Are backpacks that innocent?

Madonna Wulur's letter (Dec. 15, 1999) subscribing to the contents of Bruce Emond's (Dec.10, 1999) has set me thinking about the incident in a shop at Plaza Senayan (Dec.8, 1999).

Given the rigid and unsympathetic stance most security guards like to take -- apparently out of a mistaken perception of their duty -- people often wrongly see them as villains. I think myself that they often overact in simple matters. In banks they like to jump on customers who jump the queue. Have they nothing better to do?

But I can well imagine the strain of security guards in shopping malls where they have to supervise wily shoplifters and throngs of idle sight-seeing schoolchildren. May be the "innocent" 10-year-old boy involved in the "accidental" knocking of a figurine was one of those schoolchildren.

If you sometimes sit in a city bus you may have experienced that schoolchildren with backpacks often let their bag swing onto your face. They seem to be oblivious that their bag enters somebody else's private space. No apology is uttered in most accidents.

There is another side to the "public humiliation". The shop assistant in charge of a department within the shop is responsible for any loss or damage of any article in his department. The Rp 200,000 would have been charged to him. If he does not pay up, the management will deduct it from his salary. Even if it is done in four installments, what will remain of his meager salary?

S. HARMONO

Jakarta