Day 213 of writing every day.
I don’t really know much about the banking industry save that a lot of money flows back and forth and that they do play a critical role in how modern societies work. Without banks, there’s no way for companies to effectively pay all their workers for their labor and there’s no way for workers to cash their cheques. Even if you have cash on hand, it’s vulnerable to theft even if you have it locked away in a safe inside your house, so it’s best to put it in a bank which also provides services that allow you to send and withdraw money relatively conveniently.
But what kind of people make up the workforce in this industry? In Japan, it’s apparently pretty draconian in regards to how banks operate. Maybe I’m just too sold on the idea of diversity, but banks in Japan basically want the tidiest looking and boring people there are, in my opinion, to fill their ranks. This whole idea of trust being built on one’s appearance and needing to “look trustworthy” is a ridiculous notion.
If there’s anything about a bank employee that gets potential clients to trust them, it’s the system and money that makes up the bank that they’re working for, not them being the tidy looking representative, not the smiling face knowing that as long as you don’t declare bankruptcy that they’re always going to profit.
As long as you present yourself as being engaged in conversation and are able to think logically about what kind of loan and if the information provided makes a person or organization look like they’ll be able to repay the loan with interest, why should the focus come down to hair length and smiles? Not every culture takes a smiling stranger as a good sign and individuals may have preferences that go against mainstream expectations.
If anything, I felt the people who interviewed me were really out of the loop, and I’m guessing they thought the same about me if they decided to reject me. But it’s more likely they just had a candidate that better aligned with what they were looking for. I’m not going to hold it against them for rejecting me.
On the other hand, just how sheltered are these middle aged people who seem to have things so easy it seems? The bank office worker job was for a non-Japanese bank with a branch office in Osaka, so they weren’t held to the same strict standards of Japanese banks. They don’t even have to deal with normal people who have an everyday checking account as the bank deals mostly with exchanging money and sending money to and from abroad.
I don’t even know why I got asked if I wrote the Japanese words on the envelope addressed to them containing my resume. Did they think I needed someone else to address a letter and that I was illiterate? Can I read newspapers? Who even reads newspapers these days when the vast majority read it online? It’s like they’ve just met a foreign for the first time and tried conversing with one with all the stereotypes they’ve kept in their head dating back a couple decades.
I’m not bitter about it. The person who emailed me about setting up an interview even slipped up and wrote another applicant’s name instead of mine when responding to me. I don’t even know why they bothered asking me to send in a resume in English when they didn’t even bother to mention it at all. I’m glad they found someone who’s more pleasing to them and passed me up. I doubt they’re competent enough to train anyone without a banking background to help out with the tasks of making schedules and writing emails in English.
While the salary looked decent and the hours pretty nice, they hardly seemed interested in someone who’s not a highly maintained bonsai tree. I’ll focus on my remaining options and whatever else that becomes available in the coming weeks.
Thanks for reading!
One Chance Works 