53 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
53 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
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Japan's Got Us Beat
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in the Service Department, Too
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by Hilary Hinds Kitasei
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My husband and I bought one souvenir the last time we were in Tokyo --
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a Sony compact disk player. The transaction took seven minutes at the
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Odakyu Department Store, including time to find the right department
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and to wait while the salesman filled out a second charge slip after
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misspelling my husband's name on the first.
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My in-laws, who were our hosts in the outlying city of Sagamihara, were
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eager to see their son's purchase, so he opened the box for them to see
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the next morning. But when he tried to demonstrate the player, it
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wouldn't work. We peered inside. It had no innards! My husband used the
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time until the Odakyu would open at 10:00 to practice for the rare
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opportunity in that country to wax indignant. But at a minute to 10:00
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he was pre-empted by the store ringing us.
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My mother-in-law took the call, and had to hold the receiver away from
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her ear against the barrage of Japanese honorifics. Odakyu's vice
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president was on his way over with a new disk player.
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A taxi pulled up 50 minutes later and spilled out the vice president
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and a junior employee who was laden with packages and a clipboard. In
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the entrance hall, the two men bowed vigorously.
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The younger man was still bobbing as he read from a log that recorded
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the progress of their efforts to rectify their mistake, beginning at
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4:32 p.m. the day before, when the salesclerk alerted the store's
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security guards to stop my husband at the door. When that didn't work,
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the clerk turned to his supervisor, who turned to his supervisor, until
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a SWAT team leading all the way to the vice president was in place to
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work on the only clues, a name and an American Express card number.
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Remembering that the customer had asked him about using the disk player
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in the U.S., the clerk called 32 hotels in and around Tokyo to ask if a
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Mr. Kitasei was registered. When that turned up nothing, the Odakyu
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commandeered a staff member to stay until 9:00 p.m. to call American
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Express headquarters in New York. American Express gave him our New
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York telephone number. It was after 11 when he reached my parents, who
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were staying at our apartment. My mother gave him my in-laws' telephone
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number.
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The younger man looked up from his clipboard and gave us, in addition
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to the new $280 disk player, a set of towels, a box of cakes, and a
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Chopin disk. Three minutes after this exhausted pair had arrived, they
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were climbing back into the waiting cab. The vice president suddenly
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dashed back. He had forgotten to apologize for my husband having to
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wait while the salesman had rewritten the charge slip, but he hoped we
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understood that it had been the young man's first day.
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