Combining Efficiency and Friendliness

Ask foreigners who have visited Indonesia or other Southeast Asian country, what is one good thing about Southeast Asian countries? Most of them will answer in unison: ’the people are friendly’. I spent most of my live in Indonesia, and probably as most of Indonesian we take it for granted that our people are friendly, much friendlier than our neighbour in the north. We’re used to take a ‘thank you’ accompanied by warm smile as a complimentary part of service even in a humble Warteg. Only on the eyes of foreigners I notice that it’s actually a luxury in other countries. I’ve heard some pretty bad recount of rude service of waiter or waitress in China. A friend from China once told me a story of rude service by MRT ticket-seller. Here goes the story:

A young woman wanted to take the MRT to a place, let’s just call it ‘A’, so she went to the ticket-selling booth and asked for the price. The man in duty answered rudely: “Can’t you see the price on the board?”. After taking a glimpse of the price in the board, the woman decided to cancel the trip and walk slowly leaving the ticket booth. Seeing the woman leaving without buying any ticket, the man shouted: “Why are you asking for price if you’re not buying!”.  

According to this friend, it’s a real story and a pretty common situation in China. It’s something I can’t imagine I would encounter in Indonesia, even if I do it would be on very rare occasions. But if we look deeply this kind of rude service doesn’t come without any reason. China is a huge country with humongous size of population, competition become stricter day by day as the country turn into a more capitalist country. The daily grin of people in China is highly competitive, fast-paced, and full of pressure. No wonder, even those working in the service industry act rudely toward other people. But, this kind of environment gave birth to one great feature that we rarely find in friendlier Southeast Asian countries, efficiency! Chinese people or in the larger scope Northeast Asian (including Japanese, and Korean) are undoubtedly very efficient. They value time way better than Southeast Asian people and they don’t like to discount the working days like we do in Indonesia. If there’s a work day in between holiday and weekend we usually just naturally assume that the day is holiday making it a long holliday! But, it’s not the case in China. Let’s say Tuesday is a national holiday and you want a long holiday, than you have to work on Saturday as a compensation for not working on Monday. It sucks but we have to admit it’s way more efficient than our habit as Indonesian in prolonging holidays. 

Southeast Asian people tend to be lazier, we have worse concept of time and we don’t really value efficiency. BUT, we are FRIENDLY!

Northeast Asian people tend to be rude, they rush everything, they can’t enjoy life in slower pace. BUT, they are EFFICIENT!

Both have their own unique strength that could compliment each other perfectly. It takes time but when the two different cultures meet, a clash is not necessarily the inevitable result. Southeast Asian people can learn a lot from Northeastern value of efficiency. Imagine Jakarta’s Busway coming on-time and a 5-minute late is not tolerable as Japan’s Shinkansen service, but without forgetting the warm smile and a thank you from the attendant. While Northeast Asian people can learn to smile and be more friendly to others. Efficiency + Friendliness would be a perfect duo in elevating both cultures and the service industry in particular!