Office Chair Anarchy in a Japanese Company
The day they caught me with the president’s armchair
In the late 1980s, a Japanese client in Shizuoka recruited me to join their project team with the mission of starting up a new factory in rural Tennessee.
At the time, I was a newbie to the manufacturing world. All I had going for me was my language skills, a knack for connecting Japanese and Americans, and the trust I had built with the Japanese start-up team.
In addition to myself, the team was comprised of ten Japanese managers, all of whom would be on temporary assignment in the U.S. for the next several years. It helped that these guys were also my drinking buddies, a situation that made my job much more fun than it should have been.
In light of this backstory, it’s no surprise that I was at the bottom of the organization’s totem pole. My official title was “Assistant to Production Control Manager,” but it doesn’t come close to describing what I actually did.
Thanks to those fuzzy Japanese job descriptions we all know and love, my Japanese colleagues kept me busy developing and implementing new systems, driving the forklift when the shipping clerk called in sick, interpreting whatever serious or silly meetings they held (forget that my interpretation qualifications were, at best, dubious), and so much more.
Such is life in a Japanese company.
So imagine my surprise when I showed up for work one morning only to discover that my humble arm-less office chair had been replaced with a cushy, highfalutin hijikake isu, the Japanese word for “armchair”.
My first thought was “sweeeeet”!
How naïve I was.
It took about half an hour before someone tapped me on the shoulder. The shoulder tapper was none other than Tajima-kacho, a senior manager and trusted drinking buddy.
“Tim-san,” he said in a whisper, “I’m so sorry but this hijikake isu is only for executives. This chair belongs to the president. I have to return it to shacho’s office right away.”
And with that, he confiscated my hijikake isu and unceremoniously rolled my arm-less bottom-of-the-totem-pole chair back to me.
My heart sank.
I couldn’t help but get defensive. “Tajima-kacho, this chair was here when I came to work this morning. I didn’t steal it from shacho, I swear!” Then I added, “Um…why was it at my desk in the first place?”
Tajima had an answer.
As best he could surmise, the night cleaning crew had cleared out all the chairs in the office the previous evening so they could clean and buff the floor. When they were done, they returned the chairs to whatever desk struck their fancy. By random luck, I won the armchair lottery that morning — at least for the first half hour.
After hearing Tajima’s explanation, my disappointment gave way to a chuckle, although Tajima didn’t seem amused. Why did I laugh? It was the armchair’s backstory, both funny and rich in cultural significance.
What Does It Mean?
In Japan, where hierarchy is baked into everyday life, matching chair types to organizational rank makes perfect sense, although it had never occurred to me up until that moment.
Like me, the American night crew was oblivious to the hierarchical significance of chair assignments. And this blind spot had created just the right conditions for office-chair anarchy to rue the day!
Same Values, Different Priorities
This story is about the unintended clash of value differences. In this case, an equality-loving group of unsuspecting Americans innocently — and unknowingly — clashed with a culture that placed great importance on the pecking order.
Value differences can go a long way in explaining intercultural disconnects like these. But the more I interact with people from different cultures, the more nuanced and refined my understanding gets on how value differences influence human behavior.
The key cultural differences are not just in the values themselves, but also in how we prioritize these values, a challenge further compounded by shifting priorities based on context.
A related concept is what my college thesis advisor used to call “the value matrix”. When a given value within the matrix intersects with a conflicting value, one value gets priority while the other takes a subordinate position.
An example in Japan would be the value on truth versus harmony. Japanese value the truth, but when truth and harmony collide, the truth sometimes gets swept under the rug so Tanaka-san can save face or the team can maintain harmony — or at the very least, a façade of harmony.
An example in my own culture would be the American value on equality clashing with the company hierarchy. Most of my compatriots implicitly accept that we are all equal as human beings, at least in principle. (The religious among us say “We are all equally loved in the eyes of God.”)
Religious or not, most of my compatriots want to believe that they are inferior to no one and generally are uncomfortable with the idea of rank. And yet, when we step into the workplace, competing values clash. When this happens, equality gets demoted, and rank rules, at least until quitting time.
How do we Americans square this circle? Like all cultures do — cognitive dissonance!
In this case, Americans play make-believe that we are all equal. One way we do so is by encouraging employees to call each other by their first names, regardless of rank.
We also temper our discomfort with hierarchy by rationalizing that meritocracy determines our respective positions within the pecking order, a value deemed important in any competitive business environment.
These cultural value differences can manifest in so many ways other than how chairs are assigned or the way we address each other at work. Understanding these hidden differences and learning how to navigate based on context is an indispensable skill to develop, especially when dealing with Japan.
Just as important is to be mindful that, when all is said and done, most people share the same basic values: Living a meaningful existence, connecting with others, cherishing loved ones, and feeling valued at work and in our communities. That’s as good a foundation as any for building and nurturing meaningful cross-cultural relationships.
Lastly, I wrote this post while sitting in my armless home-office chair. As a retired curmudgeon, I can certainly afford to buy myself a hijikake isu. However, I choose not to, as it is impossible to play my guitar with those pesky arm rests in the way. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!)
Did I mention that my Japanese wife has a hijikake isu and approves all home purchases? You can draw your own conclusions about the pecking order in our home.
© Tim Sullivan 2022
