I wonder if bus drivers are really a great example…not that I think they are undeserving of a personal life, but I’m pretty damn sure I don’t want my bus driver texting while driving. Being given more breaks, on which they can check in with loved ones? Sure.

Facebook is a miracle - I have reconnected with people, connected better with my family, and grown a much larger, richer social life because of the way it facilitates contact between busy people.  I meet people at parties (that I get invited to off of facebook, natch) and get “you’re that friend of (friend) and you are hillarious” and I suddenly have an IRL new friend to have lunch with, party with, etc.

For me, phone calls just don’t do it.  I connect best using this sort of interface.  So do most of my busy friends ... busier, since we bike together, kayak together, drink together ...

Not at all quibbling with the notion that lower-status workers as a whole bear the brunt of corporate fascism, though.

Well, they’re not allowed to use cell phones on break, on pain of being fired.  Like I said, if they’re doing their job, it’s not a problem.  What’s happening here is surveillance of people not derelict in their duties.

And not allowing them to use phones *on break* is bullshit. But I wonder whether policies like these zero-tolerance bans are based on wanting to oppress the workers or more on wanting not to be this guy’s boss:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0152835520081002

The net Effect is, as you say, surveillance of people who are not derelict. But the intent may be less nefarious, especially when dereliction can end in dead people.

Again: No quibble whatsoever with the overall thrust of Broadbent’s argument. I just felt that perhaps those particular examples—operators of heavy machinery—were not the best to make her point.

@chareth cutestory: so true; when I worked for That Bastard he blocked pretty much everything - shoot, we had to protest to get cnn.com added back on the allowed list.  The one saving grace was Wikipedia, because my boss was so cheap we didn’t have Westlaw or Lexis access and thus allowed Wikipedia for research.

Broadbent notes how people who work in many low status occupations, like bus drivers and factor workers, are facing increasingly punitive monitoring to make sure they don’t check in with family and friends during the day.

To be fair, bus drivers and factory workers are also restricted from using mobiles due to safety issues—I’ve taken bus drivers to task more than a few times because they were yacking on their phones (and not hands-free) while ferrying dozens of passengers around in 15+ tonne vehicles. I don’t imagine that it’s a good idea to be distracted near a milling machine on the shop floor, either.

That’s not to say that mobiles shouldn’t be allowed on breaks or in less dangerous settings, of course. And you’re correct in the overall crappy attitude of the 4th Purpose/Human Resources Culture toward employees keeping a connection with their personal life. Commercial net filtering software is a particularly blunt and clumsy instrument of control and surveillance—one that certainly consumes time and resources without much ROI (unless power-tripping counts as profit).

[Seconding your recommendation re: the TED Talks—thought-provoking stuff from recognised experts on a broad range of topics, delivered in convenient 15 minute packages]

God damn it, this is so right on. Having experienced a year and a half of hell stuck working in a job I couldn’t quit (not for hardshp reasons, fear not, but trust me, the incentive not to quit was VERY compelling) in which all non-work related internet access was removed, and in which a slew of arbitrary “flair” style requirements for non management personell were magically enacted, I can attest that nothing makes you feel smaller and more resentful, than being denied the acknowledgement that you’re an adult, which is whattaking away access to the outside, taking away personal privacy and dignity, and taking away contact with friends, is all about.

This is, in my mind, related to drug testing - notice that jobs that require drug testing for new employees are almost never jobs in which the consequences of a drug related fuckup could literally end someone’s life - Lawyers, (for the most part) Doctors, politicians, even pilots, and definitely not managers, C or VP Level corporate leaders and so on, none of these people are required to prove they don’t enjoy themselves in unauthorized ways when they’re not on the clock.

OTOH, nearly everyone who earns minimum wage is required upon pain of homelessness to prove that they never ever ever ever accidentally do something their bosses don’t approve of. As with strictly limiting access to off-site information, the whole point seems to be fostering a sense of helplessness and fealty in workers. Humilate them, break them down, isolate them from their loved ones. This sounds eerily like the behavior of abusers towards the abused, does it not?

Ms Kate: Facebook is a miracle - I have reconnected with people, connected better with my family, and grown a much larger, richer social life because of the way it facilitates contact between busy people.  I meet people at parties (that I get invited to off of facebook, natch) and get “you’re that friend of (friend) and you are hillarious” and I suddenly have an IRL new friend to have lunch with, party with, etc.

Huh. I wonder how I’d feel about Facebook if I joined under those circumstances? I joined because my employer had decided to use Facebook to promote activities and events to Facebook circles as part of our online marketing program. I find it useful as a social networking tool to stay in touch, but I always have to bear in mind that every single person I work with - and potentially all of the people my employer wants to impress - are reading my profile. That doesn’t mean everything on it has to be work-related - but it does mean that I think twice before putting anything really personal up there.

I’d also like to add that I have several surprisingly close friendships with people I have never actually met in person - people I talk to nearly every day, in fact - brought to me courtesy of the internet. This is in addition to commenters I look forward to reading, bloggers I frequent and other perks of internet assisted living. At least in my life, the march of technological progress has been a specific and appreciated benefit.

One should examine how much of this is the possibility the managers/employers’ reasons for implementing such policies is to provide cover for themselves or those with the same tendencies to completely compartmentalize work vs non-work time and don’t want to have to negotiate/argue with SOs, family members, and friends on when keeping in touch throughout the day crosses the line into calling so much that s(he) cannot get work done effectively because of the frequency and distractions.  In short, it is a firewall from family members and friends who they perceive as acting as if they have nothing better to do than to answer their calls/talk all day.

