Hannah at the slow move east ("thoughts on being an expatriate") gets to be a control officer.
Money quote(s):
"Tomorrow I start eight full days of control officering on two separate visits, both of which have more moving parts and complications than a bureaucracy designed by Rube Goldberg. When I leave for R&R in two weeks, I'll be running right at mental and physical empty. So for the moment, I'm holding on to the best moment of the last few weeks, to keep me going through several long nights at the airport or hours in tour busses."
What is a control officer and why does it sound like something stressful?
Control officers, generally FSOs, are assigned by posts (embassies, consulate, or missions) to be the overall wrangler of an official visit. The visitors, almost by definition VIPs, may be codels (congressional delegations), stafdels (congressional staff delegrations), Departmental officials of sub-cabinet (i.e, job titles including the word "Secretary;" that's with an upper-case "S") or ambassadorial rank, the Secretary of State, or even POTUS/VPOTUS/FLOTUS.
Posts put a lot of effort, time, and resources into making those visits as worthwhile for the visitors, given whatever their focus might be, as is humanly possible (actually, this is sometimes counter-productive).
Everything is laid on ahead of time, little is left to chance, transportation, security, receptions, media events, it's all planned to the minute; after having done a few of these I commented to a fellow Iraq vet that running convoys had been less stressful.
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