It's not their fault
A reminder to slow down and observe the bigger picture.
Three recommendations will be at the very last of this essay. Enjoy!
“It’s not their fault though,” I’m reminded by my boyfriend after a frustrating conversation with the service desk at Labi, an electronic store in Shibuya that has mostly anything you need electronics related but unfortunately has way too many staff on each floor.
I’ve been recently exposed to a lot of stuff that I usually am not privy to. My boyfriend and I started to rent an office space (yay! more details will come soon on this), and when renting apartments in Japan or I guess anywhere in the world, you have to deal with people who you usually don’t have to; realtors, gas companies, electricity companies, wifi installation companies etc. Let’s say that the only way to describe the first couple of days of getting the space was comical frustration. But I’m also realizing that while the process of renting houses and signing stuff in Japan is so so frustrating, none of it is the individual's fault.
Our realtor greeted us in front of the potential apartment building that we were seeking out. Lo and behold, we said yes to that first one we saw. He was nice, normal, middle aged and looked extremely tired. He took us up to the 3rd floor and opened the room for us. It’s not a big space, and there really isn’t a lot to ‘show.’ But yet, he just stood in the corner and observed us or his phone. He never explained to us about the owner of the building, where things were in the apartment, the selling points of the place, the beautiful sunlight that hits during the afternoon, none of that stuff. He was just there.
We asked him if there is a bicycle parking lot. He didn’t know so we looked over the window together and was grunting and shaking our heads left and right thinking together. He called his colleague and confirmed that there is in fact one. It just felt like he really didn’t know much about the space, not even the rent really without looking at the hardcopy together that was handed over to me by him. He didn’t necessarily sell the place to us at all, all he said to us during the viewing was, “It’s a really old apartment but you get good sunlight.”
There were multiple opportunities for me to be dismissive of our realtor. Like his email etiquette or his way of speaking to me was not up to par to my liking. But my conscience was trying to reason with myself; these people earn almost nothing in earnings. Their work environment is far from a ‘healthy’ place. There is no other alternative for them to do something else. Or is there? Maybe there is, maybe they could branch into their own thing and venture out as a freelance realtor, but they would need capital for that. How likely is it that they could break out of the system? It’s an industry that is notoriously known to pay their workers minimum salary and the system rewards a certain kind of people; young fresh graduates from higher educational backgrounds.
When we went to the realtor’s office to sign the papers, it felt like it was a comedy sketch from the 80s. They weren’t smoking indoors but they might as well. There were only middle aged men at sight, almost shouting at their phones to whomever they were speaking to. Their social skills were very unfamiliar to me; loud voices on the phone, the word choices and demeanor, interruptions here and there. It was a corner of Japan I usually don’t interact with but nevertheless, they were very kind.
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I was frustrated at the service desk at Labi after our credit cards didn’t work for payment and we had to sit through a 40 minute long explanation and checklists of things to receive this wifi packet, which didn’t end up happening anyways. Watching an ipad explanation about the product felt like they really don’t care about customer service but they just want the numbers in and it upset me in a visceral sense. I have no tolerance for paying things when I think it wasn’t worth it. I need the wifi desperately, but at this point, I just didn’t want to support this particular company by signing up with them. The fella who was helping us out apologized that he couldn’t be of help to us and if there’s anything else he can help with, he told us to let him know.
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A woman from the wifi company called me a couple days after we received and installed the wifi to check if everything was working. I told her that everything is fine and then she continued to read from off of her script of a current water server campaign that she wanted to sell me; the catch was that I would be able to reclaim a 15,000 yen rebate. I told her I’m a little busy, and she responded with rigor, “Oh I see. May I ask when will be a good time to call you back?” I knew that she would be persistent because I missed three phone calls already from her that she will in fact call back. I told her “ok, you can just tell me now.” After she explained how beneficial it will be to have a water server at my company and to the environment for about 10 minutes straight, she asks “So, does any of this interest you Koiwai-sama?” It felt like I was talking to an AI but all I could respond was, “I’m ok.” She then said the same thing as the fella at Labi did. “I’m sorry that I have inconvenienced your time and I wasn’t able to be of help for you.” Our call finally ended after some more pleasantries.
In hindsight, these interactions are now just funny to me, frustrated at the time of course, but funny. It’s hard to remove yourself from the irritation and the annoyance that is a product of ‘formality dialogue.’ I hate stuff that is “for the sake of…” things in life. Companies are a prime example of this and that’s why I probably had my fill with corporate culture as well. It doesn’t make any customer experience better by doing things for formality reasons, especially when the customer is already frustrated by the process. But then again, these employees have to say these things that were given to them as a script or they had to learn it as part of their training to ‘deal’ with a situation. They didn’t make the rules, and I should know better.
As someone who grew up hafu in Japan, code switching has always been a huge part of my identity and how I present myself to the world. I have this theory that people who are hafu or mixed race who grew up doing code switching naturally are also the ones who have an extreme sense of adaptability. When adapting to the world as well as us, you also learn to read, feel and understand strangers sensitively. When I’m in a situation like these, or I see my realtor, I think of the bigger picture: it’s not hard to put myself in their shoes. I will be the first to admit that a lot of it was annoying. Why am I paying 99,000 yen for the realtor company when he literally has almost done nothing besides opening the door for us that morning on the viewing? But again, that’s not his fault. It’s how the rules are written. Also, it’s also not like the 99,000 yen commission fee is going straight to our realtor's wallet ー as much as this feels counterintuitive, I would much rather want the money go to him directly than his boss earning more and our realtor not getting paid fairly. I just felt the urge to write about this experience because we can be very quick to judge these days, including myself. It’s easy to get irritated by people when things are not going our way. Our lives are basically designed to be as convenient as possible, it’s an inconvenience when someone or something is standing in our way. But I feel the need to halt and go slow sometimes. It’s rarely their fault.
She designs the book cover you judge I never heard of Na Kim, now I’m obsessed. All of her books covers that she has done are the ones i absolutely love! Loved this piece associated as well.
I cooked up some of this slow cooked coconut beef curry from
and YUM! I actually never thought to put sweet potatoes in my stew but this is now going to be a routine for me.This is a selfless plug! but my beloved friends and I, are doing a mini radio show called Movement. Last week, we did an episode on corporate culture and I think if any of you have worked in corporate before, this will be a relevant listen!