Lawyers, (for the most part) Doctors, politicians, even pilots, and definitely not managers, C or VP Level corporate leaders and so on, none of these people are required to prove they don’t enjoy themselves in unauthorized ways when they’re not on the clock.

You’d be surprised, at least as far as non-filtered Internet access for associate lawyers and VPs at large firms go. Some of the most locked-down and surveilled networks I’ve seen have been at bigcorps and white shoe law firms (and investment banks of all sizes).

One should examine how much of this is the possibility the managers/employers’ reasons for implementing such policies is to provide cover for themselves or those with the same tendencies to completely compartmentalize work vs non-work time and don’t want to have to negotiate/argue with SOs, family members, and friends

That’s just a side benefit for the workaholic manager/employer who doesn’t want to deal with his own personal life. One doesn’t need a corporate policy to set personal boundaries, especially if one is the boss to begin with. These policies are mainly about control and power over others.

Well as much as Scott Adams turned out…interesting over time, he was very good on catching very early on that a lot of businesses basically made a conscious decision to move from a “selling stuff” economy to a “fucking the workers” economy and manipulating the rush of power and short-term profit margins that can come from massive firings, outsourcing, and increasingly intrusive fascist control over life so that people’s freedom, self-regard to look for another job, or humanity was beaten into so much paste. And since one doesn’t care about long-term viability or the quality of the product, it doesn’t matter that the employees end up demoralized, broken, and uncreative, because the products are less of a focus than the short-term gains that come from underpaid workers doing the jobs of multiple people and too scared of being next to look for a job where they aren’t treated worse than mice in an old-school neurobiology experiment.

Plus, from a douchebag/culture warrior side, this is great for manipulating the public into supporting the type of dystopian policies that can really pay off for the rich. Want the middle class to be entirely focused on fear of the poor and fear of downsizing that they don’t even notice the stagnant wages or broken health care system anymore? Or college students to spend more time thinking entirely in terms of being more employable and “not offending future employers” instead of focusing on getting an education in what they really want to learn and thinking for themselves and agitating against social wrongs? Or a workforce so afraid of being randomly fired or losing health benefits that they’ll put up with whatever sick fantasy you have with minimal fuss?

Yeah.

On the tech side, I’ve recently come to say one statement over and over again which is “the kids are always all right.” Every single generation, the generation that’s older has a complete freak-out over what the kids are doing or listening to or treating as culture and how this spells doom and gloom for society or otherwise leaves them worse off than the generation before. And with the exception of economic opportunity in America, this is always false false false. Video games are the new rap music which was the new metal music which was the new rock and roll. The internet and cell phones has been blamed for a supposed inability to focus that will prevent kids from being informed citizens at the same time kids have once again been leading the adults in inventing new ways to agitate for equal rights and global causes and bypass old-guard media disinformation services. Like always the fights of the last movement of kids leaves a better world for the next generation of kids to be a little less fucked up and use whatever technology is available to deal with what is still fucked up or what backlash or legacy projects from the fucktards litters their ways.

In short, of course the internet connects those disconnected by a society wherein college kids are literally basing their life’s work decisions on what they imagine some right-wing corporate hack wants in a cog in a machine (not a joke, my partner worked for a company where the CEO put out a video literally comparing workers to cogs in a machine with zero irony or self-awareness). But criticizing the excesses of capitalism would be communist so let’s blame the anarchic freedom of the internet or whatever else is being used by more young people than old people as it’s obvious that’s where most of the problems are coming from. Feh.

You’d be surprised, at least as far as non-filtered Internet access for associate lawyers and VPs at large firms go. Some of the most locked-down and surveilled networks I’ve seen have been at bigcorps and white shoe law firms (and investment banks of all sizes).

good point, though in this instance I meant to refer more to drug testing, which I guarantee is not being forced onto Vps and associates.

PS: I don’t actually take drugs. I just happen to think drug testing is invasive and unneccessary. Sobriety tests, OTOH…

This is, in my mind, related to drug testing - notice that jobs that require drug testing for new employees are almost never jobs in which the consequences of a drug related fuckup could literally end someone’s life - Lawyers, (for the most part) Doctors, politicians, even pilots, and definitely not managers, C or VP Level corporate leaders and so on, none of these people are required to prove they don’t enjoy themselves in unauthorized ways when they’re not on the clock.

Not sure about that… yes, lawyers, politicians, and corporate types aren’t often subject to drug testing, but most healthcare workers, including physicians, in the employment of hospitals are almost always drug tested.  As are airline pilots.

By the way, if you think the HR Culture is bad here, I was freaked out by the description of corporate culture in Japan in this (admittedly long and whingey) piece. Excerpts:

The Japanese are so serious about work that even work-related parties are mandatory. If you don’t go to a company party, you’re not part of the team. If you’re not part of the team, it’s possible you’re not actually working at the company.

[...]

The general consensus is that, if a guy doesn’t want to go to a party and get terribly drunk with everyone else in the company, then he obviously has some element of his outside life — a girlfriend, a hobby, et cetera — that is more important to him than the company, so any work he does is less worthy of trust than any work done by anyone who “respects the company” enough to go to all the parties and match the boss drink for drink.

[...]

Every once in a while, you’re outside, and you find a huge crowd of people in suits and ties. They take up all of the sidewalk. They’re all drunk. They just got out of a mandatory company party in the nearest wooden-submarine-like Japanese restaurant whose menu consists of whatever fell off the garbage truck as it peeled away from a flock of particularly aggressive crows that morning. They’re standing a circle, completely of their own accord. The boss is nowhere in sight. Someone in this group of juniors influenced them all to get into this circle. Anyway, they start chanting something. You can hardly understand what it is, even if you fluently understand the language. What the hell are they doing? The chant soon becomes a scream. This group of maybe forty young men and women in suits are screaming in unison.

