Cherry blossoms, strawberries and a fresh crop of anime: Spring is here, and it’s delightful. I’m busy soaking it all in, so we’re going to go light and sweet today, like the demiglace on a hamburg steak.
She did it best.
It’s an art, it’s an art
To be a fine waitress
To see that you pleasure each guest
- Working: The Musical, “It’s an Art”
So. On one hand, I appreciate that Working!! shows us a human side behind the monoculture of Japanese service jobs. It can be pretty hard to find.
The service industry in this country is amazing, a phenomenon that must be seen to be believed. Or rather, it must be heard: All customer service positions, from the most refined and highly trained sommelier to a convenience store wage slave, use a type of Japanese called keigo, which is so exceptionally formal that it almost sounds like a different language. Secondly, people in service speak with high-pitched voices, and are often trained to have a specific intonation that is unlike natural spoken Japanese.
This kind of training is especially possible with heavy reliance on set phrases, like “irrashaimase” and “go-yukkuri douzo.” Really, when I think about it, maid cafés just add a “master” here and there to what they already would say as waitresses anyway. It’s that old Japanese chestnut about honne and tatemae, the difference between your true feelings and what you show the world because it’s socially proper.
The overall effect, I feel, is the masking of one’s true personality when at work, much more so in Japan than in other countries. When you’re waiting tables, you’re not yourself; you’re a waitress at a family restaurant, and you will act accordingly. While it’s nice as a customer to always have polite help, I can only imagine that as a worker it gets tiresome. So Working!!, to its credit, shows us one version of what it’s like when the employees are on their much-needed cigarette break.
But on the other hand, this is possibly the most unprofessional behavior I’ve ever seen. I’m a bit horrified. Is this theater of the absurd, or poor taste?
April 3, 2010 at 3:03 am
“the difference between your true feelings and what you show the world because it’s socially proper.”
Wow! That makes a lot of sense. Now that you explain that, it really helps to explain the scenes where the manager interacts with customers a lot. I already got it instinctively, because I worked in restaurants in America, but I didn’t have a great phrase to sum it up.
There were two examples: A) Lady asks that heater is turned down, Manager responds, “lose some weight.” B) Customer is hassling cute waitress, Manager kicks him to the floor. What wonderful examples of expressing true feelings instead of doing what is socially appropriate.
It was said elsewhere (http://hashihime.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-absurdly-hilarious.html), but the humor in this show tends to the absurd. In these cases the Manager (of all people) is doing exactly the opposite of what someone in a service role should be doing (and to cap it off, in situation A the lowly part-timer high-school students are trying to cover for HER).
Personally I thought the show was fairly entertaining. Not as deep and meaningful as Haibane Renmei, for example, but given my history with restaurant work, something that I imagine I will find amusing to watch.
April 5, 2010 at 8:35 am
I had the feeling that people who’ve actually had to do this sort of work for a living would enjoy this show. Glad to know I was on the money.
Thanks for reading.
April 3, 2010 at 4:51 am
The level of human stupidity truly is endless, and people who work in the service industry have to deal with it on a daily basis. Honestly, if you work in a job like this for any length of time, you’ll usually wonder how you don’t kill anyone. It’s not like you lack an arsenal of effective weaponry. So in that respect, Working!! is not in poor taste, rather it’s a vent of sorts. These are the kinds of antics that we wish we could get away with, but know we never could.
April 5, 2010 at 8:38 am
That site is painful to read.
I had a roommate who worked the register at a sandwich restaurant, which is possibly one of the worst service jobs, because customers are so darn fickle about what goes in their sandwich in a way they would never fuss over, say, a cheeseburger. Seeing him come home every night with the soul sucked out of him, I grew to empathize with people who work service jobs.
Evidently not that much, though. Calling that fat lady fat was uncalled for.
April 3, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Working!! is theatre of the absurd. Exactly that. No poor taste involved.
Personally, I think the politeness of Japanese service is delightful at first, but gets cloying even to the served, let along the servers, after a while. For a North American, that ingrained falseness is pretty hard to take. Not that there isn’t plenty of falseness here, too, lol.
I guess that not having to actually relate to all your customers, but having formal ways of getting things done, may keep you sane.
April 3, 2010 at 7:50 pm
I agree that Working!! is probably exaggerating that “cigarette break” more than anything. My first impression of the show was that it was going to be wacky and unrepresentative of the service industry that is its setting. However, that’s only a guess.
April 5, 2010 at 8:40 am
I caught your article. Nicely done.
It can get a bit annoying, especially those put-on voices. But the set phrases are a godsend to someone like me, who just nods and says “hai” to everything to avoid revealing my utter incompetence.
Thanks for reading.
April 3, 2010 at 7:57 pm
So it’s an anime version of the movie Waiting, then? Cool, cuz that movie rocked. My mom has worked in just about every service job you can think of and she’s always said how it’s the worst job in the world. she actually tells me that any time she has too much stress in her life, she starts having dreams about being a waitress, and that’s when she realizes she needs to cool down.
The girl in that last image looks an awful lot like Nobue Itoh did when she worked at a maid cafe in Ichigo Mashimaro… <3333
April 3, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Androphobia, carrying around a sword, being sensitive about your age, being gosh darn cute, and all that applies is really just Working’s version of the penis showing game.
Now it is up to the protagonist to discover his own penis showing game.
