Damage Control

I lost my temper at work today.

Let me tell you: As far as I can see, losing one’s temper is just not done in Japan. Anger is not the norm here. Period. Anger is a mark of immaturity here, and so one does not, after a certain age, display anger.

But me? I’m not from here.

I’ll explain:

Last night as I was leaving The Kaisha’s Halloween party and headed for the last train out of Ginza, one of the office staff stopped me on the street and informed me that I would be teaching a private lesson the next day. She had had hours and hours and hours to inform me of this fact but hadn’t bothered to do so until I was leaving work. It was nearing midnight and we were standing on the corner waiting for the light to change so we could cross and she was handing me a work assignment for the next day, a work assignment that she had known about for hours and hours.

I smiled.

I said it was fine and asked her what lesson I was supposed to teach. She didn’t know. I asked her what time the student was coming. She didn’t know. I asked her the student’s name. She didn’t know. I said I’d get there early and prep something to teach this private lesson student.

She squeaked in her little girl’s voice, “Honto? Are you sure? I’m so sorry! Oh, thank you!”

I smiled.

I said goodnight and caught the last train out of Ginza.

The next morning, I arrived at work an hour early. Though I am scheduled in at one p.m., my first class begins at one p.m., so if I want to be prepared each day, I have to come at least an hour earlier. I don’t argue about this. In fact, I rarely mention the time I put in beyond the 29.5 hours that, legally, The Kaisha can ask me to work. The 29.5-hour workweek is, in a good week, a 40-hour workweek. All the unpaid overtime, I just eat as the cost of doing my job well.

I asked again what time the student was coming and she still didn’t know, so she asked the manager and together we found out the student was coming at a very inconvenient time. I had perhaps six things to do in about forty minutes, so I prioritized and got to work. I began by first trying to prepare a lesson for the private student. The lesson he had been promised was from a textbook I had never laid eyes on before. That’s fine. It was a business English text and I don’t usually teach business English and the text was thick with jargon that I had to try to learn enough of to sound knowledgeable about. I tried to focus.

I will tell you that The Kaisha branch I work for sells me. Let me explain that statement: Because I am not the typical college-aged kid, I actually look like an adult. When I am working, I look serious and businesslike and many business people who come in to language schools to learn English want to study with someone like me. However, for what The Kaisha pays? Professionals--even professional-looking people--are out of their price range. The Japanese businesspeople who come in look at what many Eikawas have to offer (which is usually an array of post-college kids in cheap suits) and they think: What am I going to learn from this person? But this is not me. Students, especially the older, more serious students who have some experience in the business world, look at me and think: Ahhh, an adult. Maybe I can learn something from her.

I am not supposing this. I have actually been informed of this by students. I am not guessing that The Kaisha staff sells my this way. I have actually been informed by them that they do. The arriving private lesson student had been sold this version of me, and the expectation was that I would deliver. Because it is part of my responsibility to, shall we say, cash the checks that the staffs’ promises write to students, I try to maintain a professional attitude and to be as well prepared for lessons as is required given that I actually do take my responsibilities seriously. Also, I am well aware (from being continuously informed) that The Kaisha has certain financial responsibilities that they must meet and that I share a part in assisting them in meeting those financial goals. How do I do that? Well, I teach well. I am also aware that students pay a lot of money for my time, so I try to do a good job and to make sure that they consider their money to have been well-spent.

However in addition to that, I hate being forced into a position where there is the potential that I, due to someone else’s incompetence, end up making a fool out of myself

So I tried to focus on prepping a lesson. I asked again for the student’s name. I always ask because, yes, students pay a lot of money for their lessons and I want them to feel as though they are receiving individual attention (and using their name is a good way to make them feel this way), but also I like to rehearse difficult names. I am fairly good about Japanese names, but I know from experience that some of them just don’t stick in my head. (Hidemasa and Yoshimichi and Takayuki and Masataku, for example, took me a while to learn.) I asked the student’s name and she still didn’t know and she tried but couldn’t read his name (which was in kanji) on his file. She said she’d ask someone else.

I smiled.

I prepped two lessons and did a few other chores. She came back about twenty minutes before I was to begin teaching and informed me not of the student’s name but that I had just used the wrong textbook to prep a lesson for the private lesson student.

I smiled.

