News Tokyo to implement first ordinance against customer harassment

お客様は神様です。That proverb will have its limits in Tokyo, according to Gov. Koike:


The Tokyo metropolitan government is taking a significant step to address the issue of customer harassment. They plan to establish an ordinance to prevent unreasonable demands and malicious customer complaints to company employees. This proposed ordinance would be the first in Japan and aims to create rules that protect workers from such behaviour without imposing penalties.

Customer harassment encompasses acts like forcing workers to apologize on their hands and knees, making extremely unreasonable demands, and directing insults and verbal abuse at staff. In recent years, this problem has become more pronounced in the retail and service industries, leading to mental or physical health issues for affected workers and sometimes even tragic outcomes like quitting jobs or suicide.

According to sources close to the government, the draft ordinance will stipulate the prohibition of customer harassment and Tokyo will aim to submit a relevant bill to the metropolitan assembly before the end of the year. The government is also considering including in the ordinance the responsibilities of companies to protect their employees from customer harassment. Specific prohibited acts will be presented in guidelines to be created separately.

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Wait, what...? I thought the trope of the angry customer demanding a dogeza apology was just that, a trope, mostly for anime and manga, maybe the occasional dorama.

That seems extremely over the top, but also... would management actually punish the employee if they didn't literally prostrate themselves to unreasonable customers? Management has the real power here, if they won't discipline the employee then unreasonable demands are meaningless, and also, ultimately, management is at fault here.

Customers make unhinged demands all the time everywhere around the world, but in most places those demands are not heeded.

It's so sad that things have come to the point where the authorities have deemed it necessary to do something about it. The customer may be God, but only really works when "God" has good enough manners and social sensibilities. Whatever happened to

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