Quality control

I am growing to love Qatar. But still, sometimes I want scream: why can't things just work smoothly here?
Things that you buy fall apart quickly, work that is done is shabby, and getting anything like paperwork done (e.g. anything with government) usually takes three attempts before you can accomplish it. It usually involves driving across town several times in thick traffic, being given wrong directions, incomplete instructions, and playing pass the buck.

Quite honestly, I think this has to do with a local failure to adequately value skilled (and unskilled labor), resulting in a lack of incentive for quality work. And, of course, also a tendency to place too high a value on lineage, nationality, and other forms of entitlement, resulting also in a lack of incentive, inefficiency, and general waste.

For my fellow Muslims, both Qatari and non-Qatari, so long as we refuse to embrace just meritocracy, we will continue to decline. Riding on the backs of imported Western expertise is no substitute.