Blackberry grief

A recent arrival on short-term assignment asked me today whether he could have a Blackberry. This reminded me of the difficulties I had encountered when I arrived in Hong Kong.....

I am no fan of the Blackberry, but when you have to deal with colleagues and clients as far west as Vancouver you rather need one instead of firing up the laptop before going to bed every night or when staying in an out-of-town hotel. So I asked my secretary to arrange one for me. "This is not possible" she told me, shocked that I had even asked for one. When pushed, she handed me a requisition form and asked me to complete it and she would pass it onto the Managing Partner for consideration.  Duly completed, off went the form for what I expected to be instant approval. 

A few days later my secretary returned with a request to supply reasons why I should have a Blackberry. Jeez, I thought this would be obvious, but nevertheless complied. About a week later I got a note from the MP saying my request had been rejected as Blackberries were only for the use of partners. So I fired off an email to her, politely pointing out that as a Director I needed one just as much as I suspected partners needed one, and to an extent, probably needed one more than them given my responsibilities.

Still no joy! It eventually took a client spitting the dummy and my email response to him that I could have acted more promptly had I had a Blackberry (an email I copied to the MP) that resulted in a brand new Blackberry (identical to the one I was given by the EU firm in 2005) arriving on my desk. I soon discovered that the Hong Kong office practised Blackberry apartheid - local partners get the new models and others deemed worthy of having one get shitty old models that the telecom company have obviously paid the firm to take out of their warehouse.