And it really took me back to the time when I used to be a part of the corporate world. A world full of suspicious people like the woman on the above comic strip. Don’t get me wrong; the company itself was built upon great values, but it was the people – especially those who were at the top – who were screwing it up.

If you worked at a corporate company long enough, you’d know how to be a good liar – your manager, your boss and your shifty senior colleagues would be the ones teaching you.

How? Study the following case;

Iwan* was a work colleague who went home to Bandung every weekend. It had become a traditional habit to bag the crap out of him when it came to Friday afternoon, because he always took off at exactly 4 pm just so he wouldn’t miss catching the bus back home.

On one particular Monday, he took a day off work because he had to take care of his family car’s registration. Our office was located in Cikarang and if he did try to make it into a half-day’s work by the time he got to the office it would be noon already, and we all know how ’smooth and easy’ the government was when it comes to administration work, sometimes it would take them a full day just to approve a single paper, but let’s not get into that now.

So Iwan gave my manager, Lisa*,  a call to let her know about it since, of course, it was the right thing to do to tell her the truth, right? Not so. Lisa practically yelled at him through the telephone, saying that it was unacceptable for him to miss a day of work just to deal with his car’s registration and why not get someone else to do it? On top of that she managed to let everyone in the department knew about it so that she could come around and badmouth him, or even better get the rest of us to do the same (out of fear for pissing her off if we didn’t, of course).

FYI, Iwan lived alone with his mother (his father had passed away) at home, because all his siblings were married and moved out already, so he was the one who took the role as the head of the family by providing and taking care of the bills etc.

The next day, Iwan came to work with an exhausted look on his face and he said to me, “Had I known she’d make such a big deal about it, I would’ve lied and told her that I was sick instead.”

What he said to me really got me thinking for the whole day – true, he could’ve lied and it would make his life a whole lot easier, but he chose not to. He told the truth instead, and got told off. Even worse, Lisa sort of implied to the rest of us that there might be a chance that Iwan was lying about his car registration.

What made me feel sad was the fact that Lisa’s behavior was not exactly uncommon – almost every manager in the whole office behaved in exactly the same way. Most of them even violated the rules of the company that they had created themselves.

It was okay for Lisa to take half day off from work because her son was sick and demanded attention, but it was definitely not okay for Iwan to do the same thing – why? I have no idea. Maybe it’s the whole double standard thing, “It’s okay for me to breach the rules because I’m a manager and you are not”, even though everyone knew that Lisa misused her position and her son’s sickness as an excuse for too many times than she should, if she was to be compared to her subordinates.

My guess was that the next time Iwan needed to take a day off, he’d rather make up some lying excuses rather than telling the truth – it sounded better on Lisa’s ears anyway, so why shouldn’t he? And he was right. He had started looking for a new job a few months after and for every interview he’d been to, he gave the sick excuse and no questions were asked. And that is how a person becomes a good liar, my friend.

I ought to congratulate Lisa and all the other power-tripping managers for recreating an honest and good-willing person into a dishonest and lying person. I didn’t stay long enough at that company myself – the office politic finally got me and I had enough.*

So when Suparman from the comic strip above gave the doctor’s certificate for his absence the day before  and instead, got the suspicious treatment from his boss because the certificate had a writing that was ‘too neat coming from a doctor’, I already had an idea of what was going on in his head then.

But for now, I’ll let you do the interpretation for me. What do you think?

*)The real names of the characters in this story are protected for their privacy.

To set the record straight, let me share a little bit about my personal experience. Being the naive girl that I was, upon returning from my study overseas, I thought getting a job would be an easy-peasy task, because an overseas degree must have been more appealing than a local degree, right?

Wrong. It was difficult for me in finding a job. I’d sent out resumes after resumes only to receive absolutely zero responses, and even if I did manage to score some interviews, they never led anywhere.

I was suspecting that my resume and the abundant list of work experiences was something that would have flawed it all – many work experiences probably meant I was not loyal enough (even though they were all mostly part-time jobs that I did during college) and carrying the title of an overseas graduate scared most people off because they probably thought I was going to ask a huge amount of starting salary which was equal to the salary of a person who had worked for ten years.

It was when I was all fed up and developing a ‘can’t-be-fucked’ attitude as a result of all the useless interviews that I finally, finally, got a job. Unfortunately, before I even started working, someone had leaked the fact that I was (gasp!) an overseas graduate, and before I even knew it, I had my very own persona labeled onto me; the snob girl who must have had a very grand life and very loaded parents at that.

That wasn’t the first time it had happened to me. In the brief period of me working as an English teacher in this small institution in Thamrin, I had received the same treatment – the other employees were not keen to be friendly with me, and I couldn’t immediately start chit-chatting away with them for fear of being too friendly aka SKSD (Sok Kenal Sok Deket) and scared them even more; besides, the Indonesian Art of Basa-basi was not one I had mastered yet.

Which was why it was funny that when we finally got to know each other, they were surprised that I wasn’t at all what they thought. As a matter of fact, I was just like everybody else.

