Convenience Store Woman Read online

  The male trainer checked each of us one by one, instructing us to try again if our voices were too quiet or our expressions too stiff. “Miss Okamoto, don’t be so shy. Smile! Mr. Aizaki, speak up a bit! Try again. Miss Furukura, that’s perfect. Nice and spirited—keep it up!” I was good at mimicking the trainer’s examples and the model video he’d shown us in the back room. It was the first time anyone had ever taught me how to accomplish a normal facial expression and manner of speech.

  For the two weeks prior to opening, we worked in pairs to role-play dealing with imaginary customers. We practiced looking the customer in the eye, smiling and bowing, cleaning our hands with alcohol before handling items from the hot-food cabinet, putting hot and cold items into separate bags, and sanitary products into paper bags. The money in the till was real so we would become accustomed to handling it, but the receipts were marked TRAINING in big letters, and our “customers” were our fellow uniformed workers, so it was rather like playing at shop.

  It was fun to see all kinds of people—from university students and guys who played in bands to job-hoppers, housewives, and kids studying for their high school diploma at night school—don the same uniform and transform into the homogenous being known as a convenience store worker. Once the day’s training was over, everyone removed their uniforms and reverted to their original state. It was like changing costumes to become a different creature.

  After two weeks of training, at long last opening day arrived. I arrived at the store in the morning to find the empty white shelves now fully stocked, the tightly packed items looking somehow unreal.

  Finally, it was time. This is the real thing, I thought to myself as the doors opened. Real customers, not the imaginary ones projected in training. And there were all kinds. Being in an office district, I’d had an image of all our customers in business suits or uniforms, but the people waiting outside appeared to be a group of local residents. I watched on in blank amazement as a little old lady walking with a stick came in first, followed by a long stream of customers clutching discount vouchers for rice balls and lunch boxes.

  “Hey, Miss Furukura, don’t forget to greet our customers!” the manager prompted me.

  “Irasshaimasé!” I blurted out, pulling myself together. “Today we are holding a sale to celebrate opening the store. Please look around!”

  Even the set phrases we’d been taught to use sounded completely different now that there were customers in the store.

  I never knew customers could be so loud! Their footsteps echoed and voices rang out as they walked around the store, confectionery packs rustling as they tossed them into their baskets, the refrigerator door clunking open and shut as they took out cold drinks. Overwhelmed by the sheer volume, I kept yelling out “Irasshaimasé!” over and over again.

  The mountain of food and confectionery that was so perfectly displayed it looked artificial soon crumbled under their hands. The store had looked almost fake, but now under their touch it was being vividly transformed.

  The first at the cash register was the same little old lady who had been the first through the door. I stood at the till, mentally running through the manual as she put her basket containing a choux crème, a sandwich, and several rice balls down on the counter.

  All the staff behind the counter straightened as she approached. Aware of their eyes on me, I bowed to her the way I’d learned in training.

  “Irasshaimasé!” I called out in precisely the same tone as the woman in the training video as I pulled the basket toward me and began scanning the bar codes, just as we’d been taught. The manager stood at my side, briskly placing the products in a plastic bag.

  “What time do you open?” she asked.

  “Um, today we opened at ten. From now on we’ll be open all the time!”

  Noting how inept I was at answering questions we hadn’t practiced in training, the manager quickly followed up with: “From now on we shall be open twenty-four hours, seven days a week, year-round. Please come and shop here at your convenience.”

  “Oh my, you’re open at night too? And early in the morning?”

  “Yes,” I told her, nodding.

  “How very convenient! It’s hard for me to walk with my bad hip, you see. The supermarket is so far away. It’s been such a bother,” she said, giving me a smile.

  “Yes, we’ll be open twenty-four hours from now on. Please come at your convenience,” I said, echoing the phrases the manager had used.

  “That’s wonderful. It’ll be hard on you store workers, though.”

  “Thank you!” I said, enthusiastically bowing the way the manager had done.