What the hell is that about? The answer is: nothing. They’re screaming for screaming’s sake. They’re doing this to show that they have some energy — any energy at all. This is a subtle hint: Their lives, bodies, and souls belong to the company; the energy that resides in those bodies is all to the company’s benefit.

[...]

In many Japanese offices, you’re required to scream “Good morning!” at the top of your lungs, clapping your hands to your thighs, as soon as you enter the office area every morning. Everyone in the office then shouts “Good morning!” back to you.

Given how much further along the Japanese are in terms of broadband and mobile phone penetration as a part of daily life, I wonder if employees there are given more or less freedom to surf and connect in those horrific-sounding workplaces.

I think it’s absurd to limit things like how much bus drivers talk on their phones in their break times, etc.  But that said, I do think the omnipresence of internet-based distractions/ways to connect with friends has made me less productive. I’d be super annoyed if my workplace blocked facebook or gchat, but I also know I’d get more work done. This is based on experiments I’ve done where I measure productivity when internet is on the fritz, vs. times with internet functioning.

but most healthcare workers, including physicians, in the employment of hospitals are almost always drug tested.  As are airline pilots.

My fault. I swear I meant to add “pilots (until surprisingly recently”. But FWIW, according to friends of mine who work in health care, while nurses, orderlies etc are always forced to take drug tests, doctors often aren’t once they’ve finished the residency portion of their career. Policy depends on state and hospital. Then again, the plural of anecdote isn’t “data”, so I retract that inclusion. Anyone here have more concrete information?

And anyway, my basic point is that there’s no reason a Lawyer shouldn’t be tested but a Buger flipper should be. Also, sorry for including incorrect info.

good point, though in this instance I meant to refer more to drug testing, which I guarantee is not being forced onto Vps and associates.

And definitely not on a broker—unless they’re spot checking to see that there’s an acceptable minimum of coke and speed in his system.

Seriously, there are some boutique investment houses where everyone under C-level does get tested. The employees at those places were a paranoid and fearful lot who basically had no personal lives. No amount of money (and they made a lot) is worth that humiliation and stress.

companies that crack down on this just lose out to employees with smart phones

This. Iphone/Blackberry/Droid all pretty much blow a hole right through the Great Corporate Firewall (unless the employer is providing the phone and wants to lock that down too I guess).

Gracchus -

The culture of shame in Japanese society goes back thousands of years to the time when Samurai who had betrayed their honor would commit ritual suicide by cutting open their own abdomens - Seppuku.

Though matters aren’t taken to such a gory extreme today, the idea of shame and honor is still used heavily in Japanese society to keep workers in line.  Corporate middle managers who have failed to meet expectations are often expected to grovel on their knees in tears and humiliate themselves to prove they are deserving of a second chance.

Japanese culture is so workaholic-insane that they actually have a word for “death from overwork”: karoshi

My fault. I swear I meant to add “pilots (until surprisingly recently”. But FWIW, according to friends of mine who work in health care, while nurses, orderlies etc are always forced to take drug tests, doctors often aren’t once they’ve finished the residency portion of their career. Policy depends on state and hospital. Then again, the plural of anecdote isn’t “data”, so I retract that inclusion. Anyone here have more concrete information?

I imagine it probably varies by state, but hospitals are typically required to follow whatever protocols the state licensing boards have on the matter.

There is a big difference in what happens to a doctor who gets caught using drugs versus a lawyer being caught using drugs - a lawyer may lose his job over it, but it’s unlikely he’ll be immediately disbarred.  Physicians, on the other hand, not only face the prospect of losing their job, but also the possibility of having their license to practice medicine revoked, and depending on the circumstances of their drug usage, they could even face serious criminal charges with the DEA (if they were acquiring their drugs by using their medicial access).  A childhood friend of mine’s father was a dentist who got himself into this predicament, and spent a year in prison over it.  And can never practice dentistry again.

That’s just a side benefit for the workaholic manager/employer who doesn’t want to deal with his own personal life. One doesn’t need a corporate policy to set personal boundaries, especially if one is the boss to begin with. These policies are mainly about control and power over others.

Many of those bosses/managers need to implement such draconian policies precisely because they are too spineless and/or lazy in their personal lives to set such boundaries with family members and/or friends…..especially if they tend to be the pushy imposing type who feel that s(he) has nothing better to do than to take their frequent and/or put up with their long phone calls. 

Heck, had a friend who is a compartmentalizing type, is willing to set boundaries, and still has a hard time getting through to many family members that he does have too much on his plate to talk an hour ir more on the phone….even during working hours….

@chareth cutestory -

I’m lucky enough to work for a company that doesn’t have such testing, though I’m sure once (if) the company goes public that’ll change soon enough. I know I’d have the same reaction you did, were I to be subjected to it.

As for creatives and the bong, it’s California. They just need to show a prescription and everything is right as rain.

Well, I believe the research demonstrating that risks of allowing workers to have time to themselves throughout the day are overblown to gain control over workers is pretty solid.

I’m internet-limited for most of my workday.  Can’t bring my cellphone in either, since they sell for about $1500 inside the prison.

It sucks, but there’s a reason for it.  Still, I’m cut off from news, family, friends, events, and distractions.  It’s inconvenient to find me at work, hard for those who want to say hello, and hard on me when I can’t say “I love you” to my children because I’m working at a place where I’ve said I don’t have children and there’s a damn good reason to stick to that story.

