Every Bad Japanese Stereotype You Could Imagine - Anonymous employee Uniqlo Employee Review

Terrible training; rushed, inefficient, and made me drink from a firehose of complicated company culture and processes before throwing me into the workspace. No resources I could go to if I had a question, and I had no idea who to contact for specific questions. They were consistently late and disorganized in getting me the most basic things I needed for my job, such as my Employee ID (which I needed to sign up for benefits before the deadline; I finally got my ID number at the eleventh hour), or my laptop (for a job in which 90% of my responsibilities required me to have access to a computer). Culture-wise, it's the most Japanese company that's ever Japanesed: mandatory shouting of customer service phrases, a complete lack of individuality, and an obsession with minute cultural details that gets in the way of basic workplace common sense and efficiency. You have to stand up in a perfectly straight, military attention-like line at the beginning and end of every day, with perfect posture and "samurai sword hands." I'd get to work wanting to do my job and focus on my tasks, and always feel like my time was being wasted by these rituals. The standards are ridiculous and nonsensical: I once had to completely do over a project involving printing P-Touch labels, because the sides of the labels hadn't been cut in perfectly straight, vertical lines, and therefore didn't live up to "Uniqlo standards," setting me behind on important work actually relevant to the functioning of the store. The Japanese managers don't speak the best English, and have a condescending, "we need to teach these American barbarians how to act like civilized people" aura about them that constantly made me feel belittled and built resentment. The pay was way too low to justify the amount of work I was doing; Uniqlo likes to tout that it pays competitively, but where I worked, they were barely above the city minimum wage. A week after I left Uniqlo, I got a new job which pays better for easier work, better training and learning resources, a friendlier work environment, approachable and supportive management, and I don't even have to shout slogans every morning. That pretty much sums it up.