  The woman laughed and said, “Thank you, I’ll come again,” and moved away from the till.

  “Well done, Miss Furukura,” the manager told me. “That was perfect! You kept your calm, even though it was your first time on the till. Good job, keep it up. Oh look, the next customer!”

  I looked around and saw a man approaching with lots of discounted rice balls in his basket. “Irasshaimasé!” I called in exactly the same tone as before and bowed, then took the basket from him.

  At that moment, for the first time ever, I felt I’d become a part in the machine of society. I’ve been reborn, I thought. That day, I actually became a normal cog in society.

  * * *

  The Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart has remained open ever since that day, its lights on without a break. Sometimes I use a calculator to work out the number of hours that have passed since then. The other day, the store was open on May 1 for the nineteenth time, having been open continuously for 157,800 hours. I’m now thirty-six years old, and the convenience-store-worker-me is eighteen. None of the other workers who did their training with me are here anymore, and we’re now on our eighth manager. Not a single product on sale in the store at that time is left. But I’m still here.

  When I first started here, there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don’t have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual.

  Even now my parents indulgently look on as I remain in the same dead-end job. There were times in my twenties that I felt sorry for them and went through the motions of applying for career positions, but having only ever had the same job I rarely even passed the screening selection. And even if I made it to an interview I couldn’t explain very well why I had spent so many years working there.

  Sometimes I even find myself operating the checkout till in my dreams. I wake up with a start, thinking: Oh! This new line of crisps is missing a price tag, or, We’ve sold a lot of hot tea, so I’d better restock the display cabinet. I’ve also been woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of my own voice calling out: “Irasshaimasé!” When I can’t sleep, I think about the transparent glass box that is still stirring with life even in the darkness of night. That pristine aquarium is still operating like clockwork. As I visualize the scene, the sounds of the store reverberate in my eardrums and lull me to sleep.

  When morning comes, once again I’m a convenience store worker, a cog in society. This is the only way I can be a normal person.

  * * *

  I arrive at the Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart every morning at eight. My shift is from nine, but I come early to have breakfast before starting. I pick up a two-liter bottle of mineral water, select a sandwich or bun close to its sell-by date, pay for them, and take them into the back room to eat.

  In the back room, the security camera in the store is relayed on a big screen. This morning Dat-kun, a Vietnamese guy new on the night shift, was frantically working the till, while the manager ran around keeping one eye on him. I gulped down my sandwich, ready to change into my uniform and rush out to help at any moment.

  For breakfast I eat convenience store bread, for lunch I eat convenience store rice balls with something from the hot-food cabinet, and after work I’m often so tired I just buy something from the store and take it home for dinner. I drink about half the bottle of water while I’m at work,
then put it in my ecobag and take it home with me to finish at night. When I think that my body is entirely made up of food from this store, I feel like I’m as much a part of the store as the magazine racks or the coffee machine.

  After breakfast, I check the weather forecast and go over the store’s data. The weather forecast is a vital source of information for a convenience store. The difference in temperature from the previous day is an important factor. Today will have a high of 21°C and low of 14°C. It will be cloudy, with rain forecast in the evening, when it will feel cooler.

  On hot days sandwiches sell briskly, whereas on cold days rice balls, meat dumplings, and buns are more popular. The sale of food from the counter cabinets also varies according to the temperature. In our branch, croquettes sell well on cold days. Today there also happened to be a sales promotion running on them, so we should make a lot of them, I noted to myself.

  The other day-shift staff always start arriving about now, just after eight thirty, when the door opens and a husky voice calls out: “Morning!” It is Mrs. Izumi, our trusty supervisor. She’s a housewife, one year older than me at age thirty-seven, and rather stern, but she’s an efficient worker. She’s a rather flashy dresser and changes out of her high heels into sneakers by her locker.

  “Early again today, Miss Furukura? Oh, that’s one of those new buns, isn’t it? What’s it like?” she asked, her eyes settling on the mango-chocolate bun in my hand.

