Losing Trust

Since we moved here on account of Mike’s job, it has required us to go through about a million and a half people for each step in the process. First, there was the person who held all of the information about the job but who didn’t post it when she said she would (over and over again). There have been HR people who promised us things they didn’t deliver on. There have been managers who are unresponsive. There was the promotion Mike was promised, oh, LAST NOVEMBER that those in charge dragged their feet on and haven’t responded to inquiries on the subject. There were the people in charge of getting our visa paperwork that had us running around for months to get everything in order, only to then say that we apparently WOULDN’T be getting visas. Instead, we’d be entering the country under a military agreement called “SOFA Status.”

Except…we still don’t have SOFA status. In fact, in a couple of weeks, we will officially be in this country illegally if the paperwork is not in order by that time. We’re trying to get the company to make some “suggestions” for what we might do if our legal status expires before our paperwork is in order. I’m really hoping that their answer isn’t “it’ll be fiiiine” but my hopes aren’t really that high.

And then we tried to purchase a car. Two people who were hired to help us relocate told us that we could purchase a car in this country and it would take a few extra steps, but it was possible. A day before we were supposed to purchase a car, it turned out that we wouldn’t be allowed to get insurance on the car (after at LEAST 6 or 7 emails confirming we could get insurance and two months of discussing it). A week later, they found an insurance company that WOULD insure us. So in order to pay for the car in cash, we cashed in some of our stocks and investments and spent weeks transferring the money into cash, incurring regular fees along the way for ATM transactions and whatnot.

So we found a car. We paid in cash for the car. We were supposed to pick it up a few days later. Mike returned his rental car, took a taxi to the dealership, and lo and behold, there was a problem. We can’t buy a car!! Shocker. So Mike was without a car and had no way of getting back home. The dealership lent him a car while we got other arrangements together.

There have been SO many fails on SO many people’s parts during this whole process. We cashed in thousands and thousands of dollars of our investments, incurred fees converting it to Euros in cash. We lost money on a deal that never should have happened in the first place. That money could still be sitting in an account, accruing money for our future children instead. Somewhere along the way, SOMEONE should have told us that no, it isn’t possible to buy a car. That we HAVE to rent even though it’s more expensive than purchasing.

We still don’t have all of our items from home, either. Our big items like our beds and our christmas tree aren’t here. We’ve been told for weeks that it would be “soon.” We’re trying to schedule the delivery for this week since we’re going out of town next week. I can’t imagine what people do if they buy an unfurnished place and wait for their furniture for months before it arrives.

At the risk of sounding dramatic, we just don’t trust people anymore. We just don’t. We don’t trust that anyone will do what they say they will. We don’t trust that people who assure us of something they “know” actually know anything at all. We don’t trust that people who are paid to help us will help us at all.

I had no idea when we took this job that I would lose faith in so much of humanity. We’ve always been prepared to the extreme…sending 3 or 4 confirmation emails to people on things just to be sure the status hasn’t changed, that we will be good to go. The fact that so many emails have gone back and forth telling us false information or misleading information is so, so disheartening.

I don’t trust that we’ll be “just fiiiine” if our legal status here expires before our paperwork is ready. I don’t think it’s fair of anyone to ask us to be here illegally because someone else didn’t do their job properly. In fact, I think it’s…um…illegal for someone to ask that of us. Personally, I’d rather spend Christmas back at home instead of in a Spanish jail cell if we’re caught.

It’s sad that an experience like this that was supposed to be fun and exciting has made us so much more cautious of everything and everyone. It’s sad that people who have our lives in their hands have misled us on numerous occasions. It’s sad that we used to want to travel and live abroad beyond our time here in Spain, but now we have to seriously, seriously reconsider that dream.