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Spring is coming. I am supposed to be happy, but on the contrary, I am more depressed day by day. Now it is April, ladies and gentleman; smells of flowers are everywhere, and people even let themselves indulge in the magic of spring and practice their passion of love. I am walking on my way to my office and feeling that I have never spent a disgusting spring like this before. People are chatting everlasting nonsense everywhere, and I am being bored to death. I spit at the street three times in order to show my disgust toward Japanese and nod as if I accomplished the important task. Oh my God, I really do not want to go to a job today to waste my time, but I must earn money for my mission. I am so distressed, help me God!
I have been working for Benefit One for seven months, which is my record so far. My company is a travel agency. I am assigned to work at a customer center as a Japanese-English telephone operator. My duty is to make reservations of hotels over a phone and organize travel itineraries. I usually handle twenty-five calls per day where I talk with idiots. Needless to say, I am sick of my job. I am frazzled answering stupid phones over and over and from talking to clients while using exceptionally polite words that only fatuous Japanese can invent. As always, the bitch is listening to my every conversation with clients to check if I am rude to them, because she simply cannot trust me. She is very short, fat, and ugly as sin. No more description is needed. She is human trash, such is my supervisor! Today I hope to Christ that the bitch will be quiet all day and will not disturb me, because I do not want to talk about nonsense and am sick of being insulted. Ms. Yamada is my supervisor’s name, by the way.
The bitch is always telling me, “Mr. Onoe, here in Japan, you shouldn’t talk to clients as you talk with your friends. Remember, clients are not your friends but important customers. You must use polite words in order to give the impression that we have highly trained employees and good services. If you talk to your clients friendly, some of them will feel that you are rude and impolite. I suggest you… you’d better study how to apply polite Japanese language in any sorts of circumstances; otherwise, I can’t let you to pick up phone calls in the future, because I have huge responsibilities for controlling every telephone operator. They must use exactly the same words to clients and follow the manual, so that every single tiny detail works smoothly. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Onoe?” “A fresh insult again!” I think. But whenever she starts her tirade, I just nod to show her that I completely understand what she means and start pretending to speak politely to clients over the phone, since I am used to enduring such humiliations.
