There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job

by Kikuko Tsumura

It was weird because I worked such long hours, and yet, even while working, I was basically doing nothing.

This whole situation had come to be because I’d sat down one day in front of my recruiter and informed her that I wanted a job as close as possible to my house – ideally, something along the lines of sitting all day in a chair,

I’d left my last job because it sucked up every scrap of energy I had until there was not a shred left, but at the same time, I sensed that hanging around doing nothing forever probably wasn’t the answer either.

There was no denying that it was exactly the type of thing I was looking for. Yet, as fate would have it, it turned out to have its own specialised set of hardships.

once I got started on this job’s bad points I could have gone on forever, but of course it had its perks too.

I wouldn’t say that I thought the job a good one, but I had eventually got used to spending all of my time in the building.

I could have worked it out, but I was so absorbed by the prospect of wurst that it hadn’t even occurred to me.

Yet morning dawns, even on nights filled with thoughts as dark as yesterday’s.

Post-retail Yamae Yamamoto was always as full of life as if he had been reborn.

I was also sitting still for hours on end, but unlike Yamae Yamamoto, who could exercise his own discretion when it came to the use of his time, the only excursion I was allowed was a trip to buy my lunch.

I paused the image from the day before yesterday, leaned all my weight on the armrests of the office chair and let my head loll back. What a wretched life I led! And yes, I knew. Of course I knew that there were innumerable things in this world incomparably much harder and more terrible than what I was going through right then. But just for that moment, I wanted permission to crank my unhappiness gauge to the max. I’d dial it back down, I promised to dial it back down right away. By the day after tomorrow at the latest.

I’d found my previous job worthwhile, but had felt chronically betrayed in regards to both the nature and the quantity of the work involved, and it got to a point where I simply couldn’t stand it any more. Then, a while after quitting and moving back in with my parents, and my unemployment insurance running out, I had to find work again.

To this day, the target still didn’t know how close his house had come to burning to the ground.

All I’d done in my job up until that point was keep watch somewhat aimlessly, so I’d felt pleased to be asked for my opinion.

but the fact that I’d been asked to do something weird on my very first day weighed on my spirits.

I didn’t want to have any more feelings about my work than were strictly necessary. I was done with all that.

I got the sense that he wasn’t a bad sort, all told. Although I was also aware that in a workplace context, people could become bad sorts as and when the situation required, so maybe it was more accurate to say he wasn’t always a bad sort.

so I asked perfectly seriously if he could provide a broad framework for a topic and just leave the finer details for me to hone – but he replied with modesty, ‘Oh no, no, I’m far too old for that.’

After having to leave my old job because of burnout syndrome, I was rationally aware that it wasn’t a good idea to get too emotionally involved in what I was doing, but it was also difficult to prevent myself from taking satisfaction in it. Truthfully, I was happy when people took pleasure in my work, and it made me want to try harder.

Feeling strangely guilty about being visibly out of sorts, I deliberated about whether to confess about the impasse I’d come up against, or to declare the matter over and reply with great self-possession

I felt pretty pathetic that my worries had got out, despite my best intentions.

‘Speaking of forgetting to buy things,’ broke in Ms Tamada, going on to relate how she’d run out of shampoo and conditioner and failed to pick any up in the shops, so had ended up washing her hair with soap. As a result, her hair today was all coarse, and she didn’t want us looking at it.

real

From the angle of her head and the look of her eyes with their big irises, I understood that Mrs Fujiko could see that my soul had seized up and grown stiff. I felt a sudden urge to kick the coffee table away and hurl my teacup at the wall.

Walking back down the corridor it occurred to me that ‘We’re counting on you!’ and ‘You should rest!’ were actually contradictory messages, and a lump formed in my throat. Which did she really mean? Or did she mean neither? Maybe it was all just meaningless conversational fluff – or was this what they called a double bind?

‘Which is more important, I wonder – not to be lonely, or to live the life you’ve chosen for yourself?’

“It must be so hard, running a shop on your own as a single woman.”’ ‘Is it hard?’ I asked. ‘No, not really,’ she replied without hesitation.

But if we can’t get it in the budget, you’ll be paying for them out of your own pocket. Are you prepared to do that?’ ‘Yes.’ Hold up a minute, I said to myself immediately. What did I mean, yes?

most annoying mc narrator ive ever encountered oh my GOD

I’D RATHER DIE THAN DIE ALONE!!!

I’d realised after my first two years of employment that, so long as your colleagues presented you with ‘good interface’ while they were at work, it didn’t really matter what kind of people they were outside of it.

If old age found you lonely, maybe you’d want to leave your possessions to someone who’d made you feel less so, even if just for a little while.

Nobody’s life was untouched by loneliness; it was just a question of whether or not you were able to accept that loneliness for what it was. Put another way, everyone was lonely, and it was up to them whether they chose to bury that loneliness through relationships with other people, and if so, of what sort of intensity and depth.

This was what was known as an inappropriate relationship with one’s work.

‘Well, you’d better start making an effort to be more feminine, then,’ she said, rather presumptuously. ‘My mother said that can also bring its own problems,’ I said, baiting her. ‘That’s very true,’ she said with a sigh. ‘But you’ve got to at least try it, otherwise you won’t have even made it to the threshold of life.’

‘That must be really tough,’ the young woman said. Amazingly, I felt my mood improve slightly. So, I thought, I’ve been wanting sympathy, have I?

I was aware that what I was doing was ridiculous, but I overrode that awareness with another thought: Take this, you fuckers! If you can tell me to die alone, I at least get to do this to you.

‘Rest well, because the day after tomorrow will be busy.’ Quite without intending to, I’d followed his advice.

When I went into work the morning after my day off – a day that more or less hadn’t existed as far as I was concerned

Really and truly, I didn’t care. At this moment in time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to work at all. Were I to be told there weren’t any jobs available, I’d probably just nod and quietly make my way back home. Equally, if I was asked if I was available to go and work for a construction company in Dubai, I was likely to say, quite offhand, that I was up for it.

For no reason I properly understood, talking with Mrs Masakado here today, I felt that a hole had opened up in my heart. If being busy would prevent me from having to look at that hole, I could probably handle any kind of job.

however strange a job it might have been, it was better to act while people still had high expectations for you, and so I nodded. ‘Okay, sure, I’ll give it a go.’

I was aware it was something of a bad habit of mine to feel, after a very short time on a job, that I had grasped its essence,

This was clearly a serious situation and she seemed genuinely petrified, but there was a part of me that wanted to burst out laughing.

I liked this job quite a lot, but I ended up feeling unconditional respect for anybody who engaged in their work with such passion. I was all too aware that such a trait was destined to cause me a lot of hardship in my working life.

That day, I worked very hard on tasks that were entirely extracurricular.

‘It wasn’t that simple, though. My job was really tough, but I’d always manage to get through the challenges it posed. And yet, I had the sense that another thing would always be following close on its heels. As soon as I’d crossed one mountain, another would appear, even higher than the first.

‘I just felt like I didn’t understand a thing any more. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, what I was living for.’

Whoever you were, there was a chance that you would end up wanting to run away from a job you had once believed in, that you would stray from the path you were on.

There are pitfalls like that everywhere, lying in wait to trip you up. The more feeling you put into your work or whatever it is you’re devoting yourself to, the more of them there are.

The time had come to embrace the ups and downs again. I had no way of knowing what pitfalls might be lying in wait for me, but what I’d discovered by doing five jobs in such a short span of time was this: the same was true of everything. You never knew what was going to happen, whatever you did. You just had to give it your all, and hope for the best. Hope like anything it would turn out alright.