As for the social networks: they’re good things if used well, and I never connect my work self to my private self.  Partly because I work for a prison and for the state, but also because my private interests seem to be a lot about small L libertarianism stuff that doesn’t fit in well with my employment.  In other words, there’s no way in hell I’m starting a facebook page for my work self.  It’s much easier to avoid trouble if I have two separate lives.  Not that it’s always easy, but it’s better to be more divided than mostly combined.

Having the ability to communicate with friends and family at work in unobtrusive ways keeps me sane. It gives me perspective. Also, it allows me to contact a vast resource pool of information, which on more than one occasion, has helped my work. I can twitter friends in the field and get a fresh perspective i can’t get from asking the same half dozen coworkers who aren’t helping me anyway.

Grac, could you link the whole piece? I’m super interested. I hear in a few Japanese companies they have uniforms. I bet American companies would love that.

And Jergislac, I agree about facebook. I can’t exactly say much with my real name attached.

That’s just a side benefit for the workaholic manager/employer who doesn’t want to deal with his own personal life. One doesn’t need a corporate policy to set personal boundaries, especially if one is the boss to begin with. These policies are mainly about control and power over others.

I think there are other factors as well.  The big, soulless corporations don’t want to leave anything to chance.  If they ask a middle manager to keep an eye on things and make sure employees aren’t abusing their right to surf the Internet/make personal calls and he/she doesn’t bother?  Well, then, some employees in a division somewhere are getting away with something.  Can’t have that.  Better to impose draconian policies.

This isn’t to let these companies off the hook, but I still think this is more about keeping a real life Michael Scott* from letting his employees get away with murder.  Any human resources expert worth his/her salt knows that people have to take breaks throughout the day in order to be even remotely productive.

*Although of course the Scranton office is the most productive.

You all are way, way, way, too forgiving of people and skeptical of the will to power/contempt for the little guy that’s endemic in our culture.  After Republicans basically come out and say that unemployed people should not draw unemployment, because starving is highly motivating to work for peanuts, I’d think it would be obvious.  Terrorizing people is its own reward.

Gracchus,

As for the Japanese corporate culture, what you’re seeing is the employee’s “part” of the corporate bargain in exchange for lifetime employment….when it existed. 

They are supposed to dedicate their entire waking hours and then some to the employer because it is supposed to be treated like a “family” beyond one’s own family.  A reason why many salarymen worked so much that they only saw their families on the weekend…and one day of that if that* and why most Japanese corporations expect women to resign upon becoming engaged or pregnant as women are expected to take care of the home. 

Of course, with lifetime employment gone in the wake of the 1989 economic bubble burst and the subsequent decade+ long recession, many current Japanese 20 and 30 somethings are increasingly refusing to take corporate jobs and getting married….hence the widespread phenomenons of college grads taking odd jobs such as message delivery or “parasitic singles”. 

Also, this overwork phenomenon is not exclusive to the Japanese private corporate sector.  Government employees are also expected to put in long hours as I found from a few Japanese grad students who are government bureaucrats in various ministries.  They’ve all told me that 18 hour workdays (9 am - 2:30 am+) was routine and expected 5 or more days/week.  What’s more, since employment as a ministry bureaucrat is considered a topflight plum job for topflight college grads**, few would even consider complaining about the working conditions.

* This extends down to Japanese schoolchildren as until recently, their school week is 5.5-6 days/week.  When the educational ministry proposed reducing it to 5 days, there was a loud outcry from parents concerned that this reduction of classtime would mean their children’s education will be impaired with the consequent imperiling of their family’s and Japan’s economic future competitiveness. 

** To be eligible for selection, one had to graduate from the top 4 Japanese universities, but also from certain “prestigious” departments.  Back in the days when MITI existed, they would only select college grads who graduated from Tokyo University’s Department of Law…..no mean feat when that’s the hardest department to gain admission to in the first place.

You all are way, way, way, too forgiving of people and skeptical of the will to power/contempt for the little guy that’s endemic in our culture.  After Republicans basically come out and say that unemployed people should not draw unemployment, because starving is highly motivating to work for peanuts, I’d think it would be obvious.  Terrorizing people is its own reward.

That was not my intention at all. 

Instead, I was trying to illustrate a variant of “kicking the person below you” to alleviate one’s own feelings of powerlessness in one’s personal life. 

Similar to the operational dynamic in the brutalization of Allied POWs under the auspices of the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces.  One factor in the brutalization of the POWs was the widespread harsh discipline…actually abuse that was widely practiced in those forces from the highest ranking officers down to the ranks.  General officers would see nothing wrong beating up/abusing field officers, field officers doing the same to junior officers, junior officers to non-coms, non-coms to Japanese soldiers, Japanese private soldiers to Korean counterparts, and the latter two then taking out their anger and bile out on the POWs.

That full article about Japan, Japanese culture, etc. (only some of it’s about workplace culture—the author has a bad case of burnout after living in Japan for a long time, I think…) is here.

I’d be super annoyed if my workplace blocked facebook or gchat, but I also know I’d get more work done.

To me, there’s a difference between being told You Will Not Use The Internet In Work Hours and deciding for yourself that you’ll use certain measures of self-control.  For instance, I’ve installed the Leechblock firefox extension to my work computer and set it to only allow a very limited amount of access to Facebook, and, alas, Pandagon, during prime work hours.  This is a whole different ballgame from the alienation I feel when my immediate supervisor says something Office Space-ish about my 10 word g-chat exchange with a friend, which is not actually impacting my productivity at all.

