Shipping packages and the Japanese service industry
Today I noticed this article about how shipping services are done in the US. I understand and totally agree with the sentiment. It’s the same problem any time someone needs to actually come out to your home for anything: e.g. cable installation. “Yeah we’ll be out there sometime between 8 am and 4 pm. Have fun taking a day off of work and waiting for us.”
What I really don’t understand is how this can exist in the US: isn’t capitalism and competition supposed to fix this kind of thing? I mean I literally live up the street from an auto repair shop and I still have to have my friend drive me to work when I need my car fixed because they only work from 8 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday. Really? You only work during the times that other people are using the thing you’re trying to fix for them? Retards.
The only reason I can think of for this is that there really isn’t free market competition. In the case of UPS deliveries, there is probably too great a barrier to entry into the market these days, and the little guys probably all got bought up. In the case of the cable company, the physical lines are a community shared resource which they have control over. (Hopefully improved wireless technology will provide the kind of competition we need so we’re not still paying $50+ per month in the US for high speed Internet, while some eastern block countries ironically enjoy about a $20 per month price.) I still haven’t figured out how the car repair places do it without having a competitor just work on the weekends and off hours to get all the business.
And there’s something else implied in the article that I can attest to: the service in Japan is excellent. I stayed a night in Tokyo on my recent trip to Indonesia in October. I flew on Japan Airlines, and while I didn’t notice the difference in service and culture when I was experiencing it, I definitely noticed after I came back and had to deal with people here. People here have horrible attitudes in the service industry–almost as if they all hate their jobs and they’re going to take it out on you. It’s not every industry and it’s not every region, but there is a marked difference between here and Japan.
First of all, people in Japan act polite and happy to serve you. They don’t passive aggressively project all their personal frustrations on you. And they take pride in their job and their work. I never felt uncomfortable or out of place while I was in Japan. And even my friend Taka, who I visited while there, was willing to talk to and help other strangers who had just arrived at the airport.
When I got back to the US, the first thing I noticed was how unaccommodating the airline stewardesses were. In particular I remember one of the legs of the trip I had been up for nearly 48 hours, and asked for help to find a place to put my bag on the plane. (I only had a very small bag, but of course the plane luggage was nearly full because the airlines here –in this case American Airlines–don’t feel the need to enforce any fair treatment of their passengers, and the bins were filled up quickly.) The stewardess acted like it wasn’t her job to help me find some space, and that if I don’t see anything I’ll just have to put it under the seat so I can have even less foot room. I guess that’s their way of rewarding passengers who travel light and don’t impose on other passengers. I explained to her that I had been up for 48 hours, and she just responded with some kind of defensive remark to the effect that there was no way she could help me. I didn’t expect her to find a spot, just help me look.
Sadly, all of this boils down to the quality of life being better in Japan. In general I think the US needs to fix a few things: the society as a whole is much more concerned with the bottom line than it is with quality of life.
Categories: Society
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