I am currently renting a room in my friends' dormitory, where I plan to spend my last few days having fun and saying goodbye. Renting a dormitory room is easy - it's pretty much a hotel. An expensive one, though, by Indonesian standards. For Rp100,000 (a little over $10/night), I get a room with a bed, a tv, electricity, a/c, and a bathroom with a dipper bath. Because I know the people who live here, I also get free wifi (but they told me the password, not the caretaker). For half the price, I could get the same thing in the city center, but it's worth it to be with my friends. God knows there is absolutely no other reason to return to this city.
When I got the key to my room this morning, I discovered that the a/c in my room is not working. Because one of my friends, who has now returned to his home country, used to live in this room, I know that the a/c hasn't actually been working for several months and that the so-called attempts to fix it were really just for show. Since I'm recovering from a bad cold and am still feeling pretty irritable and under-the-weather, I decided that I just didn't have the patience to tolerate anymore unnecessary nonsense for the sake of cultural sensitivity.
I went down to the caretaker's room and knocked on the door a few times. He did not answer, so I headed back to the staircase to go back to my stifling hot room. On the way, I noticed a group of men lounging in the back room. I walked back there and found the caretaker surrounded by six or seven buddies. They were gambling (something which is, incidentally, incredibly illegal in Indonesia and haram for Muslims, and they were all Muslim). As I have discovered often happens in Indonesia, when you walk in on a person at their place of work and they are playing Solitaire or making a personal call or, in this case, playing poker, there is not an ounce of shame or guilt at being caught. There is no quick shuffle to hide or disguise the illicit activity but instead a bored look of irritation at the person who has interrupted and an immediate resuming of the activity. As I spoke to the caretaker to tell him my a/c was broken and I wanted to change rooms, he barely looked at me, preferring instead to watch the money being rapidly counted around the table. Finally, exasperated by his complete and utter failure to even pretend to do his job, I told him that I was paying for the room and I expect there to be a/c. He glared at me, then told me that none of the rooms were clean and they would do it later. Then he stood up and claimed a recently abandoned seat in the poker game.
I went back to my room, giving them one hour to finish their game and do their jobs before letting my illness-induced irritability get the better of me. An hour later, I walked back downstairs and into the room where the gambling was continuing. They merely glanced at me, so I left and went and got one of my male friends to come with me. They seem to respond more favorably to men, especially when that man is a head taller than all of them. As soon as we entered the room this time, they jumped up without us having to say anything and said the repairmen were coming to look at the a/c. Two blue-uniformed men slowly relinquished their seats around the table and grabbed a toolbox hidden inside a cabinet. Fifteen minutes later, then sauntered into my room.
I told them that the a/c was not blowing cold air, and they set up a ladder so they could reach the unit. Since a/c units in Indonesia are almost always window units, the cold air blower is inside the room but the motor is outside, mounted on the side of the building. One of the repairmen climbed the ladder, stuck his hand in front of the fan, and said, "Yup, that's not cold." Then his coworker said, "Huh." Then they stared at it for - no joke - TEN MINUTES. Every once in awhile, one of them would mutter something about it not blowing cold air. It was like they were trying to will it to work.
Finally the said something and left the room. They came back with an older man, apparently someone who actually knows what to do, a super special a/c remote, and a length of rope that looked no stronger than twine. For awhile, they merely pointed the super special a/c remote at the unit, turning it on and off. Surprise! No change.
Then it got interesting. One of the repairmen is really bright. Instead of getting a ladder and using that as an aide to examine the motor mounted on the side of the building, he decides to repel out the window. Remember that itty bitty rope I mentioned earlier? Yeah.....
I watched him in disbelief as he wound the twine-like rope around and around, never making a knot but just looping it every once and awhile and pulling. He mounted himself on the windowsill and was just about to jump out with only the unsecured, untested, itty bitty little rope to hold his weight. His friend, who had also been watching, suggested almost as an afterthought that he get a bigger rope. The aspiring mountain climber looked at his friend, looked at the rope, then slowly leaned back to test its strength. A few minutes later, he was using a much more appropriate-sized rope to support a human being.
Now I would just like to say that this is characteristic of most interactions I have with people here. Customer service is unheard of. Work ethic...well, you read for yourself. I wish I could say that was a rare occasion, but it wasn't. In my school, in this university, in the bank, in the mall, at a restaurant - customers are treated as an inconvenience, an interruption to a TV show, a cell phone game, a phone call, or a social visit. It's just the way the culture goes.
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