Also, the Japanese Expat Gripe article referred to upthread annoys me on so many levels.  It reads very much like the author has either A) been an expat so long that he’s forgotten all the little annoyances of American life, or B) he literally has NEVER thought to critique the culture he grew up in, to the point of probably not even being aware that he grew up in a culture at all.  Easily 75% of his complaints about Japan either have a direct parallel in American culture or are simply baseless griping. 

I thought the gripe about how food in Japan has unnecessary meat-based ingredients to be particularly hilarious.  I know he opens the article by basing his standard for American life on San Francisco, but srsly?  Does he think all Americans are vegan?  It would make me lol if it weren’t so ignorant and depressing.  As much as I love travel and would kill to live abroad, white people outside their home turf can be such morons.

Grac, could you link the whole piece? I’m super interested.

Apologies, forgot the link. It’s here:

http://kotaku.com/5484581/japan-its-not-funny-anymore

The author comes off as a bit of a pill, and you really wonder why someone who was interested enough in Japan to move there would be surprised by some of the things he complains about. But the details about corporate and retail culture are interesting even if you’re familiar with the broad historical outlines.

Corporate middle managers who have failed to meet expectations are often expected to grovel on their knees in tears and humiliate themselves to prove they are deserving of a second chance.

During the recent Toyota debacle, the CEO was taken to task because he didn’t bow low enough during his apology. And honestly, that says less about Japan’s long tradition of shame and honour than it does about the CEO taking an arrogant attitude more reminiscent of his counterparts in Detroit.

As for the Japanese corporate culture, what you’re seeing is the employee’s “part” of the corporate bargain in exchange for lifetime employment….when it existed.

That last part is the key. During the early 1980s, when Japanese companies were gonna (ZOMG!) take over the world and I studied the history and culture, that social compacy was still in effect. Basically it was the Japanese equivalent of the late Boomers who got royally screwed—10+ years of that slavering and humiliating dedication to the zaibatsu, and then they were rewarded with a pink slip. You can’t blame the Japanese Xers and Millenials for opting out of a corporate culture where the only change is to remove job security.

It reads very much like the author has either A) been an expat so long that he’s forgotten all the little annoyances of American life, or B) he literally has NEVER thought to critique the culture he grew up in, to the point of probably not even being aware that he grew up in a culture at all.

I don’t think he really took a close look at either American or Japanese culture until he finally got fed up with the latter. He just assumed that if an 733t computer game dood like himself could live in the Bay Area, he could just as easily live in the greater Tokyo area. In other words, the kind of tech geek whose ability to make cultural distinctions doesn’t go far beyond the content of videogames and animation.

But the details about corporate and retail culture are interesting even if you’re familiar with the broad historical outlines.

It was the retail culture stuff that really drove me nuts.  Clearly this guy never worked a service job before leaving the States for Japan, or even so much as contemplated the odd quirks of the American shopping experience.  I remember, when I was a sales clerk, literally having the same conversation over and over, day in day out, for months, word for word, with every customer.  And finding myself parroting things that, when you thought about them semantically, made no fucking sense or were even completely backwards (e.g. saying “Thank You” to a customer when it’s them making a request of you).

It was the retail culture stuff that really drove me nuts.  Clearly this guy never worked a service job before leaving the States for Japan, or even so much as contemplated the odd quirks of the American shopping experience.

Still, as a Westerner, I was interested in the stuff about employees having to scream “irasshaimase” over and over again, interspersed with deliberate nonsense words—takes things a step beyond even the flair-draped dehumanising insanity of standard American service. But in the end it sounds like the author’s upset mainly because it made it more difficult for him to chat up shopgirls and waitresses (boy, is he in for disappointment when he returns to the States).

Oh, sure, I was interested.  What I disliked was his assumption that this is freakish behavior that only crazy fucked up Japanese people would ever engage in.  “Irasshaimase!” is really not too different from the concept of the “greeter” in a store, or repeated meaningless pleasantries like “Can I help you find something, sir?” and “Have a nice day!”

I also thought it was odd that I was able to immediately take away “shouting meaningless greetings/pleasantries is considered normal behavior in Japan, whereas it would be strange to see in the USA”, whereas the dude who’s actually lived in Japan for a decade hasn’t managed to tease that out yet.

Iphone/Blackberry/Droid all pretty much blow a hole right through the Great Corporate Firewall (unless the employer is providing the phone and wants to lock that down too I guess).

I’d wager that some workplaces are already deploying mobile phone signal jammers on the premises, or even requiring that employees check their phones at the door. And I’d further be willing to bet that the employees affected by such policies work in low-status occupations, and don’t enjoy any kind of labour mobility.

“I know he opens the article by basing his standard for American life on San Francisco, but srsly?  Does he think all Americans are vegan?”

I’ve heard quite a few complaints from American veggies traveling abroad that basically boil down to inconsistent definitions of “vegetarian.” Like if you tell someone in America that you’re a vegetarian, they’re probably not going to try to feed you ham.

I know he opens the article by basing his standard for American life on San Francisco, but srsly?  Does he think all Americans are vegan?”

No, but he probably fell for the stereotype that Japanese people ate only rice, ramen, vegetables and sushi. What better place for a hip and health-conscious vegetarian videogame designer/musician to live than Japan, amirite?

...requiring that employees check their phones at the door. And I’d further be willing to bet that the employees affected by such policies work in low-status occupations…

Yep. 

Speaking of my time as a retail drone, I definitely remember that we were not to have our cell phones on the sales floor at all, much less use them during work hours (even down time).  Even just to send a quick text message.  Then again, this was the job where I got in trouble for reading during my down time… in a bookstore.  I do not miss service industry work, at all.

