A Fish Out of Water
This past Monday I went into the city for an interview. The position was one I thought would be interesting, as it has absolutely nothing to do with technology. One could argue that it is almost a direct opposite of tech. If hired, I would be standing at the entrance of an upscale brand store like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, greeting visitors while opening the door. This seems like an odd thing for someone with three decades of software development experience to do but, when jobs are scarce, one must be willing to do new things. Ultimately, I did not accept the job as it would require working part-time hours for several months, with an expected monthly gross of 120,000 Yen. That's about $775 USD. Before taxes and deductions.
No thank you.
I have no qualms with being a door man, a chauffeur, or even a toilet cleaner. The perception of prestige is not the reason I want to work. My goal is simply to pay the bills and have a little left over afterwards for Ayumi and I to enjoy our time together. So it was interesting to look around before, during, and after Monday's interview at the environment where door men are both expected and invisible.
Midland Square is a massive skyscraper towering above much of Nagoya. Built by – and for – Toyota Motor Corporation. Like many tall buildings, it has shopping on the bottom, restaurants up near the top, and office space throughout. What separates Midland Square from many other tall buildings is that everything inside is expected to be luxury. Jewelry shops are seen every dozen metres. Stores with French names are everywhere. Young ladies walk with older men. Older women are nicely-dressed and walk alone with purpose. Employees wear white gloves.
Very rarely am I in this sort of environment. It's not just foreign to me, but completely undesirable. Even if I had a million dollars in the bank, this would not be the sort of place I would want to go. The Lexus show room contained bland-looking smartphones on wheels. The fashion shops had scarves and jackets with price tags greater than some of my highest paycheques. It's a world that I do not at all understand.
Believe it or not, this was one of the things that had initially attracted me to apply to the position of door man. I understood that the work would not be glamourous, but the advertised pay range made it appear that it would be a viable way to pay the bills. This would also allow me an opportunity to explore and study this different world, to understand what it is that attracts people to desire these things. Is it just image? Fascade? One-upping? Or is it something else entirely? I had a $10 iced coffee during the interview and, while it was enjoyable, it did not taste any different from the UCC-brand iced coffee that I buy in the summertime for 188 Yen1.
Being in this sort of environment does tend to make a person feel a little self-conscious, though. Every visitor, every mannequin, every employee were all smartly dressed. Not a hair out of place. Shiny. Gloved. Separate. I thought of my slightly longer hair. My goatee with white strands. My shoes, which had seen a great deal of use. My suit, which was bought from Aoki's many years earlier for the paltry sum of 25,000 Yen2, did not reflect light like the others around me. Midland Square was, in effect, like the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles.
After the interview, while on my way out from the building, I wondered whether being in such an environment would alter the way I look at the world. Would I eventually see my comfortable clothes as shabby rags? Would I eventually come to desire luxury items? There is no way to know the answer, but it was an interesting thought experiment while riding the train home.
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$161 USD