, and he listened to me when
I had questions or comments. I hope my request to finish everything in Korea
didn’t come off as mistrust for his abilities; I had other things that I was
dealing with (pack out, kids in Florida, etc.) that needed my attention more.
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