I went to work using public transport, instead of a hand-me-down BMW and a personal chauffeur. And if you want to know what kind of public transport exactly, just read it here.

I bought my clothes at places like Matahari and sometimes Mangga Dua, not from Guess or Mango. Although if I had a lot of money I probably would, but clothes had never been an important aspect for me – I’d rather spend my money on books, to be completely honest.

I cut my hair at the local Johnny Andrean and experienced bad hair day because it was the wrong style, instead of coloring and rebonding it at LuVaze – I’m not freaking Agnes Monica, for God’s sake.

To be frank, I wasn’t at all as glamorous and so high class it practically made me a snob by default.

There was this one time when I was instant-messaging with one of my work colleagues in the Documentation department, and I mentioned something about ironing my clothes, in which she went, “You can iron clothes???”

And my reply was, “Of course I can – who do you think did all my laundry whilst I was being overseas? A freaking maid?” (this was said sarcastically of course).

And then she goes, “Wow. I always thought you were this really rich person who never did any house chores and use Body Shop products.”

Honestly, I did not know what Body Shop got to do with it all, but OK, whatever floats her boat.

Perhaps it is common to label supposedly rich people as snobs – because they are wealthy, then they are entitled to be arrogant. So it must be weird to see a rich person not being smug about their richness, because many of them are.

I remember what this other colleague said about this Javanese girl in the R&D department who drove to work using a Suzuki Katana and just recently changed her car to a Toyota Soluna – bear in mind we’re talking about Japanese car ranges here as opposed to European ones that are identical to belong to the rich and famous as well as the Indonesian high-ranked officials i.e. corruptors; “Even though she’s rich, she’s a very friendly person.”

Wow. That “even though” bit really got me. As if being wealthy – or living an abundant and sufficient life – was a weakness, something to condemn to, and an excuse to make sense of their judgment.

Which is why whenever I met new people, I dread the very question of, “Where did you graduate from?”

I’d contemplate lying, but I have never been a very good liar, and if I do lie, it will all just get out of hand in which they probably go, “Oh, you went to so-and-so university! What year did you graduate? Perhaps you know my friend Budi, he was the manager of the student lounge?”

See? Not a very good idea. So now you would have understood my dilemma – if I’m being honest, I’m definitely going to be judged as a snob as to what has happened before, and if I do lie, I’ll just get myself into more trouble. And all of that is only because I have spend a few years of my life being overseas.

Hardly a big deal – but not to some people.

But then four doesn’t feel that late anymore. Gradually, it feels as if there are not enough hours to work – wailing every time lunchtime arises since it means having to leave desk, not believing that time could really go that quickly. It gets even worse after lunch. When look up at massive wall clock, it’s suddenly three pm and all hell breaks loose, trying to get everything done to avoid constantly thinking and worrying about work and even having some sort of weird, traumatized dream about it in the evening.

When waking up in mornings, feel like haven’t had enough sleep and also wishing that it hasn’t been five yet. While lying around in bed until practically six, drifting on and off from sleep, with temptation to skip work lurking around in back of mind but realizing that a day’s work actually makes huge difference so get up and brace the day, thinking could always go to sleep once get on the bus but actually never able to since dreading the people around me already putting me off the thought about sleeping for good.

As soon as having stepped foot at work, brain sort of switches into serious, meticulous, fast and efficient work mode – which am still having difficulty to adapt to since having to do a lot of things at the same time while doing everything really quickly has never been one of my expertise.

And then time rolls by and everything happens so fast it’s practically lunch time again, and on and on it goes.

Was wearing dark blue uniform and realized skirt was a bit on the tight side that had tremendous difficulty climbing up to my dad’s car in the morning when he dropped me off. Agonized about having to spend all day sitting in front of computer wearing really tight skirt, unable to fold legs on top of another or secretly spreading them out behind desk in manner of guy-inviting-girls-to-have-sex-style. Anyway, turned out working environment was like top-secret underground laboratorium-style sort of place, with sterile uniforms and different areas that require completely different, if not layered, other sets of uniforms.

Uniform was great, though. Was roomy cotton top with hood (to go over sterile areas to prevent hair falling and latching onto medicinal stuff, probably), cotton slacks with elastic waist band and rubber foamy shoes. Could spread out as much as want. Really felt like on set of ER or something.

Once inside safe area, was actually perfectly fine to take hoods off and there were rooms in different sizes and shapes all connected and disentangled together – some with computers and desks like normal offices and others with strange biopharmaceutical equipment and big glass tubes and massive fridges and people sieving white powder (!) and stuff. Each walls were see-thru with windows on so really felt like was working in wide open space and everyone could see what others were doing – in and outside.

But due to importance of sterility, could not have drinks on own table – must go to drinking area and even then only thing could drink was water because drinking area turned out to be small 2 x 4 m room with a water dispenser and small cupboard for people to put their plastic cups in. With their initials written on each. So coffee was definitely out of the question, let alone munching on snacks while working. Only thing could bring was inedible stuff, such as CDs, books, documents, files etc. Make up, jewellery and watches were not permitted too.