  “The cream tastes weird, and it smells a bit strong, which is quite off-putting. It’s not very nice, actually.”

  “Really? Oh dear, the manager ordered a hundred of them. Well, let’s at least try to sell the ones that arrived today.”

  “Hai!”

  By far most of the store workers are university students or job-hoppers, and it’s unusual for me to work with a woman my age.

  Mrs. Izumi tied her hair back and put on a white shirt and light blue tie over her navy-blue jersey blouse. When the current owner took over, he made us all start wearing a shirt and tie under our uniforms, although it was never the rule before. She was checking her appearance in the mirror when Sugawara came flying in calling out: “Good morning!”

  Sugawara is twenty-four, a loud and cheerful type. She’s a singer in a band and goes on about wanting to dye her short hair red. She’s a bit plump and not without a certain charm, but often used to be late and was frequently scolded by the manager for wearing earrings at work. Thanks to Mrs. Izumi’s forthright manner of scolding and educating her, however, she now takes her job much more seriously and is an enthusiastic member of staff.

  Also on the day shift are Iwaki, a tall and lanky university student, and job-hopper Yukishita, who’s now found a proper job and will be leaving soon. Iwaki has also said he’ll be looking for a job and will have to take more days off, so the manager thinks he’ll either have to come back to the day shift or employ someone new if the store is to keep running smoothly.

  My present self is formed almost completely of the people around me. I am currently made up of 30 percent Mrs. Izumi, 30 percent Sugawara, 20 percent the manager, and the rest absorbed from past colleagues such as Sasaki, who left six months ago, and Okasaki, who was our supervisor until a year ago.

  My speech is especially infected by everyone around me and is currently a mix of that of Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara. I think the same goes for most people. When some of Sugawara’s band members came into the store recently they all dressed and spoke just like her. After Mrs. Izumi came, Sasaki started sounding just like her when she said, “Good job, see you tomorrow!” Once a woman who had gotten on well with Mrs. Izumi at her previous store came to help out, and she dressed so much like Mrs. Izumi I almost mistook the two. And I probably infect others with the way I speak too. Infecting each other like this is how we maintain ourselves as human is what I think.

  Outside work Mrs. Izumi is rather flashy, but she dresses the way normal women in their thirties do, so I take cues from the brand of shoes she wears and the label of the coats in her locker. Once she left her makeup bag lying around in the back room and I took a peek inside and made a note of the cosmetics she uses. People would notice if I copied her exactly, though, so what I do is read blogs by people who wear the same clothes she does and go for the other brands of clothes and kinds of shawls they talk about buying. Mrs. Izumi’s clothes, accessories, and hairstyles always strike me as the model of what a woman in her thirties should be wearing.

  As we were chatting in the back room, her gaze suddenly fell on the ballet flats I was wearing. “Oh, those shoes are from that shop in Omotesando, aren’t they? I like that place too. I have some boots from there.” In the back room she speaks in a languid drawl, the end of her words slightly drawn out. I bought these flats after checking the brand name of the shoes she wears for work while she was in the toilet.

  “Oh really? Wait, do you mean those dark blue ones you wore to the shop before? Those were cute!” I answered, copying Sugawara’s speech pattern, but using a slightly more adult tone. Her speech is a rather excitable staccato, the exact opposite of Mrs. Izumi’s, but mixing the two styles works surprisingly well.

  “We’ve got quite similar tastes, haven’t we? I like your bag too,” Mrs. Izumi said with a smile.

  It’s only natural that my tastes would match hers since I’m copying her. I’m sure everyone must see me as someone with an age-appropriate bag and a manner of speech that has a perfect sense of distance without being reserved or rude.

  “Mrs. Izumi, were you in yesterday?” Sugawara called out loudly as she changed by the lockers. “The stock of ramen noodles is in a total mess!”

