Japanese Woman and Customers: Updated Dec. 30, 2023

 

Over 50% of Japanese women willing to work say they've been harassed by customers: poll

Article Source: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20231026/p2a/00m/0na/012000c

Article:

TOKYO -- More than half of women willing to work in Japan have previously been victims of "customer harassment," in which customers and clients take advantage of their superior position to demand excessive service or make malicious complaints, a research institute has found.

Shufu Job Soken, a private research institute based in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward, conducted an online survey from Sept. 12 to 19 mainly among homemakers who are motivated to work. The poll asked them about customer harassment, which was added to the criteria for recognizing a work-related illness or injury from this year. Responses were received from 637 women.

When asked how often they had experienced customer harassment, 29.5% said "once" and 22.1% said "several times," indicating more than 50% of the respondents had experienced such harassment.

Ideas:

Its very unfortunate that Japanese society, like many societies today, have "customer harassment" problems. 

Its one thing to be upset about a company's service policies but it another thing completely to think the people trying to help when you call and you take out your personal frustrations on the people trying help you or explain about the policies which they didn't create. 

These day people its easy to take out your frustrations on people either at a counter or on the phone, when they have nothing to do with the policies themselves.

Article:

About 70% of the respondents cited harassment such as being yelled at or otherwise verbally abused, being questioned persistently for a long time, facing violent language from customers, and having unreasonable demands made upon them.

One respondent commented, "Sometimes the line between what is acceptable and what is not is unclear," while another said, "There are cases where even legitimate complaints are treated as customer harassment," leaving some people struggling to classify the behavior. At the same time, there was also a woman who personally learned about such harassment and defended herself against it, such as by "taking a firm stand against false accusations." Another commented that the long-used Japanese phrase "the customer is god" is misinterpreted and leads to harassment.

Ideas:

Its unfortunate, again, that customers today don't have any manners. Of course 99 percent of customers have manners and would never do it, but its the 1% percent how cause all of the problems in society, and makes problems for working woman who just want to make a living.

Japan many decades ago, and yes maybe decades, was a very polite society, but some customers and people have misunderstood the concept of "the customer is god", thinking they have all the power and the clerk, sales clerk, store employee or company representative is not a human being with feelings and a heart.

Where has common decency or human dignity gone? What has happened to fairness in society and everyone treating each other with respect even though you have problem with a product or service or want to return a product etc.

Article:

The institute pointed out that "It is necessary to base the relationship on mutual respect between the provider and the receiver of products and services, rather than a hierarchical relationship with the customer as the superior."

Ideas:

No wonder Japan has a labor shortage problem with many Japanese women might have experienced such behavior from customers and even from higher-ups with think they are better than the lowly ranked service employee at a company.

The customers is not the king and they don't have all the power. Yes, of course, have good customer service that treats the customer correctly, but at the same time, the customers too, has a responsibility to be polite and civil in society.

Unfortunately, this kind of behavior is common among some higher income people in Japan, who think they are better than lower income group people.

But its not all higher income people as most are very polite people, but there are enough of them to think rich people in Japan only care and think about themselves, like other some other rich people around world.

Have a nice day and be safe!