I asked her which textbook I was supposed to use and she told me and I asked her where it was and she didn’t know. Together we found it. I sat down in the prep room to try to read the unit I was supposed to teach in about twenty minutes and despite the fact that she had just handed me a brand new textbook to prep a lesson for a brand new student, she tried to start up a conversation about the party the night before. I didn’t even have time to look at her disbelievingly.

Instead I smiled.

I made an inane comment and I left the prep room. I headed for an empty classroom to try to spent fifteen minutes reading the lesson. No idiot she, she picked up on the fact that I was a bit angry at her. She followed me down the hall as I was trying to read the textbook which was filled with yet more thick business English and while I tried to concentrate, she did that thing, that thing that women do here, that thing where they turn themselves into little children begging for your forgiveness.

Her voice turned squeaky and she said, “I’m sorry that this is such short notice. Are you sure you don’t mind?” I smiled and said I didn’t mind and I kept reading the text. She asked in an even higher voice, “Honto? Are you sure? Honto? Really? Oh! Thank you so much. Honto? You don’t mind? Honto?”

I assured her that everything was fine.

She said, again in her girly, squeaky voice, “Honto?”

I stopped smiling. I thought: You unintellectual small ill parentage*.

I went into the classroom. Without turning, as I walked into the room, I slammed the door to the classroom shut with my foot and I leaned against the windowsill and proceeded to concentrate on reading the text.

Less than a minute later, the manager opened the door to the classroom and came in. “Blenda, are you okay?” he asked.

I looked up from the text and I smiled at him.

I was angry as hell. I was furious and I had shown it by slamming the door. It was a mistake that, slamming the door. Yes, I had been angry, but in the fraction of a second between my pushing on the door and the door slamming shut, all that anger had shifted from the office staff member (whose ignorance and unprofessionalism apparently knew no bounds) to me. All that anger was now directed inward because slamming the door had been a mistake. It was a mistake and I knew it and I also knew that it might take weeks and weeks to undo the damage my action had done.

I smiled at the manager and I said in a friendly voice, “I’m fine.”

He said, “Honto?”

I kept smiling.

I thought: Do you really want to know the truth?

I kept smiling while I informed him that it was really difficult to prepare a lesson from scratch on such short notice and that it was my considered opinion that the situation had been handled very badly, very unprofessionally by the staff and that, though I was fine, I would very much appreciate it if it would be handled more professionally next time.

He apologized.

I smiled and assured him that it was fine.

He said, “Honto?”

Let me explain this much about the manager’s position as I see it: First, the managers don’t speak very much English. I had been informed (or maybe warned) about this in training, though I would have picked it up anyway. I realized that it’s not often not cluelessness or ignorance that I’m dealing with (as in the States, when one sometimes has to work for a manager who speaks perfectly fluent English and still makes absolutely no sense because they have absolutely no idea what’s going on). In this situation, it wasn’t cluelessness. Well...perhaps it wasn’t entirely cluelessness anyway. Some of it was inexperience, some of it was...something else.

Luckily, my manager is a terrific guy. Hired to run the business end of the English as a business venture in Japan, he’s simultaneously supposed to take charge of a group of people from other countries--people who don’t necessarily understand the Japanese (read: correct) way of doing things. Furthermore, he is supposed to get them to work well together. And finally, he’s supposed to accomplish that task in a language that he doesn’t speak terribly well. That’s not an easy position to be in. I am aware and sympathetic of his position, I mean. But when you add cultural and language barriers to potential cluelessness and inexperience? Things may get ugly fast.

I knew that, given the cultural and language barriers some potential cluelessness and inexperience, even as I expressed my anger, I was wasting my breath. At the time, I didn’t care. Some part of The Brain--The Angry Brain--was momentarily in control, and that part long ago decided that being angry means never having to take responsibility for one’s actions in the moment.

I learned that lesson over a lifetime and so I know it from the inside out. I also know better now.

My manager apologized and said he would do better next time.

I smiled.

He left the room.

That wasn’t the end of being angry. Even as I wrestled The Angry Brain to the ground, we all knew--me and all the demons in the room knew, I mean--that the damage had been done. I knew I had to calm down fast, so I added Calm Down to my list of things to do and went on prepping the lesson.

A few minutes later, the student called to cancel his lesson. My boss actually put him on hold and came to inform me of this fact.

I added another task to my list: Damage control.

I smiled and thanked her for keeping me informed.


*Stolen from Hemingway.