Mindset: Why do Indonesian People not Love to Queue?
As we live in the digital era, the culture is rapidly changing the way of life. Everything is getting easy and fast. People nowadays can get what they want through their smartphones or laptops. Takes no long time for that. In Indonesia, it is something that simplifies their daily activities and changes their culture. But on the other hand, when we observe more deeply, there is one essential thing that has not changed in Indonesia’s people culture. That is Queuing up.
At its most elemental, a queue is the means by which access to service is regulated in time and space. Queues can be physical or virtual (Gandhi 2013:3). But here, i want to point out the physical queue which is always not done by Indonesian.
Queuing up is a not popular word or doctrine for Indonesia people especially in the big cities. It is denied almost in every situation such as when driving a car in a roadway, getting on the bus in the shelter , waiting at the cashier and so on. It is done by educated or non-educated people and low to high social class.
One evening, on my way going home from work, i decided to chose to take the bus which people in Jakarta call it Trans Jakarta or “Busway”. Before I get onto the bus, we should queue in the shelter. I saw people already make a long line. Then, I queued up following the line. In next five minutes, someone with a nice shirt and tie, a typical office worker, came from behind and cut in the line without saying anything.
This is an example of why Indonesian People do not love queue up. No matter what the occupation, education, and social class is, queue culture is not practiced and becomes a high value. Queue Culture affects a parameter value of nation.
We can take an example of Culture Queue from Japan people. They were taught to respect other people’s right. Cutting the line means robbing other people’s right for them. Besides, They have a high shame culture. It is a shame thing for them to cut the line. Regardless kids or adults, they will still be discipline when queuing up. No wonder Japan is the very developed country because of the little thing they do consistently since they were kids.
On the contrary, Indonesia people is not accustomed to respect others. They want to be respected but not do that to others first. Until it become a culture that destruct the orderliness in a society. The shame value is not a big thing in here. Culture Queue has been corrupted.
As i mentioned at first paragraph, we live in a super fast world because of the advancement of digital era. It will be more sophisticated in the future. If Indonesia people don’t change the mindset of queuing up, most people will get stressed and destructed in a public area easily. It has to be started from now to change the mindset and do consistently from kids to adult. Indonesia has many great resources that can build and developed the country. But, Indonesia cannot be a very developed country if they don’t do queue which is a little thing that cause a big impact for life.
Start from not to cut the line when waiting the bus or cashier, have the shame value, and imagine what the bad impact for our self or others if not queue orderly. Be the culture queue. Let others follow what we do. the impact is not only for our self but our country.
Reference
Gandhi, Ajay (2013) ‘Standing Still and Cutting in Line’, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal(Online), Free Standing Articles, URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/samaj/3519.
