Troy McNaughtonBad Managers in Sydney--Part Two
December 5th 2007 09:10
Mr Bakayaro, the most disgusting Japanese I have ever met
Mr Bakayaro was the owner and manager of a tiny human resources agency that, theoretically, specialised in the placement of Japanese speakers. I say ‘theoretically’ because in my two months there, we never actually placed anybody. The other four employees of Bakayaro Pty Ltd speculated that his family in Japan were embarrassed by him and paid him to stay away, or perhaps were yakuza using him to launder money.
Mr Bakayaro was extremely short, plump for a Japanese, had dandruff, and frequently came to work unshowered. He freshened up in the men’s room with deodorants and a weird-smelling cologne that he kept in an ancient, cracked vinyl gym bag. He also suffered from chronic tinea, and walked around the office barefoot to expose his fungus-plagued tootsies to fresh air. In moments of deep concentration, he would rest his bare feet on the desk whilst staring at the breasts of whichever of us four women was in his line of vision. During stressful telephone conversations, he would wind the telephone cord in between his toes.
The job was typing in Japanese, translating articles for a shitty self-published bilingual newsletter, and expanding our client base. Fresh from a six-year sojourn in Japan , I thought Mr Bakayaro had hired me for my language skills. It soon became apparent that I had been hired because I was tall and blonde. I also discovered that the agency’s core clients were older men whom Mr Bakayaro entertained at a mid-price massage parlour somewhere along the Pacific Highway.
The Japanese typing was more difficult than it should have been, and not just because Mr Bakayaro’s handwriting was sloppy. He was also too cheap to buy a word processing program. I had to work on a free demo version one in which the dictionary didn’t contain polysyllabic words. Rather than phonetically typing in the whole word, I had to type each syllable one by one, and chose the correct character from a long list that popped up on the screen.
The translation was even more needlessly difficult. Mr Bakayaro enjoyed seeing his employees make errors or take a long time to do something, as it gave him an excuse to shout at and belittle them. He would hand me a fax to be translated, making sure the print size was small and the quality adjusted to the lowest resolution, so that difficult characters with lots of tiny strokes came out blurred.
Sometimes I accompanied Mr Bakayaro taking prospective clients to lunch at a private club, where the silver-haired, bespectacled receptionist greeted us with impeccable politeness and a frigid, unwavering stare. I assumed she was just another menopausal cow who disliked seeing a younger woman accompanying an older man. I later found out that the club was quietly initiating proceedings to throw out Mr Bakayaro after some unspecified offensive behaviour on his part. I never found out what that behaviour was, but I did find out, months after I walked off the job, that two of his female clients were suing him for sexual harassment.
Can you top this? Please comment.
Mr Bakayaro was the owner and manager of a tiny human resources agency that, theoretically, specialised in the placement of Japanese speakers. I say ‘theoretically’ because in my two months there, we never actually placed anybody. The other four employees of Bakayaro Pty Ltd speculated that his family in Japan were embarrassed by him and paid him to stay away, or perhaps were yakuza using him to launder money.
Mr Bakayaro was extremely short, plump for a Japanese, had dandruff, and frequently came to work unshowered. He freshened up in the men’s room with deodorants and a weird-smelling cologne that he kept in an ancient, cracked vinyl gym bag. He also suffered from chronic tinea, and walked around the office barefoot to expose his fungus-plagued tootsies to fresh air. In moments of deep concentration, he would rest his bare feet on the desk whilst staring at the breasts of whichever of us four women was in his line of vision. During stressful telephone conversations, he would wind the telephone cord in between his toes.
The job was typing in Japanese, translating articles for a shitty self-published bilingual newsletter, and expanding our client base. Fresh from a six-year sojourn in Japan , I thought Mr Bakayaro had hired me for my language skills. It soon became apparent that I had been hired because I was tall and blonde. I also discovered that the agency’s core clients were older men whom Mr Bakayaro entertained at a mid-price massage parlour somewhere along the Pacific Highway.
The Japanese typing was more difficult than it should have been, and not just because Mr Bakayaro’s handwriting was sloppy. He was also too cheap to buy a word processing program. I had to work on a free demo version one in which the dictionary didn’t contain polysyllabic words. Rather than phonetically typing in the whole word, I had to type each syllable one by one, and chose the correct character from a long list that popped up on the screen.
The translation was even more needlessly difficult. Mr Bakayaro enjoyed seeing his employees make errors or take a long time to do something, as it gave him an excuse to shout at and belittle them. He would hand me a fax to be translated, making sure the print size was small and the quality adjusted to the lowest resolution, so that difficult characters with lots of tiny strokes came out blurred.
Sometimes I accompanied Mr Bakayaro taking prospective clients to lunch at a private club, where the silver-haired, bespectacled receptionist greeted us with impeccable politeness and a frigid, unwavering stare. I assumed she was just another menopausal cow who disliked seeing a younger woman accompanying an older man. I later found out that the club was quietly initiating proceedings to throw out Mr Bakayaro after some unspecified offensive behaviour on his part. I never found out what that behaviour was, but I did find out, months after I walked off the job, that two of his female clients were suing him for sexual harassment.
Can you top this? Please comment.
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