Tokyo looks to protect service staff from customers who are not so cool

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Tokyo will become the first part of Japan to ban customer harassment of service workers amid a perceived worsening of consumer behaviour that some analysts say is linked to the return of inflation.

Officials in the Japanese capital are drawing up guidelines to accompany the new ordinance, which was passed by the metropolitan assembly last week to tackle customer nastiness known by the abbreviation “kasu-hara”.

The regulation, which will take effect in April next year, declares a blanket ban on customer harassment and calls on society as a whole to join in the effort to prevent abuse.

In doing so, it strikes a hefty blow at the mantra of corporate Japan that “the customer is God”.

Economists say companies’ reluctance to upset customers by raising prices was one of the reasons the Japanese economy had spent so long mired in deflation. Now that sustained inflation has returned, senior executives in the restaurant, hospitality and retail sectors say customers are unhappy.

Jesper Koll, a veteran Japan economist and director of the securities group Monex, said worsening customer behaviour was an unintended consequence of Japan’s switch from its long battle with falling or stagnant prices to the current inflationary environment.

“During the decades of deflation, customer satisfaction and happiness was built in. Now that prices are going up — and going up not just once but more or less consistently — Japanese feel cheated. Under deflation, the customer was always king. Under inflation, they are taken for a fool,” said Koll.

Over the past few years, a rising drumbeat of media reports of incidents of staff suffering everything from screamed rebukes to menacing online abuse has made the customer seem less like God and more of a spoiled child.

Surveys of workers in the service sector give the impression that the highly demanding but once generally polite Japanese consumer has become more cantankerous, plaintive and liable to erupt in rage.

The UA Zensen, a labour union that represents workers across multiple sectors of the economy, in June released a report based on responses from over 33,000 members that found 46.8 per cent had experienced some form of kasu-hara in the past two years.

The private sector has been hastily enacting measures to prevent abuse of staff — a critical challenge for businesses as the country confronts a shrinking workforce and ever more acute labour shortages.

Transport and utility companies have strengthened mechanisms for reporting kasu-hara incidents and some taxi firms have introduced emergency kasu-hara buttons that allow the driver to start video-recording difficult passengers.

Earlier this year, the major convenience store chain Lawson stopped insisting staff display their full names on uniform badges to prevent them being targets for online abuse, while rival chain FamilyMart began allowing workers to use pseudonyms.

The practical force of Tokyo’s ordinance has yet to become clear: there is no punishment for those who break the ban and it appears chiefly intended to promote greater awareness of the problem.

Even more critically, it does not yet come with a comprehensive definition of what counts as kasu-hara. Guidelines drawing the boundaries between abuse and legitimate complaint will not be revealed until December.