WORKING IN JAPAN: PT. 14

Incest porn at the old folks’ home

Up until now I haven’t mentioned this, but, between my ten-year office job and my current employment as a train station cleaner, I briefly worked at an old folks’ home. I was in the office doing sales calls and admin, not on the frontline wiping arses.

The job lasted six weeks, give or take, and ended when I walked out in the middle of the day. The first red flag was the in-company communications. In Japan, there is a messaging app called LINE and they had me sign into the office computer on my personal account. I was also logged into the LINE app on my personal phone. Sometimes I would receive company files, including on my days off, that contained details about foreign nursing staff and their visa applications. This was personal info about these individuals and the fact that it got sent to my private phone on my private messaging account, instead of them issuing me a work phone and work account, was something I found unprofessional. But that’s not the reason I left.

The reason I left was the incest porn.

One day, I was doing a search online and a bunch of extremely lurid suggested search terms popped up. Things like ‘Mom s*cks son’s c*ck’, that kind of normal work-related stuff. The browser bookmarks had been similarly besmirched, listing one thing that included the name of a Japanese porn actress as well as various video titles explicitly pertaining to incestuous intercourse.

Perhaps my predecessor, the person who had the computer before me, had looked around one day at all the old folks being lovingly cared for, at the multitude of aged souls receiving the respectful care they deserved, and was moved to a state of reverie about the importance of family ties. But, also, he wanted to have a wank and the two topics got mixed up in his mind somehow.

Anyway, I took the matter to my division boss immediately. I wanted to be sure that he knew it wasn’t me who had sullied the silicon of their company PC. But he waved the issue away, even trying to tell me that some of the search terms/bookmarks could be the name of a popular game. I’m not convinced there’s a popular video game about cre*mpies, but that’s not the point. The point is that the boss was dismissive and that they hadn’t even properly checked and cleaned their equipment before handing it to me… the same equipment I had used to log into my personal messaging account. It just felt gross.

So, after lunch, I went to HR. I told them what had happened and that I wanted to quit. My boss’ boss came, along with another guy, and we sat in a cramped room as I told them about the nurses’ personal info coming to my phone, the niche wanking material that had been searched and bookmarked on their computer, and how I didn’t trust them anymore. They asked what I wanted to do, if I wanted to leave right away, and I said I would go home immediately. I went and fetched my stuff from the office, said goodbye to the staff that sat near me, and walked out in the middle of the day.

My division boss, at it happened, was at a meeting and probably didn’t find out I had quit until he got back to his seat. I felt a little bad because he had told me a few times that the place was a mess and he was kind of counting on me to get things into shape.

But I couldn’t stay there. I was commuting about ninety minutes a day, maybe even more. I was still in my trial period and, if we had reached a mutual agreement that I would stay and become a full employee, I was planning to move closer to cut down on travel time. Changing apartments costs a couple of grand and there was no way I was paying that much just to be closer to an employer I didn’t trust. And I wasn’t going to keep commuting either. So… that was that!

This was the final straw in crystallising my decision to do some kind of physical labour where I could be on my own. After the incest porn employer, I just couldn’t be bothered going straight to another office. I felt like if it wasn’t one thing it would be another: crazy coworkers, or bad training, or tons of overtime, or a horrible chair. Something, anyway. Maybe I’m paranoid.

And this isn’t me bashing Japan, by the way. I am sure there are some good offices to work at here, and that I would probably not fit into most corporate settings in the English-speaking world either.

This is me saying that I simply got tired. Tired of strip lights and Microsoft, printers and copiers and other human bodies sat two and a half feet away…

And, well, I’m writing this blog entry after another day cleaning stations, a day that couldn’t have been more peaceful.

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to check out my novel Meet Mark, a comic melodrama about a depressed and overweight incel who forms an unlikely friendship with the neighbour he’s harassing.

Read Part 15 here.

Catch up on Part 13 here.