Starting a business…

I really hope there is a special level in hell for all the bureaucrats who have ever developed ‘special internal regulations’ to make life miserable for the general populace. Notice I didn’t say purgatory. The reason I open with this wish is simple. After nearly a decade of being in the country, I decided, in my wisdom, to establish my own company. There was really nothing wrong with the company I was working for, I got to travel, do stuff on tv, had a decent salary – well maybe – but the allure of being my own boss and doing my own thing was too hard to resist, and so I resigned. Never resign if you haven’t already got a new job, or have work coming in to your company sufficient to support you. Never, ever, resign a paying job when the next year will be one of the most calamitous economic meltdowns in the history of the world. How can you tell in advance about economic meltdowns? Banks get too greedy, people are being overpaid as CEOs, personal debt is a double digit figure against income, and either everybody is getting a new home without proper credit checks, or there are so many projects under construction that they can’t possible be sold.

The year was 1996, and the next year was 1997 – the so-called year of the “Tom Yum Goong” crisis.

All that was way off over the horizon. I just wanted my own thing, and I had a few small things that I could do to get busy and probably keep busy. So I hired a lawyer to help me do the registration documents and then the two other majorly important documents, the long-term visa and the work permit. In terms of company ownership, I had already reconciled myself to the fact that I could not own the company outright – foreign ownership is limited to 49% in Thailand, unless you’re an American, in which case you can own the entire company under the “Treaty of Amity” which is basically a hold-over from the Vietnam War era and likely the result of some gunpoint diplomacy along the lines of: if you don’t give the right to our citizens to own their companies fully, we will simply walk out and leave you with the commies on your border; your choice. So I couldn’t own the company, but that was fine. The more pressing issue was the other paperwork, and this is where the nth circle of hell comes in.

Getting the papers ready

To apply for a long-term visa, you needed to show that you had applied for a work permit, and to apply for a work permit, you needed to show that you had already gotten the long term visa – that was the situation in 1996 (in 2018 it’s not that much different). Without the internet, there was nothing really to check online in terms of papers required for applications, so a visit to get the sheet with the list of required documents had to be completed at two distinct offices. The preparation of the paperwork was not too much of an issue – all the company documents duly copied and signed, letters to support the applications, bank statements, health checks, office maps, employee registers, fake salary slips (despite never having earned the sum, there was a minimum requirement for Canadians to claim a salary of at least 45,000 Baht at the time (later bumped up to 60,000), yet for Europeans it was only 35,000; go figure. All this was duly prepared, and off we went to apply for the long term visa, the lawyer and I.

The ‘over-glasses’ look

After an interminable wait our number was finally called, and we approached the counter, stacks of papers in hand, checked, double-checked, quadruple-checked, to make sure we had missed nothing. We were motioned to sit down and hand over the two-trees-turned-into-paper. And we sat. All sheets were shuffled and reshuffled, fitting into some unknown order as was required, apparently, for efficient processing internally: application sheet on top, two or three supporting documents, then passport copy, then more supporting forms and documents and….. a sudden pause in the shuffle. Back to page one and the application form, back through the stack once again, and the same pause at the same place. A slow glance up at us above eyeglasses; a questioning-accusatory look. Then the question. “Where is…. Document?” Excuse us, which document? “The …… document.” We didn’t realize we needed something like that, it wasn’t on the sheet with the list of documents we needed to prepare. “You need it; without it your application won’t be processed.” But we didn’t know about it, it wasn’t on the sheet of regulatory documents required. “It’s an internal regulation. You have to conform to the internal regulation.” Internal regulation? How… what… I’m sorry, but how can we know about an internal regulation? “It’s an internal regulation that is not publicized but needs to be adhered to. Here, take your papers back, get me the document, and come back.”

Incredulous as it sounds, we stood up, carefully took the heavy stack of papers back, then, as we were backing away, kowtowed, for who knew what would be visited upon us the next time when we did bring the document but we had not shown enough deference on this occasion?

Purgatory? Hell no. Even the iciest level at the furthest depths of hell is too good for the scribblers of unpublished, treacherous ‘internal’ regulations.