lingqi's Journal: July 8th, 2004

July 8th, 2004 (5:02pm)

My company, being japanese, spends quite little on the way of office furniture compared to US companies. For example, I would seriously not ever expect the cube farm of any japanese company (prove me wrong) would shell out the dough for a fleet of Aeron chair like Blue Cross Blue Shield does.

So, consequentially, we have pretty crappy chairs - like very basic fabric office chairs - and managers, being so cool, get the same chairs except with a crappy armrest.

I decided that since I was going to spend 40-50 hours sitting in my cube every week, it would be worthwhile to sit in something comfortable, even if I had to provide it myself. When I came to japan, I brought over my high-back leather executive chair that I grabbed at Office Depot during one of the big sales, and since I was not using it much at home, I decided that it would be perfect to use here in the office.

So last weekend, after contemplating on this for about a month, I finally lugged the chair to my car and brought it over the weekend.

Let's just say that it's not exactly something people do very often (read: never ever) in Japan.

On monday I also was happening to be giving some training to some customers, hence I was recommended to don something formal, a break from my usual slacky dresscode. It also happens that the cube across me, a guy was transfered from Kansai region and was starting work on that monday as well.

So, in the morning, when I was coming in to work and upon seeing me in a suit and my Most Excellent Chair (tm), he said good morning and a bow in the absolutely most... intriging manner: he bowed and then did this ducking out of the way thing, all in respect of my awsome facade of status.

Chicken (cocks, anyway), determine their status / pecking order by gazing upon the crown (the little red piece of meat on top of male chicken's heads). In some respects, humans are actually no better...

That said, after everybody got used to the strange-gaijin-ness, everything is back to normal. Except today one somebody from the head office in shinjyuku came and commented that the CEO's chair isn't even quite grand. Hah! japanese companies really do skimp on the furniture...