An office affair
The first
time I entered the entrails of an Indonesian government department it took time
for my pupils to dilate. The place was
Kedari in Southeast Sulawesi during the 1980s and I was seeking permission to
visit an isolated island.
Columns of
khaki-clad men and women were sitting at plain desks reading newspapers or
watching TV on full volume. An
occasional one-fingered typist clacked out a letter. Only the boss had a phone.
The lights
were squint-level dim, the air thick with the fug of fags, the heat
unchallenged.
It was a
woodcut from a Dickens novel minus ledgers and goose quill pens. Later I
discovered it was typical.
Somewhere
in Indonesia is the template for a department building. Rows of square concrete columns in-filled
with bricks to create sets of cells, then plastered with white tiles for that
special toilet ambience. This arid design has created a matching culture.
Buying
jobs, promotion through seniority, policy packaging being more important than delivery,
corruption and arrogance have all crimped competent administration.
Seen from
afar Jakarta is a modern city – the high-rise skyline makes a statement of
power and authority. But behind the
tinted glass are poor Internet connections, petty rules, lousy wages and worker
exploitation.
Is there
enough of this to support 600 pages keeping the general reader informed and
entertained? Only when written by a
talented journalist following the number one rule of his craft: Take the ordinary and make it irresistibly
interesting.
Gideon
Haigh is a prolific Australian writer best known for his books on cricket, a
skilled wordsmith clicking his mouse into nooks and crevices to find the facts
within.
A lesser
journeyman writing on the evolution of the office would be struggling to lay
1,000 words in a straight line, let alone make them sexy. Haigh finds fertility at every level in the
high-rise phallic symbols dominated by men but largely staffed by women.
Consider
how the big Indonesian banks present themselves. Cathedral foyers to crush creditors but comfort investors;
security guards to open doors and tellers who stand so you feel important and
don’t notice how severely they clip your credit cards - and everyone in sight
as young as an Olympic swim squad.
The office
isn’t just where we work. It’s also the
environment where ruthless bosses ensure we spend more daylight hours than at
home with our kids. The office is where
we interact with others, gain friends, make enemies, get rewards, plot – and
often find romance.
Who hasn’t
waited mad with thirst till a certain someone headed for the water cooler,
hoping no one will notice your coincidental rendezvous? The heat generated in the photocopy room
doesn’t always come from the machines.
It’s not an
office without an affair, a place where reputations are ripped like a memo in a
shredder and the politics have a brutality equal to a Jakarta gubernatorial
contest.
The modern
office grew out of banking and public administration, particularly in
England. The famous diarist Samuel
Pepys has given us a view of 17th century office doings, little
different to today apart from the technology.
The
invention of the telegraph and typewriter created a social revolution. Nimble-fingered women were better than men
at many tasks and paid less. They were,
notes Haigh, the first knowledge workers.
There was
resistance. ‘(Women’s) flighty
temperaments would prove ill-suited to the rigors of the working day and a
distraction from its serious cares; they would be de-natured by diversion from
their biological destinies’ reports the author. But reality intervenes and firm
policies crumble when weathered by economics, shifting attitudes and time.
A lesser
writer would have found a few literary and historical references and cemented
this rubble with quotes and statistics.
Haigh goes further and deeper, noting the evolution of the office in
popular culture. How many rom-coms are
set in offices compared with the casting floor at Krakatau Steel’s foundry?
Haigh’s
book may be an epitaph. Western
countries faced with rising costs are pushing the electronic office. Many overseas banks have already downsized
and are little more than small shops, their customers on line.
Outside
Indonesia government departments are doing the same. Why travel far through vile traffic and queue for hours when you
can download and submit forms electronically 24 / 7? Office towers are being converted into apartments, reversing the
trend for workers to commute from dormitory suburbs.
Soeharto’s
policy of disguising unemployment with make-believe jobs in the bureaucracy has
resulted in the population equivalent of Singapore living on the public
payroll. Getting their child into a
lifetime government office job with pension remains the prime ambition of many
parents.
Against
this conservative mass, reformers seeking to shrink the public service face a
task so formidable that ousting the Dutch from their former colony would be
just a poke with a bamboo pole.
After
reading The Office it seems there’s little left to reveal other than the
fate of this institution in Indonesia.
Where will we poor supplicants be when the rest of the working world has
turned to the Web?
Probably
still sitting on benches outside bland buildings waiting respectfully for the
fuehrer of the filing cabinets to wield his rubber stamps and give us
permission to keep on living.
THE OFFICE
– A Hardworking History
Gideon
Haigh
The
Miegunyah Press (Melbourne University Publishing) 2012
610 pages
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