Technician

My father left his job at an electronics factory in Cakung when he was forty-eight. He accepted an early retirement package the company offered as part of an efficiency drive and received a lump sum, which he used to pay off the remaining mortgage on our house, buy repair tools, and cover daily expenses, which he kept as low as possible. His final position was technician—the same job he had held since the day he started working there.

For the next twenty years, he ran a repair business from home, fixing washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners, electric fans, blenders, mixers, irons, gas stoves, and water dispensers.

There was no advertising. No banners, no flyers. Business came entirely through word of mouth. He relied heavily on our landline phone for repair calls. Ninety-nine percent of those calls came from his customers—ninety-nine percent of whom were our neighbors and relatives. The rest came from people he did not know, referred by that same circle.

If a skilled surgeon is defined by his scalpel, my father was defined by his test pen. His work was clean and precise. There was never any doubt about that. He was meticulous and persistent. Nothing was beyond repair, even if it took days.

The narrow front terrace of our house served as his workshop. It was also where he stored his tools, appliances he was repairing, and items he bought from junk collectors to fix and resell. Over time, the pile grew larger, and our living room had to serve as temporary storage. My mother often complained about it. So did I. But what could we do? It was where our money came from.

To give customers an idea of what they would have to pay, my father always explained which parts were damaged and what needed to be repaired or replaced. He also told them the price of the spare parts and how much it had cost him to buy them—he never marked anything up.

But he never told customers how much he charged for labor. He felt too embarrassed, or worried that the price might seem too high. He left it up to them. This often left customers confused, though he accepted whatever they gave him. If they insisted, he would name a reasonable figure—twenty or thirty thousand rupiah for a fan, for example. Sometimes he repaired simple things for neighbors free of charge.

Even so, there were strange moments. Once, he was paid two hundred thousand rupiah simply for pressing buttons on a digital washing machine. It looked like easy money, but it wasn’t. Before that, he had spent quite a long time figuring out the problem.

One day, one of our neighbors, who lived a block away, asked my father to repair his washing machine. The problem was complicated, so he brought the machine to our house. My father sometimes worked late into the night and made several trips by angkot to buy spare parts. He covered all of those costs himself upfront.

The job took about a week. In addition to repairing the machine, my father also replaced its corroded base. He made the replacement from a thick sheet of zinc, which he cut with considerable effort.

When he finished, he returned the machine to the customer and tested it. It worked perfectly. The neighbor was pleased.

Then, as usual, my father explained everything he had repaired, listed the cost of the spare parts while showing the receipts, and left the matter of his service fee to the customer.

He thought there was no way a neighbor he knew well would pay him unfairly. Besides, the man was relatively well-off—a civil servant working for the local government.

The amount he received seemed decent at first. But it was only enough to cover the cost of the spare parts and transportation. His profit was very small—if ten thousand rupiah could even be called profit.

That evening, he shook his head as he told us what had happened. He looked exhausted and had not yet bathed.

Before that day, my father had never been disappointed by a customer over payment. But what could he do except accept it? He was not going to ask for more. More than anything, he did not want the matter to escalate and cost him future customers.

“Well,” my father said, walking toward the bathroom, “consider it charity.”✦