“That’s what I mean. I’m asking why you couldn’t bother to send a word of explanation my way. I’m not requesting an apology.”
Toshiya Suzui tried to focus on his computer monitor and wait out the voice coming from the hallway.
An in-progress reminder email for a business partner who’d made an appointment for the next day sat on the screen. It was the kind of message he sent to every partner before each appointment, so the contents were mostly a standardized template; he could write them with his eyes closed. But with that voice in his ear, he found it difficult to get through it, as though he was more likely to make a mistake.
“I mean, how many times has this happened? You always apologize and claim you’ll be careful in the future, but you don’t improve in any meaningful way, so it’s totally pointless to say sorry. What are your thoughts about this? Tell me.”
“I’m sorry,” replied a tiny, meek voice. It was painful to hear, and Suzui could only pretend to concentrate on his screen. I’m not hearing this, I’m not noticing this, he told himself.
There was a loud sigh, which said more than any of the previous words. It sounded louder than the last admonishment, too.
“How did you even handle the work at your last job? What have you been doing with your life?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I just told you…”
My heart hurts.
Suzui likely wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Nearly everyone in this section heard the berating, yet they continued their work in silence. It made Suzui feel like he was taking part in a pattern of bullying.
He looked up and saw his senior coworker, Mutsumi Maruyama, stand from her seat. She crossed the open office and left, not through the door near the desk where the shouting came from, but through the one on the opposite side.
“And didn’t this happen when you took the appointment with Midorimura Market last week? I just warned you the last time, and I didn’t want to have to tell you again. Given the route, you had Akaya before that, so obvious order dictated you hit Miyata Liquor in the same neighborhood, then Midorimura in the adjacent one. That would decrease the travel time. Did that not occur to you when you reviewed this trip in your head? It didn’t even need to be in your head, in fact. You put it down in writing when emailing me, didn’t you? So if you couldn’t have imagined it then—well, at that point, it’s not even imagination, it’s just a lack of consideration, isn’t it? You’re making someone go from one train station to a different one, then back. Personally, I think the power of imagination is no different than kindness and consideration. Am I wrong?”
Suzui caught himself before saying, “There’s no point to rehashing all of that now, is there?” Plus, the order of company visits could be affected by things other than distance, such as when a liaison or manager was available. One station’s travel time wasn’t really worth making such a big deal about.
Suzui glanced over and met the eyes of Hamada, the coworker who occupied the seat ahead of him. His features twisted; he clearly shared the same idea.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the apologetic voice repeated in a lifeless tone. That only made the angry voice louder.
“I’m not asking for apologies. I’m asking for answers. Help me out here. How have you survived to this point?”
Suzui couldn’t take it anymore. He stood, and, like the woman before him, headed for the door farther from his seat and out of the room.
As Suzui suspected, Mutsumi was at the vending machine. She had a can of sweetened milk tea and smiled at Suzui when he approached. “Hi there.”
“Hello,” he answered. She pointed to the machine and asked, “What’s your poison?”
“Oh, it’s okay. I’ll get it myself…”
“Don’t be stubborn. This is about the only chance I get to play the work senior role.”
Mutsumi was forty-three. She had a child in elementary school, so she rarely took part in bar outings and drinking parties with her coworkers. Indeed, she had very few chances to buy Suzui a drink.
Unlike Suzui, who was in his third year at the company, Mutsumi was a longtime veteran, the lead salesperson in Sales Section Two. That made her the number two person after the section chief, but she looked young for her age, and Suzui had been stunned when he learned how old she was. Mutsumi was friendly and generous with new employees, so everyone new to the company treated her warmly and with respect.
Buying Suzui a drink was definitely not the only thing she could do for him. Everyone relied on Mutsumi and looked up to her. She’d helped Suzui on many occasions, and he knew he owed her a great debt.
“Then I’ll have something carbonated. Um, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure thing. This one it is.”
Mutsumi put a coin in the slot and pressed the upper right button on the machine. She even crouched down to get the bottle from the slot.
“Thanks so much,” Suzui said while accepting the drink.
“Guess you couldn’t take much more of Chief Sato, either?” she asked.
Finally, Suzui thought. He was dying to talk about it.
“Nope.”
“I’ve told him so many times that scolding Jin in front of the others is bad for Jin and the rest of us who are forced to listen.”
“Yeah.” Mutsumi fixed Suzui in her gaze. He twisted off the bottle cap and continued, “I heard from Hamada and the others. You warned the chief about it, and he stopped doing it on the floor. But he just moved to the hallway outside. But everyone can still hear him.”
“It’s hilarious that he thinks this is more considerate.” Mutsumi smirked sadly. The remark was obviously meant to be ironic, but it sounded mournful rather than acerbic coming from her.
Suzui didn’t feel like going back to the sales section, because the berating was likely to still be going on. So he went with Mutsumi to a small guest reception space beside the lobby. Fortunately, no one was there, so they sat down together.
He felt depressed.
Had he known that the section chief would tell people off, he would have scheduled some outside meetings for this morning to get out of the office. Now he was stuck here.
“Sometimes I wonder why he doesn’t talk back. But I guess there’s no point. If he makes excuses for himself, it’ll just make the chief angrier.”
“And given his position, Jin can’t really talk back. I think it’s really painful. I want to help somehow; I’ll look for a chance to talk to the chief later. If necessary, I’ll have the department chief talk to him.”
Their employer, Yotsumiya Foods, was a midsize food company. Suzui was a member of Sales Section Two and primarily handled frozen goods.
He had been in the planning division until last year. He had been a science major in college and had applied at the food company hoping to take part in planning and research, which had made his transfer to sales this year an unpleasant shock. The older members at the planning division had told him, “It’s good experience to take part in different sections while you’re young.” However, Suzui wasn’t happy about it. Even worse, his boss in Sales Section Two was Section Chief Sato.
Unlike Suzui, Sato had worked for the company in sales from the start, and he was only forty-one. The company had many longtime employees, but Sato was extremely young for a manager. His shoulders were broad and his voice was loud, giving him the air of an intense athlete. As someone who had come up in the crucible of sales, he probably saw Suzui’s planning background and thought him a weak, useless salesman. Suzui always felt intimidated by him.
Still, he hadn’t outright disliked Sato until he witnessed the way he berated subordinates.
Of all of them, Sato was definitely the hardest on the man he was scolding today, Jin.
Jin had been a part of Sales Section Two since before Suzui transferred in. He had been a midcareer hire at the end of the year before, and he was most likely in his fifties. That meant he was older than the section chief. Maybe such things were common these days, now that the era of absolute by-age seniority had passed. In fact, Suzui had seen many situations like this one in other company divisions. But none of the older subordinates seemed so obviously aged as Jin, in terms of both looks and attitude.
When Suzui first came to Sales Section Two and stepped onto the floor, he saw Jin sitting next to him, closest to the door, where the newest people sat, and done a double take, rude as that was. Jin was a man with plenty of white in his hair and black-rimmed glasses on his nose. His straight-backed posture reminded Suzui of a principal at the morning address in elementary school, and he was stunned to learn that Jin wasn’t a senior manager.
Chief Sato had been the first to call him by the nickname Jin. He’d instructed everyone else to do the same, to help the older man blend in with the rest of the section. Suzui found that rather disconcerting. The idea that you could change how people felt about others with a nickname seemed so old-fashioned and out of date.