April 5, 2010 at 8:44 am
I looked up this penis showing game.
“The Brain” is probably a riff from the Tony Award-winning show Puppetry of the Penis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppetry_of_the_Penis), but the rest is quite… unique.
April 5, 2010 at 8:42 am
The only part of “Waiting” I ever saw was the special order. Bleargh.
You know, I had that same thought about Nobue. You might actually like this show for the manager. She’s eh, how you say, that type you like. You know?
April 3, 2010 at 8:28 pm
Interesting information about how service Japanese industry workers speak “another language.” Being super formal, and separating true feelings from what you show the world. It’s something that’s a bit different than in America, where (to me at least) that separation is less distinct. I’ve encountered customer service where the employee was abrasive, and service where the employee was accommodating. It makes me sometimes wonder, is that abrasive employee very nice in real life? It seems unlikely to me.
The reference to “irrashaimase” reminded me of an article written at Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/5484581/japan-its-not-funny-anymore?skyline=true&s=i] about things one guy hates about living in Japan. It’s a long, but decent read. Basically the author was criticizing how he encountered it to an absurd degree in stores.
Quoting a part:
“The [employee] was calling [irrashaimase] out repeatedly as he folded jeans a few aisles away from the jeans that interested me. If I were to blindly and deafly heed the command semantically buried in his polite perfunctory greeting, it would require me to abandon my act of genuinely curious commercialism.”
April 5, 2010 at 8:49 am
Ah, that article… A friend linked it to me a few weeks ago, actually.
He’s not wrong at all. Those “irrashaimases” can get really irritating when you’re just trying to find some groceries. But I have no doubt that we western folk do something equally as annoying that we just don’t notice. Such as being surly and quiet when we damn well feel like it, perhaps.
Thanks for reading.
April 4, 2010 at 6:57 am
I just checked out the first episode of Working!!. It’s amusing seeing the “honne” of Japanese employees become the main entertainment point of an anime. I actually gave a few chuckles while watching the episode, so hopefully the series will keep getting better.
April 5, 2010 at 8:50 am
Mmm… I might queue up the second episode, but I’m a bit iffy. There are so many new shows to watch, after all. But if it becomes utter brilliance in short order, then please, let me know.
April 4, 2010 at 10:35 pm
Hoho, are you finally going to bash a series? You know we’d love to see it.
Your line on maid cafes reminds me of a contemporary Cantonese documentary I’d seen before, about, among some other things, the maid cafe culture (in Hong Kong). Interviewed ‘maids’ talked about how they transformed into different people when they donned the uniforms, adhered to their responsibilities and played a kind, understanding role expected of them – almost like geisha. For a while it was talking about the psychology of it all; pretty fun stuff.
Now that I recall though, it made a sizable fault, one that I now find rather humorous: it misused the Cantonese equivalent of ‘otaku’. Oh well.
April 5, 2010 at 5:10 am
>>You know we’d love to see it.
I, for one, would not.
April 5, 2010 at 8:56 am
Well, if a show’s truly that irredeemable, I usually just turn it off and move on to something more promising. Is that so strange?
Even mediocre shows can offer something to think about in relation to the world at large. Like this, for example– I don’t expect much out of Working!!, but I got a lovely little entry out of it, so it can’t be that bad after all.
Cantonese otaku culture sounds like a subject worth mining. I’d love to see you write about it later. Cheers.
April 5, 2010 at 12:38 pm
[...] attention was brought to Working!! when 2-D Teleidoscope posted about the first episode and a screencap of Kyoko wherein she vaguely resembled Nobue in her maid cafe outfit caught my eye. [...]
April 5, 2010 at 8:39 pm
Man, I haven’t heard the terms ‘honne’ and ‘tatemae’ in a loooong time.
April 5, 2010 at 9:33 pm
I’m going to guess: You heard them in a university class about Japanese culture? It’s where I learned them. That seems to be where they pop up, and then pretty much never again.
Thanks for reading.
April 6, 2010 at 1:23 am
I used to work in retail, but I find F&B to be much more tiring and stressful, judging from my friends experiences.
But as a supervisor, I can relate to the manager somewhat. Especially the scheduling bit. Do not piss off the planner!
On track, I find Working! a pleasantly absurd take on an otherwise sterile service environment. And yeah, Miyafuji spearheaded the “movement” splendidly.
April 6, 2010 at 9:08 am
By any chance, did you mean “Daikuuji”? Because if so, thank god! You’re the only person so far to comment on that! Ayu-Ayu is a forgotten love of many, I feel.
Truthfully, I’ve never had a non-teaching job. But there was a part-time stint as a tutor that I’ll always remember with mixed feelings. There’s something about being served that makes people very unpleasant sometimes.
April 6, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Ah, Ayu Daikuuji! Where the heck did I dig up Miyafuji from? *Facepalm*
I must have stepped on cat poop earlier. Her insult is rather.. “Monty Python-esque”
April 28, 2010 at 10:16 am
[...] discusses how Working!! shows the human side of the Japanese service industry but seems horrified by how the [...]
January 9, 2011 at 3:40 pm
Hi, does anyone remember a splendid show on Arte TV , I think it was in 1996-1998, called L’art de la servitude?
It was rather long, at least 2 hours, and was a sort of ballet of public servants, great, almost subersive.