00:00
Welcome to Kevin's English Room Podcast!
There you go.
Alright, so we have another voice message.
We're excited to hear it.
Let's go.
It's from...
There's no typical name on it.
Right.
I think your volume is off.
I have to...
You go to the finish.
Maybe just refresh the page.
I think.
Yeah.
There you go.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Yama-chan.
I'm Kevin.
I'm a Tsu-me living in Tokyo.
I'm really enjoying listening to your podcast every day.
Thank you.
Just like in English.
Thank you.
I am a little embarrassed to send this voice message.
Don't be.
I wanted to try out.
So here I am.
Right. Nice.
I'm assuming that both of you quit the corporate job.
So what made you to quit your corporate job?
That's my question.
Because I changed my job last year since I was able to get the job offer of the position I really wanted.
It has been almost a year, but I don't feel like I can fit into the company's culture.
So I wanted to have advice from you too.
Thank you for your interesting episodes. I will continue to support you.
Okay.
Thank you.
That's nice.
I love hearing their voices.
Yeah.
Natsumi-san.
Natsumi-san.
Can we listen to that again?
Hi, I'm Yama-chan. I'm Kevin.
I'm Natsumi living in Tokyo.
Natsumi-san.
Natsumi-san.
Okay.
And her question was...
Can we listen to that again?
Of course.
I'm really enjoying listening to your podcast every day for studying English.
I am a little embarrassed to send this voice message, but I wanted to try out, so here I am.
That's great. Try new things.
I know, right?
Assuming that both of you quit the corporate job.
So what made you to quit your corporate job?
That's my question.
Yeah.
Okay.
And she herself is in a position of... She changed her jobs too?
Yeah, last year.
It's been a year.
And did she say she's worried that she might not fit in? Or is she already feeling that she's not fitting in?
I think she's already feeling it.
Okay.
Because I changed my job last year since I was able to get the job offer of the position I really wanted,
it has been almost a year, but I don't feel like I can fit into the company's culture.
So she's already feeling it, right?
Yeah.
I wanted to have advice from you too.
Thank you for always giving me interesting episodes. I will continue to support you.
Yeah.
So maybe she wants to quit her corporate job.
Again, yeah?
03:00
Right.
I mean, yeah, yeah, right, right.
Because she...
Becoming a fertilized, maybe?
Yeah, maybe.
Because she changed her job and she feels like she's not fitting in.
And she's asking us, "Why did we quit our corporate job?"
Yeah.
So maybe she wants to quit the corporate job.
Maybe, yeah.
Or maybe just...
Curious?
Yeah, or try to go to the new company maybe.
Okay.
Change jobs maybe.
Well, what made us...
What made me quit my corporate job was the...
Um...
So, it's gonna be a long... Sorry.
It's all right. I'll keep it short.
You know, in my case, I had a thing.
I had a dream.
I had things that I wanted to pursue in my life, which is called music.
Oh, yeah.
So, that's why I quit my job.
Uh-huh.
That's basically that's it.
For me...
All right, you have now six minutes.
No, no, no, no. I'll keep it short. Really, I'll keep it short.
I would say...
Fear of not living my life minute by minute, hour by hour.
Yeah.
Like, I felt like I was not living how I should be when I was in the office.
Uh-huh.
You know?
So, like, the mentality I had when I was in the corporate job was like,
"I'll just give up my nine to five and I'll enjoy my after five."
Uh-huh.
Right?
That was kind of the lifestyle that I decided to have when I first joined the company.
Because I had the option of going for my dream versus entering a job with a "shinsotsu" status, right?
And I chose this...
Why don't I just first experience the "shinsotsu," right?
Yeah.
So, the mentality I had was like, "I'll just choose a job that's not "kuu janai," right?
And then just enjoy my private life.
Yeah.
So, like, the time of me being in the office was actually dead.
I was dead. I was not alive.
Right.
So, I feared that I was not living fully.
Uh-huh.
And that made me take actions.
Yeah.
Because nine to five is huge part of your day.
Right.
If you take away sleeping, that's really most of your life.
Yeah.
So, um...
Which, sleeping, by the way, for me is a huge chunk of my life.
Okay.
06:00
So, like...
So, it has an even bigger impact.
The nine to five has an even bigger impact.
Right?
Unlike Kake-chan, who sleeps like four hours and that's enough.
It has a lot more time on himself of, like, doing what he wants to do.
But for me, I need, like, maybe like eight, nine hours of sleep,
which takes away a lot of the private time you take away to nine to five.
So, it was a big impact for me.
