Workplace reviews and discussion: 東急屋實業有限公司

Hmm~ For those of you thinking about working at Tokyuya:

The advantages of Tokyuya: You can learn things you normally wouldn’t know.

After working there for a while, if you look for another job, this experience will be a big plus.

The salary and benefits comply with the Labor Standards Act.

As for the disadvantages, first of all, you need to be mentally prepared to be used as three or four people’s worth of labor by yourself. You’ll learn a lot—for example, operating the register, checking deliveries, restocking, and moving goods.

You also need to know how to use the hardware products in the store, such as nail guns; the differences between charging cables and their functions; and how to distinguish one-, two-, and four-foot fluorescent tubes. Basically, you need to know how to use all the products, because customers won’t read the instructions themselves—they’ll only ask the staff. If you don’t know, they’ll instead ask, “Aren’t you working at a hardware store? How do you not know this…?”

You’ll also have to do a whole lot of maintenance work. For example, on typhoon days, you may have to climb a ladder to check whether the roof drainage pipes are clogged, because a blockage will cause leaks.

Why do you have to do it? Because there aren’t enough people and they can’t recruit anyone, so many tasks are handled by frontline employees.

You’ll also have to deal with difficult customers. For example, someone buys a lithium battery and asks you to replace the battery in their car remote. After you finish, they don’t even say thank you. Someone buys cigarettes and then says they bought the wrong ones and wants to return them. Or they send a child to buy rice wine, claiming it’s for cooking.

The important point is, the child clearly looks like a middle school student == How are you supposed to sell rice wine to them? Rice wine is alcohol too.

Or someone spends a few hundred dollars and asks you to round off the remaining amount for them so the total is an even number.

If you say you can’t, they’ll say, “I come here all the time,” or “I live nearby.” Or, even though home delivery is only available for purchases over several thousand dollars, they’ll insist on buying something like a three-tier cabinet worth five or six hundred dollars and tell you their home is very close, asking whether you can deliver it for them. ==

All I can say is that these customers were probably spoiled by the previous staff.

For example, when returning or exchanging an item, bringing the receipt is a basic requirement.

But some customers will say, “I didn’t bring it. Why do I need a receipt?

I didn’t have to bring one before, so why do I have to bring one now? ……”

There are piles of goods every day, but managers constantly come around to inspect the store.

Then they complain, “How come the goods haven’t all been restocked? The shelves are so empty.

What customer would want to come in and buy anything?”

Even if you tell the managers that you haven’t had any breaks and have been restocking nonstop,

they’ll only keep emphasizing, “There’s just no one—we can’t recruit anyone.”

Then they’ll tell you to hurry up and finish restocking the goods on the floor, because it would be troublesome if a customer tripped and fell, and so on……

All I can say is, if you want to work at Tokyuya, you need to prepare yourself mentally to be exhausted to death. But if you work there for more than a year and then change jobs,

you’ll feel that everything is very easy, because there’s no job more exhausting and demanding than this one.