Pull the Grenade

Pull the Grenade 

I need to share… 

Mondays are a special day when I work from home in my comfiest clothes and I motor like a machine through my inbox and get on top of my “to Do” list for the week ahead. This Monday was particularly joyous, the UV index was 8, so I lunched outside to top up my tan ahead of Tuesday when I planned to head to the office glowing with positivity and ready to face the week ahead. 

On Tuesday morning I arrived in the office with my usual flat white coffee and blueberry muffin from Starbucks (I always treat myself when I head into the office to see my colleagues) and as I strode in, I internally congratulated myself for successfully getting through Monday. Nothing was going to derail me today until… 

I opened Outlook: subject: Urgent shipment impounded. My heart rate started to rise as the mental audit of all recent assignee started to play in my mind.  Just as I was about to click open, a Teams Message pinged up from my manager Can we speak first thing? Eeks this is bad…I clicked on the outlook message and sped read my way through the content to discover that as a Global Mobility Manager, you really can’t make this sh*t up! 

The Long and short of it all is that we had a US national (Dick) who had been living in Belgium with diplomatic immunity. He was ex-forces and as a result, he had quite a collection of weaponry. His diplomatic immunity had been revoked due to a change in role and as a result the organisation had repatriated him to the US. All seemingly straight forward on the face of it. 

However, Dick had helped pack his shipment to send home and had carefully concealed included some of his prize weaponry collection. On inspection his shipment had been impounded because it had live grenades in it!!! 

I took a deep breath, 4 counts in and 6 counts out and after repeating this 5 times I felt my heart rate fall and my sympathetic nervous system settle. Now it was time for this tanned Gina Goddess to leap into action. 

Action taken:  

I dug out our shipping policy to check we had wording to cover us. Yep phew… 

I checked what services we had contracted with our shipping company and again phew they were paid to survey and pack everything. What I hadn’t anticipated is that sometimes you get a “Dick” who likes to be helpful and assist. 

So, I quickly wrote some recommendations of tweaks to the policy… 

Exclusions 
Prohibited/restricted items based on host country import restrictions are excluded e.g. live grenades 

Survey 
The approved provider will conduct a pre-move survey to establish the items to be moved and understand individual requirements. This may be arranged at the employee’s home or virtually by video or online survey. The employee is expected to show them everything to be moved (so tempting to add “including live grenades” 🤣) 

Packing  
The employee or their representative should be present during packing/loading and it is their responsibility to a) brief the foreman on arrival to highlight any specific requirements, including items that should not be packed, such as those specifically excluded in the organisation’s shipping policy b) conduct a property walkthrough prior to packing to identify any risks or existing property damage c) conduct a property walkthrough after loading is complete to ensure everything has been completed satisfactorily. Under no circumstances should the employee act like Dick and pack illegal weapons (ok so I wasn’t brave enough to include that last bit). 

I whizzed out to Starbucks bought a blueberry muffin (as they do help on Tuesdays) and breezily presented it with my recommendations to my manager who authorised the proposed changes to policy. We agreed that asking future employees to sign an “I won’t act like a Dick” disclaimer in the future may be a step too far but it could be a useful example when training future Global Mobility Managers. If someone is very keen to assist with their packing perhaps you should wonder why?