Yeah, it's really important.
So, I...
Exactly.
Yeah.
That was...
Right. That was how...
That motivated me to take actions, I think.
Right.
Have you experienced, like...
You entered the first company and moved to the different company, right?
Yes.
Have you experienced that house feeling?
Yeah, I did. I did, actually.
I did.
First, it was a chemical company.
It was a logistics company and it was a gaishikei.
So, like, we really didn't have any communication in the office, work office.
Like, you'd go, you enter the office, say good morning, no one really replies to you.
Really?
Well, they do, but it's not, like, a heartful kind of...
It was like a...
It was more like a "ohayou gozaimasu"
"ohayou gozaimasu"
Like that. And then you sit down, the partations there.
You don't really...
You know what a partation is, right?
I don't.
The partations there, you don't really get to see people's faces.
So, you work with nobody?
Nobody.
Right. Nobody.
Nobody.
What do you do?
I mean, what was the job like?
My... So, I...
So, you have to communicate with somebody.
So, okay.
When you're in a gaishike, you really have to...
They don't really, like, take care of you that much.
Like, you kind of have to go at it.
Because everyone's for themselves, right?
It's not like a company takes care of you.
It's more like you're always at the risk of downsizing.
You might get cut off.
So, everybody's really... don't want to let go of their job.
Okay.
My boss was...
My boss did...
My boss assigned my senpai to give some of his jobs to me.
Okay.
What he gave really wasn't much of an impact.
So, like, the ones...
Like, subconsciously, I kind of knew that he wasn't really giving me the juices of his job.
Because if you let that go, the value he's providing to the company becomes less,
which puts him in a position of being...
Let go.
And a higher probability.
So, like, I kind of knew that he wasn't really giving me a job that was, like, of an impact.
The job I had was, like, putting in the oil...
The price of the oil, the gasoline, the price of the gasoline,
in an Excel sheet, and then sending that out to my team members and as my vendors.
09:06
Because with that price, you can negotiate the logistic costs, right?
The oil price is lower.
So, we should be able to...
You should give us the service at a lower cost because the gasoline is lower.
Right.
That's one.
Another was, like, an award program to award the third-party logistic teams.
So, we're a chemical company.
We make chemical companies.
And we ask other logistic companies to transfer the chemicals.
We don't do that.
We...
An award program to award the members of the third-party logistic.
Like, if they acted in a way that was safety first,
if they took care of the product in a significant way that benefits, you know, us or the environment or whatever.
And my job was to pick that up and award them, give them prizes, right?
Create and print out an award.
And that was another one.
And...
I...
Another job was a year-end party.
There was a year-end party, and I did shikai.
It was a company-wide global event.
It was a huge event.
And I...
It was pretty big, though.
Right, the CEO was there.
World.
Not the world.
Like, whole Japan.
Right, right.
Wow.
It was a big event.
I did shikai there.
And there was this also, like, chemical event to...
We did this, like, chemical event to children.
Children comes in, and then we show them...
Did they office?
No, like, it was more of a...
It's like a fair.
It's like a science fair.
Okay.
And a lot of the companies, they have their own booth.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And the kids come in, and we show them interesting chemical stuff.
Yeah.
And they're like, yeah.
I was the brain of that, too, in a team.
So it really wasn't, like, a huge impact, you know?
Well, I mean, you were the first year.
Right, right, right.
Yeah.
It really wasn't...
Right, so those were the things I was doing.
Right, of course I was a first year guy, so of course nothing...
Not the very, very important...
Yeah, of course, of course.
So that was my workplace.
So you did have to make communication with other guys, other workers.
12:02
Right, so if you look closely, the ones that I actually really had to communicate was not in the logistics team.
It was like the Air and Party Committee or the Science Fair Committee.
So it wasn't the logistics team.
Right, where my desk was inside.
My desk was in the logistics team's booth.
So I really communicated through online, through chats and people who was in the different office, different floors.
So I kind of knew that the communication was not happening in my busho, which I was okay.
I kind of knew that that was going to happen.
It was a really dry workplace.
There was not going to be any Nomikaze.
I knew that and I kind of liked that.
You preferred it.
I did prefer it because I was...
"Ku ja nakereba ii" kind of stance.
Then I moved on to Starbucks, which was a very communication oriented work field.
I can see that.
You have to communicate with your customers.
You have to communicate with your "baito" people.
Heavy communication.
Heavy communication.
That's what Starbucks is all about.
The human-ness.
In terms of communication...
In terms of human-ness, everyday human-ness.
Everyday human-ness.
There's emotions inside.
