OK, point one. Once a year, a lower level team manager checks each printed paper we have on our desks and drawers. They look through one by one through each piece of paper we have, despite us printing and shredding pages of useless daily schedules every morning. Despite said inefficiency, they possess the sole power to decide what papers we keep and what we don’t.
Now, witness this in action: we have 20 min of work left. None of this stupid document checking process requires my input as I said 50000 times already not one page has changed since last year.
But no, at every other page, the manager is still like, ‘What is it for?’
I reply the same way for each one- ‘they’re handwritten notes.’
After a while, she stops asking, so I check my phone for 10 seconds, and she’s like ‘Why are you on your phone?’
‘Because I don’t have anything to do right now while you checked my documents, so I looked at my phone for a few seconds, as many people throughout the company do.’
‘But in OUR team, we don’t do it.’
‘Well, I checked my phone for 10 seconds, and last time I checked, I’m a human being who doesn’t work in a prison.’
‘I want to ask you not to do it again.’
‘I’ll do my best but there may be times when I’ll check my phone.’
‘Why would you need to do that?’
‘To check the time, see if there’s any news from overseas that’s urgent, etc.’
‘There’s a clock on the wall.’
‘It’s not visible from here- do you want me to waste precious seconds of productivity to physically get up and walk there instead of quickly whipping out my phone?’
‘I want to ask you not to do it again.’
I tried to keep my tone polite, but I was too pissed off for formal workplace Japanese, I just couldn’t speak politely in face of such shit, and was like, ‘Calm down, I’m already not feeling well physically and your pressure is making it more and more unbearable to be here. This isn’t a prison.’
Then I stood up and just left; I needed to calm down. FUCK I HATE THIS COMPANY AND THIS JOB.
Thank god when I got back to my desk she had already clocked off for the day. Damn, I hate this shit.