(3-9) The Manager's Days ③ Turning Point [ Autobiography of a 45-year-old 2016 ]

A nostalgic feeling

　The Machida store after several years had become a casual pasta shop, and its registration had moved from the coffee shop business to the restaurant business. The exterior and interior had not changed much, but the kitchen equipment had been significantly altered, making it possible to serve simple dishes. In terms of atmosphere, it was close to the European-style restaurant I was first in charge of when I joined the restaurant business, but looking at the numbers, the Machida store was struggling and not making a profit.

　First, I have to make it profitable... It was natural to think that. And to that end, I started by trying to regain the joy of customer service myself, and by trying to develop an attachment to the store. Specifically, I started by removing the seeds of customer inconvenience and dissatisfaction, and since I didn't mind it looking handmade, I increased the number of handwritten POPs and menus, and taught the employees the joy of making customers happy, doing things I thought were good for the store from an early stage. As a result, the number of regular customers began to increase, and after a few months, we began to make a profit, albeit little by little. I was able to feel closer to the customers, and I seemed to gradually remember the joy of customer service.

・　・　・　・　・　・

Open and Close

　One day, I received a call from headquarters saying they wanted to interview me about what could be done to increase the profits of the Machida store. The manager said, "I'm looking into various things too, but for the sake of the company's profits, I'm counting on your own research and views!"

　I cleared my head and thought about various things, such as the store's location, how the company could make more profit, the average customer spend, turnover rate, customer demographics, and an analysis of nearby competitors. As a result, I concluded that even if the average customer spend dropped slightly and the cost of goods sold increased, changing the business format to a standing-only soba noodle shop that could expect more customers than now, or a standing bar targeting salarymen on their way home, would be the best strategy.

　When I told the manager this, he seemed a little surprised that a manager on the front lines would propose a change in business format, saying, "Hey, don't you have any attachment to the store?." Of course, I had a strong attachment to the store, but if we wanted a form that could continue and expect more profit than now, I felt that sticking to this business format wouldn't solve anything, and considering the resources and know-how the company as a whole possessed, this business format change proposal didn't seem that unreasonable.

　A few days later, I received a call from headquarters saying, "We'll be conducting a pedestrian traffic survey in front of the store for a while." I immediately felt, "Ah, it's started...." Recently, the pasta shop had been making a profit, but it wasn't operating profit. It was natural for the company to shore up unprofitable stores, and we could only watch to see what decision they would make based on the survey.

　Half a month after the survey ended, the manager wryly smiled and said, "It turned out just as you said! You gave the store its final rites!." In the end, it was decided that the Machida store would change its business format to a standing soba noodle shop. The company's subsequent movements were swift. Without waiting for the end of the fiscal year, the Machida pasta shop was closed less than a month after the decision. It is a strange thing, by some fate, that I ended up experiencing both the opening and closing of the Machida store.

　The day before the handover, the store, which had been emptied after all the cleaning up, looked as if it had returned to a newborn baby, and also looked like a dead person dressed in white. It had become a blank slate. When I turned off the last light and it became pitch black, the lights of cars passing outside flickered lonely into the store.

　Coincidentally, the person who came to help on the last day of the Machida store was that manager one year my junior who was a newcomer at the time, who had taken over the Shinjuku NS Building branch after me. That night, the two of us went out for a drink, and perhaps because we had a similar sense of things, we talked about nostalgic stories without reserve, about our attachment to the store and our work, about our bosses, about the limits of being a company employee, and about whether we would become cogs in the company to protect our families... and the cheap alcohol flowed more than expected.

・　・　・　・　・　・

Transfer to the Stand Coffee Business

After the Machida store closed, I was in a state of limbo for a while, essentially a manager without a store to manage. During that time, I was assigned odd jobs, such as helping out at stores that were short-staffed or assisting the manager. Even though I had always had a store to go to every day and subordinates and staff around me, once those responsibilities were suddenly gone, I felt my energy draining away. As that state continued for ten days without any clear path forward, I began to think I might be dead weight to the company, and the scenery at the places I went to help out began to look hollow and gray.

Before long, an official notice of transfer was issued. It was a transfer to the stand-up coffee business. I had not expected this at all, and I was shocked. It was something I honestly didn't feel motivated about, due to the dissatisfaction of customer service that ended in just an instant, and a sense of aversion to the fact that the business seemed to function without needing a high level of customer service awareness. As the reality of leaving the table service I had loved doing set in, I felt a somewhat distorted sensation that this is the same as a demotion....

However, the feeling that I am an employee of this company was what directed me to the new workplace. At the same time, the thought that I have to protect my family was also working significantly in the background. And gradually, as if to avoid looking aside from anything other than that, I seemed to be trying to neutralize this bad feeling by forcibly re-awakening my awareness as a salaryman.

