My Labor History ①

The cat in the header image is a cat that was always at the bicycle parking lot near my part-time job at the time. Cute, right?

The Beginning of Labor

This is a story from a little while ago.
When I was in junior college, I was working all the time.

While attending the childcare department, I juggled one-off part-time jobs and a main part-time job at the same time, and on my days off, I would cram in even more one-off jobs.
After quitting the variety store, I started working at an izakaya, and whenever I heard they were short-handed, I would go in to work quite often.
Around me, I tried to act as if I was always having fun with just a little bit of part-time work.


Looking back now, even I think, "That much?"

But back then, I felt relieved when my schedule book was completely blacked out.

When I'm working, I feel like I'm doing things properly.

Even if my future isn't decided,
even if I don't know who I'm going to become,
at least I have "things to do today."

Just that makes the world feel a little bit better.

To be honest, I also wanted money.
But what I wanted even more than that
was "a reason not to have to be at home."

Living with my parents, even as a college student, I had a curfew and couldn't go out without a reason.
At the time, the light music club at the neighboring university was my sanctuary, and I would often stay out overnight.
So I mass-produced reasons.

"I have a part-time job today."
This one sentence was almost like magic.

My mother used to say,

"Even if nothing is decided now, it will be okay eventually."
And then she would start telling stories about her own hardships when she was young.

I don't want to blame my mother.
She must have been anxious, too.

But for me, "where I am tonight" was more urgent than "eventually."

So I worked. And I interacted with people other than my family.

Because while I'm working, I don't have to think about myself.

What will I do in the future?
Will I really become a childcare worker?
Can I become a proper adult?

Those kinds of questions don't come up while I'm working the register.
When I repeat the same lines during product demonstrations, my thoughts fade, and if I stand on a factory line, I just move my body.

One-off part-time jobs were like thought-stopping devices.

And sometimes, if you work, you get praised.

"You saved me."
"You're so diligent."
"When can you come in next?"

Those words affirmed me more than any words I heard at home.

More than the me who was lost about the future at junior college,
the me who was a "useful person" on the job site was affirmed.

So I increased my shifts.

Being needed by others = having value as a person,
that kind of feeling.

Thinking about it now, it's pretty dangerous, isn't it?
But I still have that feeling now.

The me back then could only maintain myself by working or by spending that money on friends or at restaurants.

Part-time jobs don't just give you money.
They give you "today's role."

That was what I needed at the time.

Daily Changing Personality

I did a lot of one-off part-time jobs, but my aptitude for them was clear.

First, the high-consciousness apparel industry.

"I want you to understand the brand concept."
"Customer service is about making proposals."

There were even stores that made me practice vocalization.
Sales targets.
Brand philosophy.

I felt a bit suffocated by that "intensity."

Of course, I like clothes.
But when I entered a group of people who were betting their lives on selling clothes, I felt shallow.

While smiling and saying, "That color looks great on you!"
I was the me who was thinking in the back of my head, "It's only for today."

Playing a "temporary person" among people who were serious was quite exhausting.

I also did inventory.

In the store after closing, just counting products.
Numbers.
Barcodes.
Silence.

That is a quiet battlefield.
Halfway through, the numbers started to look like gibberish to me.

I seemed focused but wasn't, moving my hands mindlessly.


The factory line was the same.
Repeating the same movement hundreds of times.
Accuracy is life.
Speed is also required.

It seems I'm not good at surrendering myself to a constant rhythm for a long time.

It's not that I hate simple tasks,
but "a day that ends without talking to anyone" was tough.

I realized that when I was handing out tissues in front of the station.

Most people ignore you.
They don't even make eye contact.
You feel like an invisible person.

But one day,
an elderly woman stopped.

"It's tough even though it's cold, isn't it?"
And she gave me some candy.

Just that.

She didn't listen to the explanation of the campaign.
Just a word that saw me as a "person."
At that moment, the depths of my chest felt warm.

Oh, I like this, I thought.

Not selling products, not matching numbers,
but "connecting with people."

The reception at a real estate exhibition was the same.

Couples come to see their future home.
They write their names with slightly nervous faces.

A role where I just say, "Thank you."

But when our eyes meet for a moment,
and they reply, "Thank you for your help today," I feel like
I am properly "there."

The haunted house at the Aeon Mall during summer vacation is the same.

When laughter mixes in after the screams,
I think, ah, I did my job properly now.

There was a time when I wanted to be a cog in society, but
I couldn't become a completely inorganic object.

The discomfort I felt during inventory and at the factory
is probably that.

I felt that product demonstrations or event staff were more fun, and I felt something was missing without human reactions.

