WORKING IN JAPAN: PT. 33

Short-staffed/fear of a nasty summer

Even though my employer, the cleaning company, has been hiring the whole two-plus months I’ve been there, as far as I’m aware they haven’t taken anyone new on since I came. I only see the same faces.

I question if the work I do is worth 1,200 yen per hour. At the time of writing, that’s about $8.30. But people are doing it. There may not be enough of them for the company’s liking, but some people do it.

So, I ask myself why the hourly rate has caused me to consider quitting. Maybe I’m not broke enough. Or it could be something in my upbringing or social class. Perhaps it’s my experience of having earned more in the past that has made me start to balk.

The answer, however, could be the heat…

As we slide on our sweaty arses towards a Japanese summer, the temperature makes the money feel worse. $8.30 isn’t a lot, not for walking 15,000+ steps a day (and cleaning) in this baking furnace. I’m aware I may sound like a snob, but it’s not. And I’m told others before me have quit to get a couple of bucks an hour more elsewhere.

Given that our company is (unless I misheard) a wholly owned subsidiary of a major railway company, I believe they could afford to pay us more. It strains credulity that they wouldn’t be able to go to 1,400/hour at least. In the end, they may have no choice, because the population of Japan is falling.

I hear stories of companies being short-staffed for all kinds of manual labour. It’s possible an influx of foreign workers will take up the slack but, for now, Japan doesn’t have enough hands on deck for construction, logistics or manufacturing, among other industries. If you live in Japan, go on the Town Work app and look… You’ll see dozens and dozens of this type of job in your area, and they keep popping up every day.

I get constant notifications from Town Work for cleaning jobs, security shifts, hotel bed makers, etc. If you click on ‘apply’, most will get back to you that same day. Many of the listings state, specifically, that they don’t care about your resume, experience, or education. They want able bodies on site and on time. They want flesh.

Given the heat, then, and the lowness of my hourly remuneration, as well as the existence of a multitude of alternative manual labour options, I am thinking about applying elsewhere. If I could get something that’s 1,400/hour, in an air-conditioned building, say an office or school, that could be a better deal. I’m guessing that’s what some of the people who quit my company before me did, in which case there may be a solid argument that my job isn’t worth bearing the heat for eight bucks…

By the way, I sometimes imagine parts of this blog finding their way to Twitter. Sooner or later, if enough people subscribe, there’s a high chance of some paragraphs being screenshot and posted there – ones of me moaning about the money or it being hot outside.

‘Middle-class twat discovers working is hard’ they’ll say, acerbically, in the detached yet withering, know-it-all idiom of that website’s uber-casual commentariat. ‘Cringe,’ will say some of the replies, or ‘He really thinks he’s doing something.’

Twitter, it seems, is the sole opportunity for certain people to feel smart, and they seize it with both hands. And it’s an absolute cesspool since Musk took over. I was on the train a while back, scrolling my feed, and happened upon a post that intrigued me. I thought I would browse the replies.

One of the first of these contained hardcore pornography completely unrelated to the content of the tweet I had clicked. We’re talking video footage of genitalia interacting, without warning, there on my phone screen. I don’t know if anyone sitting next to me glanced over, but they could easily have though that’s what I had searched for.

Then there’s the OnlyFans girls on every post, the ads, the replies with unrelated quirky videos, and the ubiquitous appeals to Grok to explain things.

@Grok iS tHiS TruE @Grok WhO iS iN tHe ViDeO @Grok mAkE a PhOto oF TrUmP As JuLiUs CaEsaR

Just a swamp of boobs and AI videos, but I digress…

I checked the weather report for next week and they say the temperature could rise to 34C (that’s over 90 degrees Fahrenheit). I don’t know how the long-time cleaners have learned to manage a day like that with getting heatstroke, unless they’re skipping some of the work.

And, what with climate change, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see 40C this year on multiple occasions. That’s hotter than the human body, and, fan vest or no, I doubt many people could thoroughly clean a train station in that! It takes about 7kms of walking, plus going up stairs, to wipe down, sweep and remove the trash from two stations, quite the undertaking in that sort of feverish warmth.

It makes me wonder about the cold too. What is this job like in winter, when the air is biting down and freezing rain whips under the platform roof? The more I think about the sheer physical exertion required by this occupation, in combination with such a variety of unwelcoming weather conditions, the more I respect the people who do it.

I’ve always taken for granted that public spaces are neat in Japan, and now I understand, in a concrete and visceral way, that there are some very tired people picking up after us all.

You can read the previous part of this blog here.

And the next part is here.

For some good laughs, read Meet Mark, my comedy novel about a grimy young man who pesters his neighbour.