・ ・ ・ ・ ・ ・

An Unfamiliar Workplace

The new stand-up coffee shop I was assigned to was inside Shinjuku Station. Being inside a station meant dealing with the railway company, which brought a different kind of tension than department stores or station buildings. One of my subordinates was a male employee the same age as me, and the rest were mostly young part-timers around 20 years old. The atmosphere was somewhat insensitive and flighty, as if I were peeking into a high school classroom. Yet, the work itself was simple, and even when the regular employee was absent, the store seemed to operate without any problems at first glance. I felt an unpleasant sense of discomfort with this somewhat shallow service, which was different from table service.

On the other hand, this workplace prioritized work efficiency more than I had imagined. That was something the company already possessed as know-how. And this series of simple tasks was something that even a high school student could handle well enough once they adapted. Therefore, at this workplace, whether one was a regular employee or a part-timer was not very important, and age and gender were completely irrelevant; the speed and accuracy of the work were the most important yardsticks, rather than customer service awareness.

However, as the manager, I came to understand various things by experiencing this stand-up coffee shop. It was that the high-turnover, low-margin style that had driven the Machida store to closure could generate enormous profits if the number of customers was secured, that thorough efficiency was necessary for that profit pursuit, and especially that, in the end, the quality of staff coordination affected sales and profits. Also, since drinks were the main product, it was possible to keep the overall cost of goods sold relatively low, and it did not require as much labor cost as table service; in reality, it was a very well-crafted system that generated significant profits.

Looking back, the stand-up coffee business, including this store, was the backbone supporting the company and one of its substantial pillars. Thinking that, although I had assumed it was a demotion on my own, I began to think little by little that it might have been a promotion depending on how you look at it... and when I thought that it was effectively supporting the ups and downs of the flagship restaurant business, I felt like I could move forward, and my feelings seemed to lighten somewhat.

When I stood in the actual workplace, I still found that flighty, insensitive atmosphere of the store to be bothersome. With an early staff turnover in mind, I increased my conversations with the staff even during business hours to get to know each of them better. Then, I saw that there were factions in this store, and in fact, the staff were more at odds with each other than I had thought. Also, there was a female leader who was fast at her work, but I found out that other staff members were feeling stressed by her strong words and one-sided labeling. And to solve various problems, I had to first remove her influence; it was very painful, but I did things I hadn't done much before, such as letting her go. At the same time, I tried hiring a woman who had some life experience, was somewhat younger than me, and could bridge the age gap between the other young part-timers and myself. This turned out to be a great success for the store. After that, by hiring several staff members with similar conditions, the flighty, insensitive atmosphere of the store was resolved.

From then on, I started working on improving staff motivation. It started with me demonstrating the attitude toward customers myself, and while conveying that thought to the staff, I made sure to give them responsibility and pay attention to them. As I gained some breathing room, I began to find value in the fleeting interactions with customers. There was a part of me that wanted to incorporate the customer service sense of table service into that. And the atmosphere of the store gradually improved.

Drinking parties with the staff also increased, and if I conveyed what I was thinking to the regular employees and main staff, that content was immediately passed on to the other staff as well. The intense busyness of the rush hour, unique to a store inside a station, became a very pleasant time for the staff who were in tune with each other. I was seeing the store moving organically, like a living thing, for the first time in a while. Yes, the store is getting better... However, I still felt a sense of dissatisfaction somewhere. It wasn't about the store, but actually about myself.

It was largely because my thoughts on table service, which had been forcibly separated from me when I transferred to the stand-up coffee business, even if it was an official transfer, were still not satisfied. When I thought about whether I would continue with stand-up coffee forever, table service felt distant, and I had a feeling as if a hole had opened in my chest. And when I thought about whether I would remain a cog in the company's machine for the rest of my life after passing 30, I felt as if my potential was being nipped in the bud, and I was suddenly driven by a sense of impatience as if my life had ended. Then, the dreams I had envisioned before began to bubble up, and even though I had no leads yet, I began to think about quitting the company, and I consulted my father about whether there was any work where I could make use of myself.

The continuation is in the following article.

The previous article is...

The first article of this autobiography is...

About this article

In October 2016, at the age of 45, I compiled my life up to that point into an autobiography. I titled it Living Naturally, Dying Naturally: One Ordinary Person's Light Illuminating a Corner. This "Living naturally, dying naturally" is a phrase said to have been uttered by pre-war Prime Minister Koki Hirota to the Buddhist scholar and chaplain Shinsho Hanayama during the Tokyo Trials. In my early 20s, I was engrossed in reading many of Saburo Shiroyama's historical novels. I was particularly moved by "Rakujitsu Moyu (The Setting Sun Burns)," which featured Koki Hirota as the protagonist, and I felt I saw true strength as a human being in the figure of Koki Hirota, who did not defend himself from beginning to end and sought to fulfill his duty by accepting his conviction. The title of my autobiography is an expression of my admiration for Koki Hirota, and I have set it for myself as a guideline until I enter the afterlife.

The number in parentheses at the beginning of the article title, e.g., (1-1), is the reference number in "Living Naturally, Dying Naturally: One Ordinary Person's Light Illuminating a Corner." Thank you very much for reading this far. I would be happy if you would continue to accompany me. I sincerely wish everyone happiness.