lo One fast-food company is well known in Japan for its
extensive worker manual and the sales talk it covers. From the
book, workers learn how to greet a customer, how to bow, how
to take an order, pack a bag and give correct change.
5 Customers find the same nice service in all the franchised
outlets, which contributes to both customer satisfaction and
*corporate profits.
One day, a mother came into one of these restaurants, and
while she was ordering at the counter, her baby grabbed an
10 employee's hat and began to play with it. He was surprised and
embarrassed. He could not concentrate on what the customer
(2)
was saying and had to ask her to repeat her order twice. He
knew he was losing his dignity as a company representative by
having an infant tearing up part of his uniform, and he wanted to
15 take it back, but at the same time he didn't know what to say
or do. He stood there ( 3 ) until the mother *retrieved the
hat and gave it back to him. He put it on again, resumed his
normal calm attitude, and took her order efficiently as if nothing
had happened. But everyone in the restaurant could see that a
20 one-year-old child had the power to bring the operation to a halt
and must have wondered about it.
What was the problem here? Simply put, the manual, detailed
as it may be, fails to cover what to do in a situation where a
young child steals part of your uniform. And without the manual
to guide his behavior, the employee was lost. This is a trivial
example of a very serious problem in Japan: the inability to
48