  “Yes, I was here. It was all right in the afternoon, but that kid on the night shift didn’t turn up again so it must have been the new guy, Dat-kun.”

  Pulling up the zip on her uniform as she came over to us, Sugawara pulled a face. “What, he left us in the lurch again? I can’t believe it! He knows how short-staffed we are right now. No wonder the store’s falling apart. There aren’t any drink cartons out there at all and it’s the morning rush!”

  “I know. It’s awful, isn’t it? The manager says he’ll have to stick to the night shift. He’s only got new people on it at the moment.”

  “We’re already having to manage without Iwaki on the day shift since he’s taking so much time off for job interviews. What are we going to do? If people want to leave that’s fine, but they should make sure they give enough notice. Otherwise they’re just making things difficult for the rest of us.”

  Hearing the two of them speak with such feeling, I felt a twinge of anxiety. There wasn’t a trace of anger in my body. I stole a glance at Sugawara and tried to mimic the way she moved her facial muscles as she spoke, the same way I did in training, and parroted, “Really, he left us in the lurch again? I can’t believe he’d do that knowing how short-staffed we are.”

  Mrs. Izumi laughed as she removed her watch and rings.

  “Ha ha ha! You’re really worked up about it, aren’t you Miss Furukura? But you’re right. It’s really not okay.”

  I’d noticed soon after starting the job that whenever I got angry at the same things as everyone else, they all seemed happy. If I went along with the manager when he was annoyed or joined in the general irritation at someone skiving off the night shift, there was a strange sense of solidarity as everyone seemed pleased that I was angry too.

  Now, too, I felt reassured by the expression on Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara’s faces: Good, I pulled off being a “person.” I’d felt similarly reassured any number of times here in the convenience store.

  Mrs. Izumi looked at the clock and announced, “Well then, time for our morning practice session.”

  “Okay.”

  The three of us stood in a row and started our morning routine. Mrs. Izumi opened the report book and informed us of the day’s goals and matters to be attended to.

  “Today’s special is the mango-chocolate bun. Let’s all remember to keep announcing it. Also, it’s cleanl
iness crackdown time. Lunchtime is busy, but even so let’s be diligent about keeping the floor, windows, and the area around the door clean. We’re running out of time, so I’ll just trust you to get on with it. Well then, let’s practice our phrases, shall we? All together, repeat after me: Irasshaimasé!”

  “Irasshaimasé!”

  “Certainly. Right away, sir!”

  “Certainly. Right away, sir!”

  “Thank you for your custom!”

  “Thank you for your custom!”

  We three repeated in unison the phrases we used with customers, checked our appearance, and one by one filed into the store calling out “Irasshaimasé!” as we went. I was the last to rush through the office door.

  “Irasshaimasé! Good morning!”

  I love this moment. It feels like “morning” itself is being loaded into me. The tinkle of the door chime as a customer comes in sounds like church bells to my ears. When I open the door, the brightly lit box awaits me—a dependable, normal world that keeps turning. I have faith in the world inside the light-filled box.

  * * *

  My days off are Friday and Sunday, and on Fridays I sometimes go to see a friend who is now married and lives in the area we grew up in.

  At school I’d been so intent on not speaking that I didn’t make any friends, but later on after I’d already started working, I got to know her after going to an alumni reunion.

  “Wow, Furukura, you look totally different!” Miho had told me cheerfully at that reunion, then went on to comment excitedly how we both had the same bag in different colors. “We should really go shopping together sometime.” And so we exchanged e-mail addresses and from time to time meet up for lunch or to go shopping.

  After Miho married, she and her husband bought a secondhand house where she now often holds little parties with her friends. There are times when I feel like it’s too much bother, knowing I have to work the next day. But it’s the only connection I have to the world outside the convenience store and a precious opportunity to mingle with “normal” women my age, so I usually accept her invitations. Today there was Yukari and her young child, and Satsuki, who was married but still childless, and we had all brought cakes along to have with tea.