WORKING IN JAPAN: PT. 32

An angry tourist/here comes the heat

On Tuesday an angry tourist cussed at, or in front of, me. I was outside Shoebox Station, trying to get back in with my empty trash cart. There isn’t a separate service entrance, and I can’t very well push a cart up the stairs, which means I have to line up with it for the same elevator used by the general public.

So, my turn came around and I got in. At the last moment a tourist appeared behind me with her luggage, wanting to get in too. My company has a rule that we don’t share the elevator with commuters while in custody of a cart so I politely refused.

‘Fuck it, then!’ hissed the woman, and ran off up the stairs.

I saw her again, moments later, charging through the crowded melee of the inside concourse, her words echoing inside my head. The tone and phrasing had suggested she wasn’t angry at me, but angry in general, and I began to speculate about what kind of vacation she was having.

It may have been a frustrating one. Apologies to Japan here, but not everything about this country is easy to understand, even if you live here. She may have been experiencing one of those… less good days in Japan, when you can’t get your vegan food and the signs in train stations seem to lead nowhere. Her cash or credit card may not have worked someplace, or perhaps she was in the process of retracing her steps after riding twenty stops on the wrong line.

I recognised that tone, indeed. I was that woman’s last straw.

My last straw, however, might well end up being the heat. The hot hand of summer is starting to press down, dampening the inside of my clothes. It isn’t roasting yet, but the sun is flashing its nasty streak, a blazing promise of pain. I still don’t have my fan vest, and I don’t know when I will.

After work, which this week involved around 18,000 steps in 27-28C (that’s around 82F for the Americans) heat, I sometimes feel queasy and weak. Drinking litres of water helps, at the time, only for a familiar mix of fatigue and overheated nausea to creep up in the early evening.

If the fan vest doesn’t come and work miracles, there are other options to deal with this: 1. I quit, 2. I ask to go down to four, perhaps three, days a week, which is sort of what I was hoping for when I interviewed in the first place, or 3. I slack off.

There is no way, in my opinion, that some of the older dudes are working by the manual. At over sixty, I very much doubt a person could wipe everything down and sweep everything up as meticulously and methodically as we have been instructed, in this heat, day after day after day. Some have said they skip things, and I’m on the way to joining them.

I very much doubt I’ll be found out. Unless a major incident – say a mugging, sword fight or brawl – occurs, no one watches the surveillance tapes. And even then, unless I was directly involved, there would be no reason for said footage to be inspected by the cleaning company. So, barring one of my bosses following me around all day and witnessing my half-assery, I don’t see how they’ll know I slacked off.

Of course, I could leave the litter on the platform but they still wouldn’t know shit. Anything they found the next day, I could claim it must have been dumped there after I left. Any dust they detected could have gathered overnight. Basically, so long as I empty the vending machine bins, there wouldn’t be much evidence to give me away, should they peer at my stations to check.

And, for the princely wage of 1,200-ish yen/hour, I don’t think they expect us to do things by the book. The cleaning company is short-staffed year-round, always hiring and desperate as ticks in the desert. They’ll take whatever they can get, it seems, and whatever reprimand I got would be light. If I’m confronted about my lack of efforts, I can always be honest and say I was hot. They seem pretty nice, and would probably adjust my schedule.

Speaking of niceness, it still surprises me how friendly and supportive my coworkers are. There’s an older guy I haven’t mentioned yet, who’ll I’ll call Mr. Bouncy. Mr. Bouncy is all backslaps and high-fives, a cheerful, positive and uplifting person who’s always thrilled to see me. Then there’s a man I’ll call Santa, not to his face but here in the blog, because he gives me presents. I’ve had a leather-looking key holder thing from Santa, a disheveled smiler with dirty collars, as well as a nice umbrella. He’s all high-fives, smiles and fist bumps too, a thing I never saw in my office years.

Even Rosco, the demanding trainer I whine about sometimes, was careful to dole out regular praise.

‘You’ve really made this part clean!’, ‘You’re excellent!’, ‘That’s a nice job!’, he’d say.

You get more praise from these guys in a week than you get in three months of corporate drudgery, I’ll tell you that!
It’s like they actually understand that morale is important, and there’s a feeling of camaraderie from being in the same boat. (I didn’t feel in the same boat as my erstwhile office mates because banter was sparse. And, incidentally, our bosses would tend to restructure the boat so that everyone was half underwater.)

It would upset me to quit as a cleaner because I like the people and enjoy the work. But I don’t know if I can take the heat.

Please like and comment if you enjoyed this post. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Part 31 of this series is here.

And Part 33 can be found here.