But they might try to feed you fish or chicken.

Like if you tell someone in America that you’re a vegetarian, they’re probably not going to try to feed you ham.

Maybe so, but they might try to feed you vegetable soup with a beef stock base.  Here in the states, as long as a dish doesn’t currently have large obvious chunks of blatant meat in it, it could conceivably be presented as appropriate for a vegetarian.  I’ve even had people offer to pluck out the bits of meat in a beef stew or chicken pot pie!

Also, at least in Europe, a lot of the confusion of being served pork, etc, is language barrier issues more than cultural definitions of “vegetarian”.  For instance if you go into a restaurant and say “I don’t eat meat”, or “I’d like something without meat”, that might be interpreted as “I don’t want beef” due to your choice of words.  Not because the local vegetarians eat bacon every morning.

“But they might try to feed you fish or chicken.”

Yes, but in all likelihood they’ll check before doing that.  If you’re in a country where 99.5% of vegetarians are vegetarians because of health or weight concerns rather than ethical concerns, pretty much anything but cow is a possibility.

I’m willing to bet that at the root of some of this “keep the peons off the internet” attitude, unspoken, and perhaps unspeakable, is the fear that they might not only use networks to connect, but also to organize.

Just a thought.

Dear lord.  That “I am sick of Japan” thing just keeps going.  The Unabomber’s manifesto was a tweet compared to this thing.

He’s got a lot to get off his chest! But then again, I’m a bad person, so I’d probably write such a long complaint on my blog too, if I was in a foreign country for a long time. It’s scary to live in a different culture, and hard to adjust… So things that in your native country would be just a tweet’s worth of annoyance becomes a page’s worth. Maybe he should go back home…

The author comes off as a bit of a pill, and you really wonder why someone who was interested enough in Japan to move there would be surprised by some of the things he complains about.

When I was investigating living in .jp, I came across a Canadian blogger who was a big Karate practitioner, so he moved him and his wife over there. The first day they were there, they stayed in a hotel, and he spent paragraphs bitching about how the shared bath tub was so filthy, and how dirty and smelly the Japanese were. 

...because travelers like him didn’t know you’re supposed to wash before you use the bath.

In my experience there’s places that drug test as a policy, who send you to a clinic, which is easy to beat. The really draconian places (Time Warner) physically watch you pee. There seems to be an inverse relationship with how important it is that you not fail the test (retention), and how gung ho a business is about testing.

I was also fortunate to see the “managers only” documents of one large corp (2000 people), where they explain their random testing policy is really that, they don’t test you, unless your manager thinks you’re on drugs.

I should add that that co. was seriously fucking evil, where some horrible shit that would turn the public against them happened literally once a month, so retention was really important to them.

Basically it was the Japanese equivalent of the late Boomers who got royally screwed—10+ years of that slavering and humiliating dedication to the zaibatsu, and then they were rewarded with a pink slip. You can’t blame the Japanese Xers and Millenials for opting out of a corporate culture where the only change is to remove job security.

However, to the Japanese equivalent of the late boomers, complaining would not only be unseemly because it is admitting one is fooled, their hard work was for naught, and more, but also because they were socialized to believe that their hard work was for the betterment of Japan and its society.  Thus, complaining would be regarded by many within their generation and older generations as highly selfish, anti-social, self-indulgent, and displays a complete disregard for his/her duty to the state and society….especially when one considers how many Japanese and even some non-Japanese perceived that this very self-sacrifice and hard work enabled Japan to transform itself from a vulnerable medieval society to becoming a modern industrialized imperial state within a matter of a few decades (1868-1890s). 

Contrary to popular belief, many aspects of Meiji era educational curriculum emphasizing the individual’s need to work hard and sacrifice for the sake of the Japanese state and society didn’t go away once the Japanese Empire was overthrown on August 15, 1945.  Instead, it was mobilized by the post-occupation Japanese government to encourage the population to work and sacrifice to “rebuild and restore Japan” so it can regain respect and prestige with its peer nations….a.k.a. the West.  Not difficult to do considering every Japanese citizen up to that point was raised with this form of socialization from the moment they first entered school onwards.  Once the US occupation authorities left Japan, the Japanese educational ministry effectively reimplemented many aspects of the pre-war educational curriculum. 

Only now with the decade+ long recession and the firsthand observation of seeing lifetime employment evaporate in 1989 are the Japanese Gen X/millenials increasingly calling BS on the self-sacrifice/hard work mantra is it being increasingly seriously challenged.  On the other hand, that is far from saying Japanese GenX/millenials are necessarily more progressive across the board. 

There’s a disturbing tendency among a vocal minority of Japanese GenX/millenials to join right-wing revisionist groups because this serious economic insecurity along with geopolitical concerns caused by China’s rise and North Korea’s efforts to gain attention of the world is causing them to find the past glories of the Japanese Empire at its height to be quite appealing.

Well, I live in Tokyo now, and 4 doors down from my apartment building is an Outback restaurant.

And boy, when I get a hankering for ribs, that’s where I stop off!

I’ll go a step further and argue that the monitoring is valuing debasement and control of working class people over actual economic concerns like profit and saving money.

At my workplace, the Internet is heavily filtered, such that IM and non-work email is filtered right alongside (some of) the porn, streaming, bittorrent, etc.  However, the filters are not enforced uniformly: FOX “News” is directly streamed within the company (and at some sites is displayed prominently on HDTV’s).  We’re mostly a manufacturing facility but also have lots of engineers and other white-collar support/management.  Different people have different responses:

- It seems like the 45+ crowd doesn’t feel isolated at all.  They regularly use their work email account for personal stuff, and don’t seem to consider their jobs at risk from anything they might do short of forwarding porn.  OTOH, they solidly vote GOP and church is the #1 outside activity followed by school;  I expect most of their emails would read like Pleasantville.