That became so much better.
You would congratulate a new hired employee, new hired part-timer.
You would be like, "How you treated that customer was amazing."
"Remember I taught you how to do that?"
"You did it! Right there! That was great!"
"I love how you executed that. Nice! Good job!"
Those kinds of things happen really a lot.
As well as the negatives too.
It was a really emotional workforce.
People cried there.
They did.
If they weren't able to...
If they made a mistake, some of the other "baito" cried.
If they weren't able to execute the company policy...
The company value.
You know how there's company values and stuff like that?
That wasn't... I should have said that.
They're good.
I love the Starbucks "baito" still.
It's on the regular.
Some of the other "baito"s cried.
Because they weren't able to fully serve the customers how they wanted it to be.
That's beautiful, right?
I like that.
That happened, but at the same time, it's energy consuming.
I did kind of get bored.
Well, not bored, but...
That wasn't...
It really became the main part of the job.
15:00
Communication was the main part of the job.
You have to take care of others.
Every day for a long time.
Thinking about others.
Thinking about others and providing them was the main job.
You were the sunshine guy.
You have to take care of all the part-timers and writers.
The atmosphere was very young.
I didn't enjoy it that much.
They were really "iketeru" people.
Of course it's Starbucks.
They were too close to me.
You were too uplifting and happy guy.
But at the same time, you were a really cool guy.
I'm at work, bitch.
I didn't want to say bitch.
I didn't want to say that.
You were like, "We're not friends."
I am working right now.
So you just take a step back.
Girl, take a step back.
I am an employee here.
We're working.
No, I don't want to go beer.
No, I don't want to hang out with you on the weekends.
I'm not here for that.
When you say you have to communicate,
that means you have to go to the "Nomikai" sometimes.
As a kind of show.
Right, exactly.
That's something you didn't really like.
The atmosphere of Starbucks is like the store is a team.
And that's a good thing.
One episode I had was a year end.
It was the New Year's.
The 31st, right?
December 31st, 11.30pm.
My shift ended at 11.30pm.
At night.
In 30 minutes, New Year's come.
At that time, Starbucks was doing an overnight operation.
So people came in here, did the Happy Year thing.
18:00
The customers celebrated, the store celebrated Happy Year.
My shift ended at 11.30pm.
I clocked myself out at 11.45pm.
I decided to leave the store.
It was a year end.
I wanted to see the Ferris wheel.
The store people, the employees, the part-timers were like,
"Kevin-san, are you leaving?"
"Are you going to spend the New Year's with us?"
And I was like, "Ah, right."
"No, I'm going home."
(Laughter)
And it's tough for me to say no.
It's tough for me, kind of, right?
Yeah, I valued my time more.
So I left.
You have to push to say that.
I needed energy.
But your working time...
Has ended.
There's no reason that you have to beat it.
And every time I would enter the work force, work field,
I needed energy. I needed to turn myself on.
Of course that happens to everybody, I'm sure.
But for me, it was way more than the first chemical company.
I really didn't need to turn myself...
I turned the switch on.
There really wasn't any communication.
It was actually really okay for me to stay off
and then go in the work force to sit down and be surrounded by the partitions.
Right, no one would see your face.
Right, but I had to go in there with a happy face.
I did, actually.
Because I had to take care of the ad-bido people.
I needed to be a role model, kind of, for the Starbucks brand.
So that was energy consuming.
And I thought that was not...
This can't go on in perpetuity.
This can't go on forever.
I can't commit myself to this environment forever.
So, I wanted to stay short.
I wanted to really finish this episode.
I didn't want to...
Let me look at the time.
20 minutes!
Fuck!
Do you remember you told me that I'm going to finish really shortly?
Yes, I did tell you that I was going to finish this shortly.
And I was going to finish this podcast in 10 minutes, like always.
But you know, that's the big part of your life.
Right, right, right.
I get it.
So the question really was...
Seriously, I'm going to keep this short for now.
I think do change jobs if you don't like them.
I don't regret that I changed jobs.
21:00
I don't regret that I quit that first family company.
I don't regret that I quit Starbucks.
The regret of you...
The regret of "what if" would stay with you more, I think.
What if...
Oh, I should have started a...
I should have started freelancing.
That thought sticks with you, I think.
Way bigger than...
Oh, I should have stayed in my old job.
It gives you new perspectives.
So if you're wanting to be a freelancer,
the thought of you already having that,
maybe I should be a freelancer.
If you have that thought, I think you should go for it.
I stayed short.
All right, thanks for listening guys, thank you
Bye bye.