I felt a little lonely when ignored,
and happy when spoken to.

While repeating one-off jobs,
I also did a mountain of jobs I wasn't suited for.

But thanks to that, one thing became clear.

I like interacting with people.

It doesn't have to be deep.
A moment is fine.
"Thank you."
"You helped me."
"I'm glad you were here."

Just by having that exchange,
I feel like I properly exist.

One-off jobs were a daily changing personality.

But within that,
I could see the outline of my unchanging self a little bit.

I prefer people over machines.

That discovery, though small,
would gradually change how I chose part-time jobs from then on.

First Customer Service Part-Time Job

The one that continued throughout the one-off jobs was the variety store.

A store where I applied with a friend from junior high school and
we were both hired.
At that time, the tension was light, like "We both got in! Lucky!", but before I knew it, I ended up getting the most sense of working during my student days.

That store wasn't what you'd call high-consciousness.
We weren't pressured by sales targets.
We didn't recite philosophies at morning assembly.

But if you ask if it was easy, it wasn't really.

The products we handled were all low unit price items.
Accessories, stationery, small interior goods.

In other words, turnover rate is life.

It wasn't a store where one customer buys over 3,000 yen,
but a store where many people pile up a few hundred yen.

Weekdays were relatively calm.

While standing at the register,
I'd have a little small talk,
straighten the shelves, and learn the locations of products.

"This is a gift, can you do wrapping?"
There are days when a conversation starts with that one sentence.

Ah, it was a time when I could think that I really do like talking to people.

But Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays were a different world.

People flowed in right after opening.
A small line waiting for the register.
When gift wrapping piled up, a mountain of paper, bags, bubble wrap, and ribbons.
Shelves where restocking couldn't keep up.

Honestly, there were days when it wasn't even about customer service.

"Give me a bag."
"Separate payments."
"Actually, make it electronic money."

I was doing my best just to process what was in front of me.

Because the unit price is low, speed is required.
There's no room to wait slowly for customers who are hesitating.
In that busyness, I first learned the "feeling of running a store as a team."

Calling out to each other, knowing what to do next.
If someone starts wrapping, someone else follows up at the register.
If inventory decreases, I run to restock without even saying a word.

It was especially like that during seasonal events.
Christmas and New Year's.
Mother's Day and Valentine's Day.

The store was a little excited with decorations,
the customers' faces also looked somewhat happy,
and because of that, the busyness doubled.

After closing, on days when we were lucky enough to close the register with two people,
I liked the time when we would laugh and say, "Today was crazy, huh?"

One-off part-time jobs are "only for today."
But the variety store piles up.
There were even rare regular customers who remembered my face.

"The gift you recommended last time was well received."
With that one sentence, hours of register work were rewarded.

Here, I learned the difference between "days when it wasn't even about customer service" and
"days when I could properly provide customer service."

When swept away by busyness, it becomes a task.
When there is a little margin, it becomes an interaction with people.

And I clearly understood that I prefer "moments when I can be a person" over tasks.

The variety store wasn't flashy, but
it was a small social study tour.

Just like piling up low-priced products,
I gradually learned the feeling of how to work.

Ah, I am probably
suited for "sites where I interact with people."

It was this variety store where that conviction gradually grew.

First Food and Beverage Job

Having started to think, "Maybe I'm suited for customer service" at the variety store, I was getting quite carried away.

I like talking to people, and I can make a smile.

I really did have the motivation, you know.
It was an izakaya I entered with a slightly stretched feeling, thinking, "Next is food and beverage."

But once I stood there, the atmosphere was completely different from the customer service I had done before.
A world where people get drunk is difficult just because of that.

People whose voices get loud.
People who suddenly get too close.
People who do some minor sexual harassment.

The store wasn't large, and the unit price was high, so it rarely got chaotic, but even so, it was a completely different sport from "sober customer service."

If customer service at the variety store was "soft dialogue,"
the izakaya felt like a "sport of instant power and judgment."

The manager/owner was someone who had been in food and beverage his whole life.
His voice was low, his instructions were precise, and he was merciless.

For me, who had only had female bosses until then,
the existence of a male boss was also a first.

Every time I was scolded, I thought.

Ah, I'm still just a brat.
It was too early for me to become a working adult.

Why am I being scolded so much?
It must be because I'm inefficient.
I thought I was doing it properly—I thought that "intention" was wrong.
At that time, I hadn't yet realized that there was an option other than blaming myself.

There were times when I was late because of overlapping practical training,
and times when I got sick and took time off.

Thinking about it now, there were certainly parts where I was soft on myself.
Maybe I was protecting myself somewhere by saying, "It can't be helped because I'm a student."

