WORKING IN JAPAN: PT. 13

Gripes about management; back to freedom; ‘rousai’ repayments

I am working alone again, at two stations: Crazy Lunatic Paranoid Maniac Station, which isn’t that crazy after all, and Injury Station, the quaint little stop where I headbutted a steel counter.

A couple of days ago I got back to the dispatch office after a day’s cleaning, tossed aside my dirty cloths, and headed for the changing room. Inside, an older guy (who was on a different shift) asked me about the cut on my head and we got into a long chat about the lack of anaesthesia when I got my skin stapled. He had changed into casual clothes so, distracted, I copied and got changed into mine.

When I got into the office/lounge room, where everyone was waiting to clock out, however, non-Skeletor manager raised his voice at me angrily.

‘That’s no good!’ he scolded me, ‘You can’t get changed yet! We’ll dock your pay!’

‘Do you want me to go change back into my uniform, come back in here, clock out, and then change into my casual clothes again?’ I asked, entirely serious.

A chuckle rose from one or two places in the room, indicating that somebody took the question as sarcasm. I’m pretty sure this made the manager himself wonder if I was taking the piss. Anyway, I went and put my uniform back on, then waited until 16:45, when we are permitted to clock out.

It bugs me when managers do this: get emotional, especially when it’s in front of everyone. I am not a child, and am capable of heeding polite instruction. A good number of the managers of this world will react with personal indignation if you neglect some point of procedure and I just don’t see the point, not if it’s a first-time mistake. Then there’s the hypocrisy…

At the time this guy got pissy, our wage slips were running late and I still hadn’t received a short-sleeved summer shirt to make me comfortable in the heat. The company is supposed to provide these things in a timely manner but, like most companies, when they make a mistake (neglect some point of procedure) it’s like ‘Bear with us, sorry’, and I am meant to calmly accept it.

Given that an employer and employee have essentially done a deal together – labour and time in exchange for money – I tend to view the relationship as equal, but I am sure they’d hold it against me if I shouted ‘That’s no good! You can’t do that!’ in front of the entire office because they haven’t got my payslip done. I don’t believe most companies, in the marrow of their institutional culture, see employees as equal partners, though, often viewing the people they hire as troublesome kids in need of scolding.

Anyway, in the stations themselves, as I work, I have been thinking about the training Flint gave me on our days together. He had a very particular regime of wiping parts of the escalator structure in a certain order, and I kind of took his instructions to be officially sanctioned as policy. I am beginning to suspect, however, that these methods were just his interpretation of the list of tasks they hand out, although they may in fact perfectly match the instructional video, which I have mostly forgotten.

At any rate, Rosco, the gentleman who was with me when I got hurt, was nowhere near as fastidious as Flint about sweeping the stairs, plus I have heard grumblings about other cleaners basically doing fuck all, so I am starting to suspect the other male staff of varying degrees of meticulousness (the women who clean the actual toilets appear to be consistently diligent).

Flint, as far as I can tell, was assigned to train me because he is honest and thorough, taking a personal interest in the state of the floors, stairs, and fittings.

‘Is there any part of the platform that’s bothering you… somewhere that might need a clean?’ I remembering him asking, one day when all the other jobs were done and some time was left over.

‘Not really,’ I said, ‘But I can go and have a look.’

Flint is a mop-happy man, always finding some patch tainted by pigeon shit to shine up. I, myself, am a moderate: I won’t rush to purge every gram of dung from the concrete, but I also wouldn’t like to see the entire station caked solid in the dirty droppings of local flying rats. The crows are my people, anyway. I admire their resourcefulness and hang with them a bit, now I’m back alone.

While I am rambling, another topic has been on my mind: Japan’s recorded announcement culture. Japanese people, having been raised in the relentless chatter and blare of this country, seem not to notice, and, now that I basically live in train stations, neither do I, but when I first arrived I was struck by the looped recordings at the elevators, a friendly but chiding woman’s voice telling you to be careful about falling down, over and over, again and again, until we all go mad.

You get these messages in Japan, on tape and in cartoon form, as leaflets and posters and signs all over the place. This thing over here is dangerous and so is that!! If you stand at the ATM there are signs about ‘furikomi sagi’ (remittance scams) that tell you not to send money based on a random shady phone request. Sometimes they pipe audio messages at you in the bank, just in case you’re in the process of wiring your life savings to a telephone trickster. Like I said, this fretful carpet bombing of warnings doesn’t bother me much these days, though I still sometimes notice Japan is a touch noisier than where I grew up…

I’m finding the dispatch office to be the worst part of my day. It’s the only place I am around the other workers as a large group and I look forward to getting away from it. It doesn’t help that most morning addresses these days include a mini-lecture on how to clean without bumping your head, inspired by me and accompanied by blown-up photos of the counter where I smashed myself. But it’s also my personality: I just don’t enjoy big company groups, offices, and formality. I dislike being around managers, the experience somehow making me feel like a toddler. You have to watch yourself, be ingratiating even, because you need them to keep on paying you.

On the subject of money, I went back to the hospital and was reimbursed the 26,000 yen for the ambulance trip. It was an industrial accident (‘rousai’ in Japanese), which means I get a full return of all my medical costs. Later in the week, I’ll visit the pharmacy and get back what I paid for antibiotics.

You have to give it to Japan! When I got injured, the ambulance came within minutes. The police were there just in case. The hospital was efficient and friendly (though some anaesthesia during the stapling process would not have been resented), and I’m fully covered by the government because I dinged myself at work. Reimbursement at the hospital was instant and in cash, as soon as I presented the necessary documents.

The longer I live in this country, and the more I discover its perks, the less I want to complain. Especially when I hear my friends talk about the state of the UK.

Read Part 14 here.

And here is Part 12.