Swing Low

It is fairly common for Indonesians to swing from broad exaggeration to inexplicable understatement. It's hard to predict which method is going to be employed; or why.

Examples below.

During a job interview last Wednesday.

Me: "Why did you leave your last job?"

Him: "I felt I was not treated fairly."

Me: "In what way?"

Him: "Well ... in terms of workload and also in some cases I was bullied by the management to work harder or to deliver bad news to the client. I mean ... I told them ... I am Indonesian. I can't say these things."

Me: "So what did you do?"

Him: "I had a choice to continue or to quit. And to continue I means I would probably die."

I quickly wrote this down, knowing I would question my memory of it, before pressing on:

Me: [straight faced] "You would die? What do you mean you by that?"

Him: "Well because I was not sleeping and losing weight and people were saying 'Christian you don't look good" and 'Christian if you continue like this you will die' so I realise I cannot continue living so I quite. [sic]"

A job interview is not usually the place to contemplate your demise and I had to admire Christian for breaking ranks. Admire. Not hire.

On a conference call this morning:

A: "Hari won't be in today because his mother died."

B: "Oh. That explains the email I got this morning."

A: "What was that?"

B: "He said he couldn't meet the client today because he was sad."

In a phone conversation this morning with my CEO:

"You know Andi his kid is in hospital so he can't meet us today which guess that's a good thing because we are not ready for this meeting with him anyway."

I didn't feel too bad for Andi. There is no sick child. No hospital. He may not even own a child. "Hospitalised child" is just code for needing a couple of days off. He's probably got some visitors from out of town.