"MOOOOOM!" I screamed. I didn't care if my shrill voice was loud enough to activate a nuclear bomb. Something more important was happening right now than starting World War III. I ran out of my room looking for Mom.
"What? What's wrong?" Mom asked in a panic. She was wearing nothing but a towel. Her hair and body were still wet; she hadn't had time to dry off.
"I got a job!" I cried excitedly. I kissed Mom's still-wet, soap-scented face.
"Huh? Really?" Mom couldn't believe it. I nodded to convince her. "Thank God," she said, then performed a gratitude prostration. Mom didn't care that her wet towel had slipped open.
I was happy. Mom was even happier.
After being unemployed for a year, I'd finally gotten the job I'd been hoping for. Being a graduate of a prestigious public university hadn't made it any easier for me to find work. As it turned out, plenty of my classmates were still unemployed even now.
Maybe it was because we were too stubborn about our ideology that we had to work for a big company with a high salary, or maybe the competition really was getting fiercer. Just imagine it—my city has so many huge factories. And they aren't small, either. The growth of factories here has even driven out farmland.
This city used to be known as a rice basket, but now it had transformed into an industrial city. Strangely enough, native residents still had trouble finding jobs. Meanwhile, plenty of newcomers from other cities, provinces, islands, and even other countries were easily hired as employees here.
If so many of us native residents were still unemployed, why did those corporations keep accepting workers from outside the city?
I was lucky to get this job. A cigarette company was willing to hire me as part of its administrative staff. One of the biggest cigarette companies in the country.
I don't care about the argument over whether smoking is halal or haram. Let them debate the warning that cigarettes kill you. In reality, cigarettes are one of the major commodities bringing in a lot of revenue for the country.
Besides the amount of money deposited into the state's accounts, cigarette factories were still able to employ thousands of workers. So there was no reason to oppose the cigarette industry in this country. Now I could even shout, "Cigarettes kill you, but cigarettes fund my shopping."
Mom helped me prepare for my first day at work. I didn't need much. I already had a white shirt and a knee-length black skirt from last year. My shoes and bag were still perfectly usable too.
My parents weren't rich people with money left over to splurge freely. Dad was an employee at a paper factory who also worked as a lecturer at night. Mom didn't work outside the home; she took care of the household.
I was the second of three children. My older brother was married and lived out of town. My younger brother had just started high school. I was my parents' only daughter.
"Have you ironed your clothes yet?" Mom asked while continuing to cook in the kitchen. It was the same question she'd asked thousands of times over the past two days.
"Are they still not neat enough?" I started doubting my appearance. I was already wearing a white shirt with elbow-length sleeves and a pleated black skirt. I tied my long hair into a ponytail. My black pumps, decorated with bows, were ready to make my feet look prettier. I wore simple makeup. I didn't want my senior coworkers to think I was trying too hard to look cute.
Mom stopped cooking. She grabbed the dishcloth beside the stove to wipe her hands. Her round eyes looked me up and down. Mom smiled. "I feel like I'm looking in a mirror."
"Ugh, so I look old, then," I protested irritably. A lot of people did say I'd inherited Mom's face. Our eyes, noses, chins, and even our skin tones were the same. Dad had only passed down the shape of his lips to me.
"But you're pretty," Mom argued. Then she turned back to the stove and continued cooking.
It was already seven o'clock. I had to hurry and leave if I didn't want to be late. The roads were irritatingly congested in the morning.
I cut through the heavy traffic on my automatic scooter. The distance between our house and the factory was pretty far; without traffic, it took an hour. With traffic like this morning's, it could take up to an hour and a half to reach the factory.
As I entered the sprawling industrial area, I got a little confused about which way to go to the factory where I worked. I'd been inside this industrial area a few times just for fun. I would ride around looking at the factories that produced famous products or enjoy the relatively refreshing atmosphere around the artificial lake.
Unfortunately, because there were so many deserted corners, the industrial area was prone to crime. I often read news reports about daring muggers attacking employees around here.
Half an hour later, I was in a room set aside for training. It wasn't very big. A long table in the middle of the room was surrounded by ten chairs. A whiteboard covered in scribbles—maybe diagrams of machine parts—was mounted at the front, directly beneath a running AC unit.
There were only three people in the room, including me. We were all new employees here. The girl with long, curly hair sitting beside me was named Lia. She was sweet and friendly. The quiet girl sitting across from me was named Eci.
At exactly 8:30, a short-haired woman walked in. "Good morning. Let me introduce myself. I'm Dian. I'll be your trainer for the next week."
Dian explained all our rights and responsibilities as employees. Later, we'd be in the same department—the secondary department—but in different groups. There were five groups in the secondary department, rotating through three shifts. This factory operated 24 hours a day and almost never stopped.
On the last day of job training, Dian announced the group assignments for the three of us. I was assigned to Group C, Lia to Group A, and Eci to Group D. Of the five groups, only those three needed new administrative staff.
"Here's your work schedule. Lia, you'll start tomorrow on the third shift. Nila, you're on the second shift. Eci, you're off for now," Dian said as she handed out work calendars covering the entire year. These work calendars were printed on art paper like regular yearly calendars. They were only the size of a school notebook and folded in half. They covered January through December, complete with national holidays, annual leave, and internal company events.
Dian said goodbye after giving each of us two batik uniforms with tobacco motifs. We could wear the uniforms to work starting the next day.
I was starting to get impatient to begin my first day as an employee tomorrow. I gazed happily at the calendar in my hands. I was finally going to experience having a job. But I also had to adapt to working hours that required me to work at night.
It probably wouldn't be too much of a problem since I often stayed up until morning just to binge-watch movies or read books. I only needed to shift from lying around in bed to sitting in a chair with a mountain of assignments and deadlines chasing me. This wouldn't be hard.