In this pandemic I am working in a factory from 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM every weekday. The job listing specifically asked for individuals without any work experience, and with just over a month left on my student pass, I knew this was my last opportunity to work a $7-an-hour job in Singapore and sort of just took it.
My job is what is known in factory lingo as ‘picking’, which is collecting electronic parts from an inventory based on a list, and later counting them and putting them back. My co-workers are middle-aged women, known endearingly in Singapore as ‘aunties’, who do not speak English. The aunties I work with dubbed me “小弟” (“little brother”) on day one. They said there would be no use in learning my name for I was only here for a month. I am wearing a government-issued mask and a smock all day. During lunches we sit one person to a table and we cannot talk without a mask on.
An electronic speaker doles out the hours with a royalty-free ringtone melody. On the first day I didn’t realise there was a clock in the room, and was pleasantly surprised when my co-workers announced “小弟，吃饭了！” (“Little brother, it’s lunchtime!”). On the second day I learned of its existence but told myself not to look at it, and I didn’t. On the third day I glanced at it with a sigh in between tasks. On the fourth day I gazed at it longingly, my stomach and my soul yearning for 12:30 PM.
Working class frustration manifests itself in the smallest things. In having to hold in your shit until break-time because you don’t want your supervisor to think you’re slacking, or worse, sick. In feeling your brain is going to mush because you’re just doing the same physical shit over and over again and the only math you’re doing is counting and adding and subtracting. I feel the urge to write, to create something out of this because I’m scared that if not I will resign myself to the hidden truth that what I’m doing is truly, truly meaningless.
Frederick Von Hayek’s criticism of central planning (and simultaneous advocacy for the free market) is that a single group of individuals making decisions on all avenues of the economy affords only a shallow understanding of each avenue, and therefore less informed economic decisions. He argues that the free market model on the other hand, allows an individual to become well-versed and learned in a specific, chosen avenue, which in turn allows for more informed decisions within those avenue, and therefore a fuller, more nuanced economy. What he doesn’t understand is that perhaps this isn’t always so ‘free’ or ‘chosen’, and on the contrary, it can be an entrapping thing. Being well-versed and learned in a specific venture may be an enchanting thing to some, but not when that venture is pulling electronic parts from a shelf in accordance to a list and then putting them back again.
Near the end of a workday, I heard the aunties I work with discuss where they would be when Singapore’s circuit breaker ended. Some of them would be going back to Malaysia — they had been living in dormitories here with the Johor-Singapore causeway having been shut down, but typically they live in Johor Baru. That in itself is stunning to me. To have to traverse the border every morning to arrive at work at 7:30 AM would mean waking up at around 4:00 AM everyday, or earlier. One of the aunties talked about a co-worker that hasn’t been to work since the causeway was closed, for they found themselves on the other side of the border when it happened. She jokingly remarked that that co-worker was rich, as they could send their child to a university in Kuala Lumpur.
I don’t speak unless I am spoken to. This is partially because I’m wary of meeting the limits of my Mandarin vocabulary and falling off that cliff, but it’s also because I’m afraid that my co-workers will learn more about me and realise that I’m actually far, far more well-off than them. My heart already skipped a beat when I told them I was Chinese-Indonesian and one of them joked that Chinese-Indonesians were rich. I’m afraid that they’ll realise that I’m doing this job not to feed my family like they are, but because I like structure and that I find a certain romanticism in the idea of waking up at 5:30 every morning. I’m not joking.
I am only here for a month. I will be going to university in the fall and far, far away from this job after that. I overheard a co-worker around my age asking a superior about the possibility of promotion. The superior detailed a two-to-three year process of learning and taking initiative and standing out. He’s not in this for just a month. He’s in this for the long-run.
The three aunties I work closest with are from Taiwan, Malaysia and China respectively. They are united by the Mandarin tongue, their love for green bean, red bean and even yellow bean soups (“绿豆，红豆。。。黄豆也有！”), and of course, their jobs. Stifled by my inadequacy in Mandarin, it took time to master the art of ‘picking’, and more than once my blunders earned me a sarcastic “你好厉害！” (“so powerful!”) from the aunties. But eventually I adapted, learned a bit more conversational Mandarin, and those words were said not in mockery but in praise. One day one of the aunties asked me for my Chinese name and I told them, “王盛洁” (wang sheng jie). I butchered the pronunciation expectedly, and they quizzically repeated every name that wasn’t mine. I took out a piece of paper and offered to write it out, to which one of them said, “很好看啊！” (“it looks nice!”). They still call me “小弟”, but I don’t mind it. It’s become rather endearing actually.
The ear-loops of my mask leave red lines on the back of my ears. I’ve learnt the optimum timing for soft boil eggs from soft-boiling eggs every morning (five minutes, after turning off the heat when the water starts boiling). I’m trying to complete an online course on Flight Mechanics, learn Beethoven’s “Sonata Pathetiqué” on the piano, and workout regularly so that my job doesn’t ever define me, even if just for a month. But on many days I come home far too drained to do any of that, and my mind gravitates linearly to what I need to defrost to cook tomorrow’s packed lunch.
Perhaps I wanted to work just so that I would have a bus to read on every morning, or a sunrise to bask in. So much so that I was willing to put myself on the frontline. But I already know that’s not the only thing I’ll be taking away from this long, long month.
