I buy a cream puff at the cake shop every Sundays. A young patissier, who looks honest and obedient and would gave her fidelity to her boss, says, “How long dose it take to get home?” I say, “Five minutes, I’ll eat right away.” Next Sunday I buy a cream puff. She says, “How long does it take to get home?” I say, “Five minutes, I’ll eat right away.” Next Sunday I buy a cream puff. She says, “How long does it take to get home?” I say, “Not far, a few minutes,” next time, “I live near by,” then, “I eat immediately.”
I buy Alcoholic beverages at the supermarket. A middle-aded woman produced the laminated sheet: left, “I am over 20 years,” right, “I am underage.” “Please point with your finger,” she said in a lively voice. I deliberately made me languid, putting my right index finger on left side. “Thank you very much,”she smiled. By behaving cheerfully, she seemed to think the customers would be comfortable. She has a serious misunderstanding and would be too old to understand it. She was an epitome of devoting her task “with no thinking.”
The patissier’s same question seemed to go on endlessly and every time I buy alcohol, I was told to point with my finger(in one country, I presented my ID when buying alcohol, but next time no showing simply because they remembered me). They irked me to reply―why can not they remember my face? Of corse, she knew, but had a reason she must ask me, because her boss said to do that. She just does exactly what her boss tells her to do.
One Sunday, as usual, the young patissier said, “How long does it take to get home?” I was about to blurt out: “You can tell by looking at me.” or “You don’t need to ask me.” or “Are you stupid?” But, I could have been too kind to say anything, for she was likely to adhere to what I said altogether―she would try to keep silence, even if I showed up looking different as usual.
In any case, if I had said that, I would might had sunk this lady’s heart to the bottom of an abyssal sea―the customers is always right in Japan, and while she can not defy her superior, so docile to authority, that her brain “stopped thinking”―changing her words, “You live just around corner, don’t you?” or “You need an ice pack?” or else no asking. Too easy.
Most of the clerks at the supermarket, except for that cheerful middle-aged woman who can not read customer’s feeling, seemed to be fed up the store’s rules. In a common room, they would say: “Why must we ask that every time?” “Can’t we just do this once?” “I’m sure you will be sick of being asked.” ―it is only natural that they think so.
Eventually their boss would say, “If you inadvertently sold alcohol to a minor, how will you take responsibility for it?” Now that he said that, no one said anything more. Zero risk or minimizing it is a top priority for Japanese who be afraid of being held accountable. Therefore, they have no choice to obey him and demanding zero risk make them blind to other important things.
One evening, as I stood by the register to pay, I overheard the small talk of the family in front of me. “That young man never show us the sheet,” an elderly woman went on. “From now on, I will stand in the line where he is.”
He did not present it to me, and so next time I saw him, I was going to casually observe him. He was attentive to customers. Once he knew I had my own bag, he never asked if I needed plastics bags; naturally the others always did that, because their boss told to.
When there were no customers lined up at his register, light on his feet, he led me in the other line to him—I wanted to say this was not where he was.
