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"Work"

What is it? How do you define it? How do you think of it? How does it make you feel?

In Indonesia, if you aren’t a government official, you’re not really working. You’re just idling. Even if you were farming or employed in a company somewhere, it’s still not really work. And your status is pretty low on the social scale. When you first get employed in the private sector, you have about a year or so of probation. You’re not considered an employee. You don’t really even seriously have that job. Your social status is beyond low. In terms of integers, you’re pretty much in the negative range. After that, if you manage to renew your contract, then maybe you’re in. You’ve an iron rice bowl and your boss can’t fire you unless you molest kids or make porn or kill a person or commit some other heinous crime. Serious.

In Singapore, work is just work. It’s something you do to earn cash to carry on living somewhat decently. Once you’re hired, you’re an employee and you can get fired pretty much any day if you’re incompetent. But work is tied to status here too. The more you work, the more respected you are. The difficulty of the work doesn’t enter into it as much as the amount does. The more time you spend at work, the more you’re valued. You are pretty much a farm animal.

But I haven’t defined work. What is it? Work is a burden. That’s what the books are calling it. Books studying work and the nature of work word it differently, but that’s the gist. It’s burden. The question is, why is it a burden? Why do so many of us do it from 9 to beyond 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10pm everyday? Why is it that many can go home at 3 or 4pm in Jogjakarta whereas in Singapore we have such a large number of people working almost 24/7?

This is the theme of my present research project.