Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Won't Miss #96 - foreign employees distrust


I worked at a Japanese office for 12 years and one of the things which repeatedly occurred was distrust of the foreign employees. Our working space was intentionally placed right in front of the president's office so he could keep an eye on us. What was more frustrating though was that any time we made any sort of (almost always small) mistake, we would spend the next year hearing about it. That is, we would be constantly reminded not to have the same momentary lapse in memory despite not having had such a lapse previously during years of employment. When the Japanese staff made bigger and much more frequent mistakes, it was brushed off as unimportant and quickly forgotten.

I won't miss being distrusted on the job and treated as if any small mistake was an enduring character flaw simply because I am not Japanese.