But things began to change from the late 1960s as technological advances in agriculture suddenly freed up large numbers of one-time field laborers—especially women, who’d traditionally done much of the planting and harvesting. So where did they go? Into the factories, of course, where Indonesia’s manufacturing economy was just getting going. And as the country industrialized, burgeoning financial and service sectors and a growing consumer economy were part of the package too. There’s been a bit of turbulence along the way, but these days Indonesia’s economy and workforce are as diversified as anywhere—even if some people actually do still work as rice farmers or becak drivers!
Office life at a Jakarta cable TV company.
A JOB FOR LIFE
For much of the 20th century the most attractive employment prospect was a position in the ranks of Indonesia’s vast body of state employees which included military, police, and the sprawling apparatus of the Pegawai Negeri Sipil, PNS, the Civil Service. A civil service position might not be particularly well paid, but it was a job for life with lots of extra formal benefits, not least a pension. There were also, it has to be said, often opportunities for considerable illicit additional earnings in a system notorious for its institutionalized corruption. But perhaps even more importantly than the financial rewards, a civil service job brought prestige. Many of 21st-century Indonesia’s solidly middle class families attained and consolidated that status through the civil service careers of previous generations.
Poking fun at the pegawai negeri—A cartoon mocking civil servants; the captions read “What my friends think I do. What the public think I do. What my boss thinks I do. What my parents think I do. What I think about. What I actually do.”
Even today, amongst the ranks of the lower middle classes, especially in outlying provinces away from the big cities, the chance to don the olive-green civil service uniform remains a very alluring prospect, not least because of the security and prestige it offers.
LIFE IN THE KANTOR
It sometimes seems to me that the various primers and orientation courses aimed at Western expats heading to Indonesia for work do their very best to cast a pall of mystifying orientalist bunkum over the Indonesian office. Take them too seriously and you might come away with the idea that Indonesian employment is an impenetrable labyrinth of arcane eastern mysteries where nothing is as it seems. In reality there’s nothing particularly exotic about the average Indonesian office, although, just like wider Indonesian society, it usually consists of a layer of easy-going warmth over a careful framework of hierarchy and respect. There’s a lot of unspoken emphasis on harmony, and so being disrespectful or doing anything likely to mess with someone’s hierarchical prestige will always cause problems.
Another endless round of meetings and presentations…
The importance and respect given to formal hierarchy in Indonesian workplaces reflects the values of wider society. But I suspect it also has something to do with the fact that Indonesian office culture was originally forged in the civil service, which, like civil services everywhere, is very hierarchical indeed. Indeed, the very word “office” in Indonesian—kantor—still conjures up images of a dimly lit space, filled with untidy files and shuffling olive-green figures, even though these days it’s more likely to refer to a bright room full of frantically motivated techies.
“Rubber Time”—Punctuality, Indonesian Style
You’ll hear a heck of a lot about a concept called jam karet in Indonesia. It’s a very well-worn cliché—something that longtime expats discourse on as if delivering the ultimate cultural insight, and that Indonesians themselves mention with a certain dash of self-parodying irony, like Irish people going on about their national love of “the craic”. But there’s definitely something in it!
Jam karet means “rubber time”, and it refers to Indonesia’s supposedly innate sense of flexibility when it comes to deadlines and fixed schedules. If the bus is an hour late, or your co-worker fails to turn up for that important meeting, it’s allegedly all down to jam karet, and you’ll never be able to do anything about it. Jam karet is intimately connected with another common Indonesian phrase: nanti saja, which means “just later”. And if the reply to a question about when something’s going to get done is “nanti saja”, you know you’ve just become a victim of jam karet!
One thing that has always struck me about Indonesian workplaces, is the importance of food! In the office of the school where I first worked in Indonesia the office boys (and they’re another feature of Indonesian offices—poorly paid but very obliging men who double as cleaners, runners, general skivvies and tea-makers) were continually coming in and out with take-out orders for the teachers and admin staff, and I’d find myself constantly assailed with offers of oily snacks and sweet treats from every side. Even when I was working in a tiny newspaper office with no more than half-a-dozen coworkers, someone was always eating.
Traveling to Work
Climb aboard any long-haul bus or interisland ferry towards the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, and you’ll meet them: Indonesia’s millions of working class economic migrants, making what is often their only annual trip back to their home region. Economic pressures have long prompted people from all over the Indonesian archipelago to leave home in search of employment, and many regions have their own particular traditions of migration. The small towns of East Java provide many of the domestic staff for wealthy families in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Middle East; people from the eastern regencies of Bali have been staffing cruise ships for decades; and the hard-grafting folks of Madura pop up selling sate or doing whatever else will pay in just about every corner of the country.
But there’s one part of Indonesia that raises migration from an economic necessity to a rite of passage, and that’s the Minangkabau region of Sumatra. Minangkabau culture is matrilineal: the women get the inheritance, so unmarried young men have always found themselves disenfranchised, and have always gone out into the world to seek their fortune. The Minangkabau word merantau—which literally means something along the lines of “to go into non-Minangkabau territory”—has entered the Indonesian language as a term for migration. But the idea of merantau conveys more than just migrating for work; it invokes a sense of honorable wandering in search of wisdom as well as wealth. The reality might well be a construction site in Kuala Lumpur, but merantau is still very much a respected tradition.
YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE: THE SUPER SOCIABLE NATION
Apart from “Hello mister”, the phrase I hear most frequently as I make my way around Indonesia is “Kok sendiri?” It’s hard to give a direct translation of what’s really implied by the question but it basically means something along the lines of “You’re on your own??? What the hell are you doing on your own??? No, seriously, mister, what is wrong with you??? Don’t you have any friends???” Because in this most social of countries, wanting to be alone is a downright deviant act.
Big-name brands and icy air-con—the irresistible lure of the mall!
In Indonesia life itself is a social affair, and although this is what makes it one of the friendliest places on earth, it can cause difficulties for those who do relish a little quiet time. If I want to enjoy a peaceful