- The under-30 crowd uses smartphones/blackberries and texts/IM/chat/etc.  They are often seen texting on their phones every few minutes.  You can actually tell when you’re talking on the phone to them and a text comes in, they get that “hang on a sec” sound in their voice.

- I’m in my mid-30’s and feel incredibly isolated.  I’m used to email, Usenet, and IRC more than IM and SMS.  I lost non-http protocols so I can’t stay connected to my stuff at home or participate in other communities.  (Well, _I_ can manage it but I try to limit the times I tunnel through the Company Firewall since they could use that against me.)

- The blue collar folks are on 12-hour shifts.  They are generally friends with each other within a 5- to 10-person crew, they use the company phones to call home on their breaks, and they get multiple 3- and 4-day weekends every month.  They don’t seem to feel isolated.

We’ve only had one serious event where people’s use of Internet was inappropriate enough to really warrant action, but that was tied to a culture of rampant racism and sexism combined with dereliction of duty, which was reported to HR and promptly ignored for a decade.  That culture (the racism/sexism part) still pervades the company, but so far has not led to enough monetary losses IMHO to justify the Internet restrictions across the board.

Anyway, I guess to summarize I feel like the Powers That Be alternate between not understanding that the under-40 crowd really needs this stuff; and knowing full well that they are punishing all of us all of the time for the rare abuses that should have been caught through HR long ago.

I’m 40 - I remember as a child watching my best friend’s father working on this new thing called a PC (this would be in the late ‘70s) and then thinking nothing more about it.  I remember brick-sized mobile phones, and the phones in the back of airplane seats that seemed so cool can cost a fortune, and blah, blah, blah, geeze, geeze, geeze.

The fear of the young is always the impetus for “oh noes, civilization is collapsing” bullshit articles, but for me, the ‘nets has opened up a huge community of people who I would never have met in my daily life.  I feel more connected, more aware, and more part of things thanks to technology, and I think it scares the people who can’t keep up because they’re excluded, and more importantly, they can’t control the conversation any more.  That always scares the older generation, but now the divide is really profound - not just music, or language or fashion, but an entire technological culture that they can’t monitor that affects all parts of our lives.

I’m not the chattiest person, and I only have a craptastic Tracfone, but I can’t deny that being able to use my phone anywhere is fantastic.  I no longer have to try and find a public phone or friendly person, I can arrange stuff on the fly, and I’m a Luddite compared to many.  The social networks that now exist are astounding, and I’m waiting with great anticipation for the day when we all tap directly into each others’ minds and become a global hive mind. 

And that scares the PTB.  They can’t indoctrinate people and hide the rest of the world away; workers are now able to see what other companies are offering jobs, kids can get information on all sorts of things on the ‘nets, and you can talk to people in other countries and realize that far from being alien incomprehensible creatures your government wants you to kill to “make the world safe for America”, they’re just like you. 

Oh, hey, the painkillers just kicked in; I’m all rambly. 

The actual problem of isolation is because we live in such a fear culture that people willingly cut themselves off from their community because they’ve been trained to think that Everyone But You is a pederast, a scam artist, or a junkie.  And of course what Amanda was saying about Work/Life being bifurcated.

But I that the desire to blame technology and the internet in particular is because different people place different values on different kinds of intimacy. For some people, the most important form of intimacy is intellectual intimacy—and for people like this, non-face-to-face communication is perfectly good because they find intimacy in the exchange of ideas, and knowing that they are communicating with another person. For some people, the most important form of intimacy is physical—not necessarily sexual, but the intimacy of seeing someone’s face and being able to watch their reactions, or simple touching: hugging, hand-holding, etc. For people who feel that physical intimacy is the cornerstone of intimacy (which, they’re not wrong, they’re just different), the idea of IM and email and facebook is jarring and isolating.

The actual problem of isolation is because we live in such a fear culture that people willingly cut themselves off from their community because they’ve been trained to think that Everyone But You is a pederast, a scam artist, or a junkie.  And of course what Amanda was saying about Work/Life being bifurcated.

The fear culture you mentioned is more than merely a fear of the “unsavory/dangerous element”.  It is also a fear of being harshly judged by others whether it is one’s co-workers, neighbors, friends, or even distant relatives….especially in an increasingly critical world where even the most minor mistakes are being scrutinized and attacked.  With the larger outside world being perceived as hostile by most IME, it is no wonder that there’s a perception that one’s home is supposed to be a sanctuary against that hostile world….though it is really not in many cases if one thinks about it. 

Another thing to consider is that not everyone wants to be available to be contacted 24/7….especially when we’re talking about cell phones.  I’ve lost count of how many people of all age groups who bemoan having endless arguments whenever they attempt to set boundaries on frequency of communication, especially when friends and family members increasingly feel entitled to demand 24/7 access…..even if it is during an inopportune time period such as working through a project with a critical deadline or even in the middle of class.  One thing I’ve noticed with cell phone availability is that there is an increasing expectation that one SHOULD be available to chat 24/7…..even when it is inappropriate and encroaches on the individual’s need to not be THAT AVAILABLE. 

