Day 6: “Gudang (Garam)”

Today’s morning started particularly early, at 6am. Taking a pretty long drive for about an hour into an area I understand to be the outskirts of Semarang – we were greeted by an admittedly surprising sight. At 7am in the morning, the Micromart was closed! It was… puzzling to say the least with the cashier nowhere to be found. Well, at least I was puzzled – Cik Farid was probably furious beyond belief. 

After waiting for about 15min, we decided to make our way back to the office.

This was the first time I'm actually witnessing a challenge that can actually be quite damaging to the brand name. Back in SG, if a place says it opens at a certain time - you are more or less certain that it will be open at that time. It is predictability. It is trust between the consumer and the brand. Usually the only times you face this problem would be at hawker centre when your favourite Soto stall might decide to sleep in or not open at all. Cik Farid explained that even in Indonesia you can be presented with such operational challenges.

So I decided to observe how he tried to overcome this problem. Sitting most uncomfortably in that meeting he gave his staff a piece of his mind on the issue. Whether they understood or not is still unknown - I suppose it links back to follow up and follow through.

Then I was posted to the warehouse to observe operations. Oh that was quite fun there are little thrills in being in a room that is full of sugary drinks. The warehouse and the tokos form the front end of Micromart's operations and it was apparent to see that even with 30 tokos in operation things have to run like clockwork. This amazed me with the team that was in the warehouse. During their inventory checks I saw everybody helping out where they can - and they finished the job rather quickly. This was followed by several packing and delivery jobs for the various orders of the toko. The warehouse group idled and laughed together when there was nothing to do, but when it was time to work they did it with clear teamwork and efficiency. Although with the same level of noise. They were a lively crew - it was a different lively from the office staff - but you could tell that they cooperated with each other. Certainly there are times when they could have done things more effectively (human chain is quite an outdated method with the invention of wheels) but you would not hear a single complaint despite the weather. It was quite an interesting experience seeing them work together - and some of them also used to be kasirs.

Back at the office Mr Farid asked on the impressions of front end which I have just described above - but then I asked whether he can retain the same level of efficiency when his company scales up. 30 tokos is one thing, how about 100? or 200? He then explained that work culture matters. It is the team that can get their respective duties done that determines the success of operations. Most importantly, give credit where credit is due. By Ismail Zainal