But the me back then
couldn't properly separate and think about what was immature, what was due to the environment, and what was just a lack of experience.

In a way, it was easier to lump it all together and think, "I'm no good."
Because the reason is summarized into one.

I had taken customer service too lightly.
I finally learned here that there is a world that doesn't work just by liking to talk to people.

Even while being scolded, I didn't hate the moments of facing people.

Although I hadn't yet been able to give words to that fact.

And after a while, I thought I wasn't suited for food and beverage, so I left for a while.

First Full-Time Employee Job

In the latter half of junior college, I had already decided not to become a childcare worker.
The gap between the childcare at my training site and the childcare perspective I cultivated in class made me hate standing in the field.
I hadn't told my parents, but in my heart, it was already a decided matter.

What I chose after graduating was a full-time position at a variety store.
The moment it was decided, I quit the izakaya.


That store was one of the tenants in a building with several stores, and it dominated the entire floor.
It was a store that had apparel, cafes, interior goods, cosmetics, and even sweets, a bit neat and a bit "proper."

I went to the opening briefing with my resume, had a light interview, and it was decided soon after.
I'm really lucky in strange places.

Because it was decided so easily,
I remember feeling a little let down, thinking, "Oh, am I a working adult now?"

The reason was simple.
I wanted stability.
And at that time, I wanted to stop my parents' nagging.
My mother, who was worried about me being a freeter with an izakaya and one-off jobs without becoming a childcare worker even after quitting the childcare department, was finally able to be relieved on the surface.

Social insurance.
Monthly salary system.
"Full-time employee."

Just with that sound, the air in the house softened a little.
My mother was deeply relieved.
I, too, was "pretending" to be relieved.

But I realized it as soon as I started working.

Working from morning to night is this long, huh?

It's completely different from the freedom of evening shifts and one-off jobs in my student days.
Shifts are fixed, responsibility is always there.
There is no "I'll pass today."

It wasn't that freedom disappeared, but
it felt like "there was nowhere to escape."


And I was put in charge of the cosmetics booth.

Asking about skin type and preferences, making proposals,
and having them say, "I'll take that."

While working desperately, I gained regular customers.
When they said, "I wanted to ask you,"
I could think, ah, I am properly here.

There were also people who came to say that, aiming for the days I was there, saying, "The recommendation from last time was good, so I'll repeat it."
That moment was truly happy.

My confidence in customer service gradually piled up.

The period of looking for "jobs I'm not suited for" was over,
and I was starting to find "moments I'm suited for."
But the human relationships in the workplace were a different matter.

Everyone except the manager was female.

A nasty atmosphere like an all-girls school.
There was definitely malice.

And the discomfort of that belly-probing.
Even when you become a proper adult, there are people who look down on people who are easy to talk to, you know...

I've always been good at adapting to people.


Or rather, maybe I've lived my life trembling while watching people's faces.
I had given up on expressing my opinions, and at the same time, thinking it was useless to say anything and not wanting to be on the same level, I stayed silent and

I was in the position of an "easy person to talk to."
(Even now, there are times when that's the case depending on the workplace)
I had to do that every day in a workplace like an all-girls school.

Time is long.

I was happy about the monthly salary system at first, too.

But in a month when unreasonable overtime continued,
I happened to calculate it.
If I convert this to an hourly wage, isn't it in the 800 yen range?

Wait, I'm supposed to be stable.
What was stability again?
Taxes were deducted in addition to social insurance, which was supposed to be a source of peace of mind, and the money left in my hand was frankly about 100,000 yen.
Full-time employee = correct answer.

I wanted to think so.
But somewhere, I was always hanging in the air.

I, who had quit food and beverage as if running away,

was now clinging to being a "full-time employee."
It seemed like I was approaching the working adult I had imagined,

but I felt a sense of discomfort somewhere.
I entered thinking, "I can do it here," but

before I knew it, I was being gradually worn down by human relationships and low wages.
And I

quit 5 months before I would have received a bonus.
It's not rational, is it?

But I just couldn't endure those 5 months.
My physical strength was more important than stability.

My boss tried to stop me. I think he said something about job satisfaction or something.

You can't eat with just that.

In the end, maybe I hadn't yet chosen the "correct answer," or
maybe I was properly "re-choosing for myself."

By becoming a full-time employee, I learned for the first time.

The peace of mind of being normal and
the suffocation of being bound by being normal
are two sides of the same coin, aren't they?

And again, I move.

Part-time jobs are not an escape.
Full-time employment is not a goal.

Labor is, more than a title,
about how you can breathe in that place.



To be continued