Hence, one reason for the hostility and angst over cell phone use….along with the many examples of rude clueless users who don’t realize that there are certain areas where usage of cell phones to chat/text is inappropriate…..classrooms while class is in session, libraries, and/or theaters while a film/play is in progress.

exholt—That’s a different kettle of fish than simply feeling isolated, that’s self-imposed limits, and I understand them. Cell phones for me are for traveling and emergencies only. My solution was to purchase a prepaid phone that I leave off unless I’m traveling. Our voicemail specifically tells people they can’t reach us at that number most of the time, and if someone calls me on that line “to chat” I point out that it’s a prepaid phone and I don’t have unlimited minutes. I would have to be in pretty dire straights to accept a Blackberry into my life… I find those are the worst offenders because it really is WORK telling you that you have the be available 24/7.

My husband is a high school teacher and cell phones are a HUGE problem because kids use them to cheat on tests. They can text in their pocket without looking and then glance down for answers. He has a “zero tolerance” policy on cell phones, and sometimes it snags kids who were innocently texting mom during a test, but they have to learn the hard way that there are times when cell phones are not acceptable.

I’ve never lived in any other time so it’s hard to compare isolation levels, but I truly think I would have been much more isolated in the times before technology.  I’m not a typical anything, and it’s often hard to find friends who have a lot similar interests.  But because of the internet, I can easily find different groups of people who are interested in each of my hobbies.  For example, I recently moved to a new area.  Using the internet, I found groups for a book club, a knitting group, and D&D;gaming group.  None of the people in those groups likes the other activities.  If I didn’t have the internet, I guess I’d have to hang out with my neighbors and miss out on at least one of those groups that I really like.  I would feel much more isolated if I had to be close to my neighbors but had different interests than them.

As for the rudeness argument, I don’t buy it at all.  People have always been rude.  Those people who now talk on cell phones during a movie would have simply talked to their friends there a few decades ago.  Students who send text messages during class would have passed notes instead.

Another thing to consider is that not everyone wants to be available to be contacted 24/7

I’m one of those people, but I’m not sure why the angst is needed. It’s about setting expectations (I make sure people understand they’re more likely than not to hit voicemail), delivering on promises (I have a well known policy of returning any call within 24 hours max), and allowing for contingencies (if I get 2 calls within an hour or a text, I call back immediately assuming it’s urgent—no-one abuses that option). If someone judges me harshly for setting boundaries that way, that’s his problem.

Given all that, it’s very easy for me to turn off the ringer or set it to vibrate when I’m on a date or in the library or a theatre, and generally use the mobile on my terms (voice calls are the least-used feature on my smartphone).

I took early retirement in 2008 because I realized I wasn’t controlling my internet use at work anymore.  Sure, I was getting enough done that my job was safe, but I was feeling slightly unclean because I was spending so much time on line.  Meanwhile, a number of colleagues were just as guilty of non-attention to work, and NOT getting enough done—which was another source of frustration at work.  SO, I’m happier now that I can spend several hours a day on line, but I’m not sure I agree that there should be total access at work.  There’s a huge difference between lunch/breaks and hours and hours of non-work internet attention.  I’d rather see everyone working 4-6 hours days instead of 8-10 hour days—there’s nothing so wrong about some work/life separation, the problem, it seems to me is that for too many workers there’s only work, no life…

While I don’t dispute the legality or even ethics of companies monitoring (within reason) how employees use their work computers during business hours, I hae to wonder if doing so is worth the cost.

In fact, it’s worth it for a company with 25,000 or more emplyees to pay one person the equivalent of the average salary of a full-time employee to get everyone to slack off five minutes less per day. I’m not sure how that can be done, though, or how many companies are that size.

t-ster (19):

I think it’s absurd to limit things like how much bus drivers talk on their phones in their break times, etc.  But that said, I do think the omnipresence of internet-based distractions/ways to connect with friends has made me less productive. I’d be super annoyed if my workplace blocked facebook or gchat, but I also know I’d get more work done.

I am, honestly, a little confused about what sort of desk job you (implicitly) have that doesn’t require others’ input and has no limit on the usefulness of output. Surely there comes a time when you have no work to do and no one needs anything you produce for the rest of the hour/day/week/etc.?

IOW, context suggests you’re some variety of symbolic analyst; then, it does no harm for you to use Facebook or read Pandagon when and if there are no symbols to analyze.

As for the rudeness argument, I don’t buy it at all.  People have always been rude.  Those people who now talk on cell phones during a movie would have simply talked to their friends there a few decades ago.  Students who send text messages during class would have passed notes instead.

While there were always rude people, technologies such as cell phones has enabled and even encouraged a culture where rude people are not only emboldened, but even feel entitled to be more blatantly rude than in the recent past. 

One good example of this IME is how just a decade ago, talking even in a low volume at many college libraries would prompt the librarian staff to warn you to take it outside and if one insisted on continuing, they’d be more than happy to escort you out and possibly report the misconduct to the college judicial board for further review/punishment.  Moreover, most of the student body would have looked upon that student as an immature inconsiderate jerk who got what s(he) deserved. 

Nowadays, I routinely see university students chatting away on their cell phones or talking at volumes as if they were on a public street.  And unlike a decade ago, when the librarian/security goes up to tell them to take it outside, nearly all of the students at best cop major attitudes and sometimes even throw loud temper tantrums that even toddlers would be hard pressed to match.  It is as if the rude cell phone yakkers feel it is their inalienable right to yak loudly on cell phones regardless of how much it may disturb other students who are trying to conduct research, study, or just read. 

As a result, the same university libraries are much noisier than they were a decade ago. 

Worse, many friends who now TA/teach undergrads also must put up with undergrads who not only text during class, but also feel entitled to yak away on the cell phone in class during the lecture/section discussion.  How one feels entitled to do that….and be supported not only by classmates, but also overbearing helicopter parents who feel their kiddies can do no wrong is beyond me.