Meguro Post Office(Notice how clean everything is!)
It was on our way to the post office that we saw them. Two octogenarian ladies with a gleam in their eye and the tell tale moisture on their lips. They rushed passed us and, indeed, had we not made way I am certain we would have been mown down.
Otherwise, we made it to the Post Office safely.
Now the Japanese Post Office is a treasure to behold. Release yourself from all your psychological defences for just a moment and imagine yourself in a British High Street General Post Office. Can you feel the length of that queue? How many of the 15 service windows are manned by staff, three, maybe four if it is a busy period but all fifteen if it is time to close.
Now walk yourself to that counter and imagine being 'served' by a 'helpful' member of staff. You look around the office itself. Is it clean, is the architecture sensitive to your emotions, do you feel cared for? These and many other questions I could ask of your imagination but enough of the mental torture, think nice thoughts and relax once more. Uncle Jack is going to tell you a story.
We entered the Japanese High Street Post Office and I took a seat whilst Akane obtained her ticket. Soft pastel colours, plenty of seats, all comfortable padded linen chairs arranged in sets of rows before each of the four different sections of counter.
I took the time to count the number of staff serving behind the open counters (no glass barriers, no cage mentality, no disfunctional microphone and speaker system), there were ten staff operating twelve possible positions. I settled back to watch the news on the 42 inch Sony flat screen television which had the volume set to off but the text service for deaf viewers switched on. Detail here, detail people, so much to observe beyond the casual glance.
I settled back to watch and luckily for me Akane's business was going to take some time as it was blessed with an interesting complexity. The longevity of process gave me ample opportunity to study but with so much potential it took a few moments to realise where the most fruitful subject of enquiry lay.
After a few moments it became apparent, as is so often the case in these situations, that my quarry was stood right before me. Whilst the counter staff numbers were miraculous by British standards the floor staff, yes... floor staff, were a vision of consumer heaven. Obviously, in order to be served in a proper manner it is not enough that there are counter staff but in an environment as complex and full of choices as a Post Office there is need for the valued customer to be assisted into the correct seated queue or guided to the actual service they need. For this purpose the floor was manned by a staff of three smartly uniformed men whose sole role appeared to be to intercept all incoming customers and establish what their needs are before guiding them to their required service.
My subject presented himself immediately as the uniformed man by the ticket dispenser. This dispenser was on a smallish table with tubular legs and was about the size of a good old black and white television set. The face was set to slope from the base back to the top and had eight buttons set in place with a description beside each. The individual buttons all produced a numbered ticket when pressed.
Our man stood by the machine and awaited the approach of a customer. As one approached he bowed forward slightly and held his left hand up in a very gentle but clear 'stop sign'. Then, without raising his slight bow, cocked his left ear towards the client and asked what service they required. The raised hand remained in place in order to prevent any independent action by the client. Once the service had been outlined a broad smile and a lot of nodding occurred before this consumer concierge pressed the correct button and presented the ticket to the client.
The presentation of the ticket was accomplished by sweeping the 'stop' hand towards the machine, thus maintaining the space between the machine and client, and as it swept back holding the ticket, the right hand was extended out to indicate where the correct counter position was located. This movement was accompanied with a brief description of the subsequent process to be undertaken by the client in order to achieve their end and finally the client was directed to a comfortable chair.
The High Street Post Office Japanese style. But that is not the end of the story only the stage on which the most interesting part of the play I witnessed took place.
After about ten minutes Akane asked me if I wanted to go home rather than wait with her as "you look bored". Naturally I informed her that there was no way I was leaving and that I wasn't bored but completely absorbed by what was going on.
The man by the machine made strenuous efforts not to be dragged away from it and appeared to be uncomfortable when more than thee steps distant. When by the machine and no customers present he would rest his right hand on the top of the device and, whilst I cannot be certain about this, I think he may have patted it occasionally. His actions tended to conjure up in my mind a type of fish that guards a patch of coral. I believe they are called cleaner fish and they await 'clients' who come to be cleaned of parasites. These fish establish a favourable patch of coral and guard it jealously. There was something in this man's movement that was reminiscent of the way the cleaner fish hovers around their place of trade.
Eventually what I am certain could be termed a 'difficult' customer appeared. I say difficult but in Japan I am sure this has a different connotation than in England. You see, in Japan it is impossible for the customer to be difficult, rather it is the member of staff who has difficulties in serving the customer to their satisfaction. In this case the difficulty appeared to be that the customer needed to go somewhere beyond the counter and this required our man to guide them there. The discomfort in his body language was plain but never for a second did his face reveal anything but a smile.
As the conversation with the difficult client progressed there came a moment when our ticket guardian had to lead them off to a booth at the other end of the Post Office. Once installed in the booth he then clearly had to go and bring what appeared to be a more senior clerk to deal with this customer in the booth. As I was watching this movement I noticed out of the corner of my eye that another of the floor staff had slipped himself in beside the ticket machine!
Once his tasks had been completed our original ticket machine man returned and stood about three feet away from the new guardian of the ticket giver. He shifted his feet nervously and waited a few polite moments before smiling, bowing slightly (to which the new guardian is required by manners to reply with a bow) and then engaging in what I could only assume to be very general pleasantries.
Now I can't speak more Japanese than is required to order a beer and find out where the football is on so I cannot be an authoritative source on what was being said but..... I do feel I know the sense of what was happening here and the outcome, I believe, supports my feelings.
I think that on his return the man who had lost his place at the ticket machine asked the other man, who was much older than he, how he was. The older man said he was fine and thanked him for his enquiry. This exchange of pleasantry allowed the younger man to ask a technical question of some sort regarding, maybe, the intricate workings of the floor concierge duties. There led on from that a moment where the younger man clearly suggested that the older
man move back to his former position. In all the conversation that followed there was a clear meaning that the younger man was happy to stand in the menial position of ticket machine guardian and an enthusiastic encouragement to the older man to move back to the more important role of 'door greeter'.
The older man tried to resist but the younger man was very skilled and perhaps highly practised. Ultimately it appeared that the older man was placed in a position where the younger man had offered to take on the onerous task of standing by the machine in respect of the older man's age seniority. In such a position the older man could not refused without appearing rude and so was dislodged from the machine position. All of this took place in moments with quite skilled language and a series of bowing rituals in which the older man's status was recognised.
It was magnificent and the smile on the younger man once he was back beside his machine was like the sun in a clear sky.
This piece of social theater led me to think about the nature of what had occurred. The ticket machine was a resource and the nature of that resource was 'status giver'. The status derived from the fact there were eight options of ticket type and four counters at which different services were performed. This amounts to complex information. The uninitiated client knows the outcome they desire but do not necessarily know the process by which that outcome can be achieved. Therefore a knowledgeable person is required to match the need to the outcome by deciphering the process.
This creates status and that status is as a 'professional'. Granted it takes more effort and skill (questionably) to spend the four to six years to train to be a doctor or a lawyer but the underlying process of the skill is the same. Acquire a resource which is encoded with a specialist language (preferably encoded by the profession the language serves) and be the guardian of that resource. Make sure you protect that profession with a firm 'stop sign' so that the uninitiated don't fiddle with the machine. There you have it, our ticket guardian is a professional, admittedly his profession confers a very low social status but hey..... when you are walking the floor amongst a team and there is only one machine best be the one that controls the machine!
Japan, it gives you a different slant on things!
No comments:
Post a Comment