A few days ago my partner and I went to a sento (public bath). I finished first and sat waiting in the lobby.
While I waited, a woman returned her key at the counter and was about to leave.
Then the attendant said, "Ah, you have gone over two hours..."
Apparently she had exceeded the allotted bathing time.
Of course she should have paid the overtime fee, but she said, "I do not have money today!" and tried to force her way out.
The attendant said, "Then please pay next time." (That is already more than generous — you would never say "pay next time" after shoplifting.)
Then, unbelievably, she said something half-threatening: "If I can pay, I will! What is your name? How do you write it? I will remember!" and left.
I was stunned. What an unreasonable way to behave.
It was a small sento, so there was only one attendant, and I was the only person in the waiting area.
The attendant did not show anger (or rather, like me, was mostly surprised) and answered straightforwardly, but sitting nearby I felt very sorry for them. Still, they did not seem panicked, so I guessed they deal with difficult customers often.
I do not know the exact legal label, but it was at a level that could reasonably involve the police. The unfairness washed away a little of that after-bath feeling of well-being.
That complaining woman had come to the sento to feel refreshed — does acting like that not leave her in a bad mood too?
Above all, imagining what the attendant felt after she left made me deeply sad. I almost said, "Are you all right? That must have been hard." It would not solve anything, but talking to someone might ease the mind a little.
Later another attendant appeared after a delay, and I overheard them saying, "Something like this just happened," which made me feel a little better. Even so, sadness was probably still the larger feeling.
After that I met up with my partner who had finished bathing, told them what had happened, and only then felt a bit lighter.
And besides that incident, something else caught my attention.
Sento customers include first-timers and regulars. The attendant kept getting asked the same things, or having to say the same things: "I will take your shoe-locker key." "You can use any locker in the changing room." "Please put the bath towel here."
In the thirty minutes or so I waited, I heard at least ten such exchanges.
Repeating the same instructions over and over looked exhausting. There was a ticket machine, but at a sento without one, that kind of communication would more than double.
Including the earlier incident, I thought: if more of this were systematized in advance, operations would be easier — and above all, fewer people would meet that kind of unfair sadness.
As a side note, when I go somewhere new I look at the website and gather information first. I check what kind of place it is, what the system is, and imagine it before I go. I may overthink it, but I am bad at asking staff about every little thing I do not know — I shrink from it.
Putting myself in a staff member's shoes: of course you do not want to face someone who gets unfairly angry, and repeating the same explanations is also a drag. And I do not want to witness people near me (even strangers) going through pitiful situations because systems are incomplete.
At the very least, I do not want to become the kind of person who shrugs and says, "They are paid to do that repetitive work," and does nothing. I want to keep systematizing as much as I can.
Systematization as a solution to a problem is often talked about — but I want to rephrase it more in emotional terms and pay attention to whether someone is being made to feel sad.
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