All of the areas were practically non-smoking. In fact, didn’t even recall seeing the security guard outside smoking smokedeesmoke. Wonder whether owner of company was secretly obsessed with making their workers living over-rated healthy lifestyles.

Apart from that, the food was great. There was a canteen and food amount was huge, varied and we even got fruit and chocolate milk. Chocolate milk!

Only thing that was slightly bothering was sounds of alarm ringing continuously in “Fur Elise” warning people that lunch time had started/finished and the last lunch shift was greeted by ear-deafening noise similar to that of a fire alarm. Was quite dazed to the fact that no one seemed to notice this; all eating their food slowly and talked and chewed as if the fire alarm was just in own head. Was giving “what-the-fuck-is-going-on” stares to another new co-worker who was really freaked out too, and someone next to me piped out, “You’ll get used to it.” Was relieved didn’t straight away think there actually was a fire happening.

Anyway, what a bizarre place to work.

Well that was how I felt on Friday. I felt like a big fat failure who had not only lost the game but on top of that, had no idea whatsoever about what I should do for my life. Other people had everything figured out, but I felt like I was lost and clueless and it scared the freaking bejesus out of me to know that I was pretty much going with no direction – no job, no career, nowhere to go.

I applied for a job vacancy at a banking company and they asked me to come for a psycho-test last Friday. Not that I never had it before, because I did, and I didn’t pass. And the second time around I didn’t get lucky. I got fucked over actually, because not only did I not pass, I didn’t even pass the first stage of the test. There were about ten people who did the tests and there were three who didn’t pass, and I was one of them.

I felt like such a loser – “Hey look at me, I’m an overseas graduate who had spend six years of her life living abroad and I couldn’t even pass the first stage of a stupid psycho test.”

I didn’t exactly break down and cry and I sure hoped that I did because maybe that would make me feel a lot more relieved. The fact that I couldn’t even bring myself to cry was something to worry about. Unlike any other normal female being who was dying to talk about her problems to others just so she could feel better about it, I closed myself out from the rest of the world and hibernated at home, watching DVDs non-stop and trying not to think about anything except the movies I was watching at. I slept for eighteen hours and felt like shit when I woke up because the first thing that came onto my mind was, “I failed that stupid psycho-test”, period.

For others, this may seem like a no biggie, but it is to me, because I failed it – for the second time. I felt as if my whole life’s worth of academic background and effort was thrown out of the window and I got stamped ‘Not good enough’ on the forehead just because I didn’t pass the test.

The whole thing got me thinking over and reassessed myself on what was it that I was lacking of, and I still had no clue. Even if I bought ‘Psycho Test for Dummies’ (which I did) and did all the exercises with the stopwatch and all, I still don’t think I could pass the test. The questions were ridiculous I sucked and cringed on the math part of the test, or any tests in that matter.

I don’t know how they could possibly sum up a person’s character and attributes and I just don’t see how those things were enough to measure up someone’s capability. I felt like I was simply being dismissed because I was not given the chance to shine.

I was confident that I could do anything that I set my mind to. My friends told me that I was a girl with many talents. My ruthless English teacher in high school, whom everyone was scared shitless with, told me that I was a blazing under a bushel, and that I would shine wherever I was.

I was dying to believe those words so much, and deep inside I knew that they were somewhat true, yet what happened on Friday seemed to make me falter even more. I appeared to fail on both accounts – failed on the test and failed to see that I was special enough to be given the chance – on anything.

Aaliyah told me to dust myself off and try again. Des’ree urged me to be strong and tough. Mum advised me that maybe this was just not for me, and that many others would come and God was trying to test me to see whether I would crumble or clamber up.

So today I dug up old letters from my friends and families and found out some stuff from high school – papers that we wrote to each other anonymously, telling each others about the good things that they were. The words ‘talented’ and ‘gifted’ came out a lot, and I realized that if these people had that much faith in me, then why couldn’t I feel the same? Maybe I didn’t fail on the test but I failed to see myself the way others did. Maybe other people didn’t underestimate me but I underestimated myself. I didn’t believe I was good enough to be given the chance. I have been hiding under the bushel, still, after so many years.

I didn’t realise that chance don’t just fall on my lap, but it’s something I got to discover myself. I simply cannot give up knowing that I can do better than this and just because I failed on something it doesn’t make me a failure. I’m just a girl with her own limitations but I know that there are some things I do that others can’t do.

They can jostle me with all the bizarre questions and math problems in the world and I still won’t be able to answer correctly to any of them but those things will not make me feel less of myself. It doesn’t matter that some people don’t know how special I am, but there will be many other people who will see to that and they will let me shine, whenever and wherever I am.

This piece is dedicated to Judeline Wadhwani, wherever you are – I finally get it now. it took me years to find out what it means but I hope it’s not too late. Thank you.