😱 K’s COLUMN 068 : 負け犬の遠吠え
以前のコラムで、天下り社長の話を書いた。
今回は、その社長が某銀行からヘッドハンティングしてきた女性のことを書く。
私は、会社総務部の経理課に所属していた。
直属の上司は、当時36歳、社長がヘッドハンティングしてきたハイミス（死語）である。
仕事はできるのだろうが、他人に対する気遣いが全く感じられず、その人の下に配属させられた人たちは１週間足らずで退職願を提出し、その場から逃げるように去っていったという話は、社内の別の部署やパストラル内の関連会社の人たちから聞いて知っていた。
まったくもって、えらいな所に放り込まれたものである。
彼女はクリスチャン・ディオールの口紅を1ヶ月に1本消費してしまう、唇オバケでもあった。
ヘビースモーカーでもあった彼女のタバコの吸い口はいつも真っ赤で、吸い殻が山のように積み上がっていた。
当時は分煙といった概念もなく、私のようにタバコを吸わないものは、タバコの煙を我慢していた。
そして海外へ行けば、女性への土産物といえば、スカーフ、香水、口紅が主流で、口紅は安価な部類だったから、彼女への土産にはちょうど良かったアイテムだったのかもしれない。
さて、彼女は貸し方・借り方を説明した。
そして、これを参考にしろとばかりに何枚もの複写式伝票に綴られた冊子の束を、私の机の上に積み重ねた。
数字は手書きで記入するが、科目は印鑑を押していく。
仕上がったら彼女がそれをチェックする。
間違えていたらやり直しだ。
1ヶ月もしたら、勘定項目が分かり始めてきた。
他にはワードプロセッサで文書を書いたり、コンピュータにデータを記録していく。
当時は紙のフロッピーだ。
上司にあたる人々の多くは、文字の打ち込みができない世代だったので、これらは下っ端の仕事だ。
ちなみにインターネットの登場は、日本ではこの数年後となる。
さて、他にもお局と呼ばれる40代がいたが、なぜか彼女は50代の母よりかはるかに老けて見えた。
何がそうさせているのかは不明だが、少なくとも幸せそうには見えなかった。
そしてお局と唇オバケは大変仲が良かった。
仲が良すぎて下のものを虐めては貶し、退職へと追い込んでいるのだった。
私と同じ時期に入ってきた女性はいつも泣いていた。
彼女は当時23歳だったが、お局からお局のミスをなすりつけられただけでなく、残業を断ったら罵倒されたというのである。
しかも当時は携帯電話など普及しておらず、外部との電話は公衆電話だ。
彼女曰く、ボーイフレンドと食事の約束の内容を局に立ち聞きされ、わざと残業を命ぜられたというのである。
それが本当なら、全くもって酷い話である。
私には、男のいる女を僻んで虐めているようにしか見えなかった。
しかもそれだけではない。
入社してすぐに私は社会保険に加入できたが、彼女は2ヶ月したら入れてやると言われたそうだ。
何が基準なのかわからない。
程なくして噂は広まった。
私より1ヶ月前に入社してきた男性社員は
「ここは福利厚生がいいだけで、長くいても何のメリットもない」
と言っていた。
そして辞めるなら慣れないうちにさっさと辞めたほうが、自分たちにとっても会社にとってもよい、と言ってくれたので、私は辞めることにした。
そして晴れて、自由の身となったのである。
そして、残っていた社員の話によれば、私が辞めた後も、負け犬と称された彼女たちは残っていたそうだ。
彼らが辞める時にも、彼女たちはいたという。
私が去ってから後に彼女の下に配属された者たちは、彼女たちとそりが合わず、約4ヶ月近くいた私が最長だということだった。
結局は下の者を育てなければ自分は楽にはならないし、苦労はついて回るのである。
負け犬の遠吠えとはよく言ったものだ。
🇬🇧 English version below
😱 : K’s COLUMN 068 : The Howling of the Losers
In an earlier column, I wrote about the company president who had landed his position after retiring from the government.
This time, I am going to write about a woman whom that president had headhunted from a certain bank.
I was working in the Accounting Section of the General Affairs Department.
My immediate supervisor was a 36-year-old woman whom the president had also headhunted.
In those days, she would have been called a haimisu—an old-fashioned Japanese term for a woman who was still unmarried at an age when she was expected to be married.
She was probably good at her job, but she showed absolutely no consideration for other people.
I had heard from people in other departments of the company, as well as from employees of affiliated companies in Pastoral, that people assigned to work under her would submit their resignations in less than a week and flee as if escaping from the scene.
I had, to put it mildly, been dropped into quite a place.
She was also a “lip monster” who managed to go through one Christian Dior lipstick every month.
She was a heavy smoker, too, and the mouthpiece of her cigarettes was always bright red, while her ashtray was piled high with cigarette butts.
Back then, there was no such concept as designated smoking areas.
Those of us who didn’t smoke simply had to put up with the cigarette smoke.
And when people went abroad, the standard souvenirs for women were scarves, perfume, and lipstick.
Lipstick was relatively inexpensive, so perhaps it was considered a convenient souvenir for her.
Anyway, she explained the basics of debits and credits to me.
Then, as if to say,
“Here. Use these as your reference,”
she piled a stack of booklets on my desk, each filled with sheets of multipart carbon-copy vouchers.
The numbers were written in by hand, while the account titles were stamped with seals.
Once I had finished, she would check everything.
If I had made a mistake, I had to do it all over again.
After about a month, I was beginning to understand the various account categories.
I also wrote documents on a word processor and entered data into a computer.
Back then, we used paper floppy disks.
Most of the people above me were from a generation that couldn’t type, so these were jobs for the lowly newcomers.
Incidentally, the Internet would not appear in Japan until several years later.
There was another woman in her forties who was known as an otsubone—the sort of long-serving female employee who had established herself as a powerful presence in the workplace.
For some reason, however, she looked far older than my mother, who was in her fifties.
I have no idea what made her look that way, but she certainly didn’t look happy.
And the otsubone and the “lip monster” were very close.
In fact, they were so close that they would bully and belittle the people beneath them, driving them to quit.
The young woman who joined the company around the same time as I did was always crying.
She was 23 at the time, and not only did the otsubone pin her own mistakes on her, she also verbally abused her when she refused to work overtime.
And remember, this was before mobile phones had become commonplace.
If you wanted to make an outside call, you used a public telephone.
According to her, the otsubone had overheard her making plans to have dinner with her boyfriend, and deliberately ordered her to work overtime.
If that was really what happened, it was utterly awful.
To me, it looked like she was simply bullying a younger woman out of jealousy because the younger woman had a man in her life.
And that wasn’t all.
I was enrolled in the company’s social insurance immediately after joining, but this woman was apparently told that she would be enrolled after two months.
I had no idea what the criteria were.
Before long, word spread.
A male employee who had joined the company one month before me told me,
“The only good thing about this place is the employee benefits. There’s no advantage to staying here for long.”
He also told me that if I was going to quit, it would be better to leave while I was still unfamiliar with the place. That would be better for both me and the company.
So I decided to quit.
And, at long last, I was a free.
According to the employees who remained, those women—the ones I came to regard as losers—were still there even after I had left.
They were still there when those employees eventually quit, too.
After I was gone, the people assigned to work under her apparently couldn’t get along with them either.
I was told that, at roughly four months, I had lasted the longest.
In the end, if you don’t teach and develop the people beneath you, you don’t make your own life any easier.
The trouble just keeps following you.
They say a loser’s bark is nothing more than a howl in the distance.