lifestyle

Man buying porn refuses to be served by female convenience store clerk

12 Comments
By Casey Baseel, RocketNews24

Japan has a reputation for outstanding customer service, and as such you’ll usually find courtesy and pleasantness on both sides of retail transactions. As polite as clerks are, most shoppers are just as respectful toward the hard-working individuals who’re ringing their purchases up.

Still, not every customer is a joy to deal with, and one young woman working at a convenience store thought she was encountering an extremely rude male customer who refused to be served by her. As it turns out, though, the man she’d mistaken for a chauvinist was simply following his own particular code of chivalry.

A lot of the stuff you’ll find in a Japanese convenience store is pretty family-friendly. Often, the clientele consists of kids coming in to buy candy, hungry salarymen and Internet writers picking up boxed lunches, or passersby stopping in to grab a cold, refreshing bottle of tea or can of coffee.

Convenience stores also provide some less wholesome vices, though, and occasionally a customer, usually a guy, will become impatient and frustrated when he can’t find his preferred type of booze or the clerk is too slow in retrieving his regular brand of smokes from where they’re kept behind the counter. It’s likely that’s what Twitter user Yuma thought was happening during her shift at her part-time convenience store job.

Yuma was at her position working the register when a crotchety male customer approached and suddenly declared “I haven't got anything to say to you! Go get your manager!!”

Not sure what the man’s problem was, Yuma did as asked. Her male manager came out and served the customer, but the puzzled part-timer still had no clue what all the fuss had been about, considering she hadn’t said anything at all, let alone something that could have caused offense, prior to the customer’s outburst. So after the man left, Yuma asked her manager, “Did I do something wrong?”

Not at all, according to her manager, who relayed what the customer had told him: “It wouldn’t be right to make a young girl serve me when I’m buying a porno mag, so I had her go get you instead.”

So while he didn’t go about it in the most delicate way, it turns out the customer was at least trying to spare Yuma a bit of embarrassment. The good-natured young lady decided to take the customer’s actions with their intended sentiment. “It was actually kind of cute that he thought to do that,” she tweeted. Now that she knows his MO, though, we’re not sure what the porn-craving customer is going to do the next time he needs his fix.

Source: Twitter via Jin

Read more stories from RocketNews24. -- 10 tales of awkward customer interaction from Japan -- The Arduous Audition Process to Become a Cold Stone Japan Part-Timer -- Woman Arrested for Attempting to Rob Convenience Store; Attempt Was So Bad She May Get Off

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12 Comments
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"It wouldn't be right to make a young girl serve me when I'm buying a porno mag, so I had her go get you instead".

And they say chivalry is dead...

13 ( +14 / -1 )

I think he was trying to spare himself from his own embarrassment

5 ( +7 / -2 )

Could be a nice script for the first episode of a half season anime.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

He sounded very rude in his manner.  Chivalry null and void, If he can't be polite to shop staff, he's no gentleman.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

One day I was buying emergency supplies of feminine hygiene products (tampons) in my local convenience store. The only clerk on duty was a young man. I refused to be served by him, to his puzzlement, and a sharp-eyed female clerk called him away and took over. These things happen!

-6 ( +4 / -10 )

Once, in a video shop in Gunma, I saw a gaggle of high school girls enter the adult section. Not shortly after that, half a dozen embarrassed Japanese "men" came out. My friend wondered why they were so embarrassed, considering most of the videos on display featured girls just like them.

Anyway, my girlfriend and I stopped going to a shop down the road when they refused her entry to the adult section on the grounds that "women weren't allowed" (there were no signs stating this, either). When we pushed the little troll manning the shop why, he explained it was because women "like men".

He got the shock of his life when our friend, who was also with us, exclaimed " so do I, because I'M GAY!"

When we asked him if he was banned from the adult section too, he hurriedly said "yes", so we ripped our membership cards up and threw them at him on his counter.

I've never really liked Japanese video rental places anyway, and in this internet day and age, haven't looked back.

0 ( +4 / -3 )

most shoppers are just as respectful toward the hard-working individuals who’re ringing their purchases up.

I would have to disagree with that one.

I am continually shocked at how rude many customers in Japan are toward store clerks, waitresses and others serving them.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

I do the same in Izakaya. I refuse to be served a drink by someone of non-drinking age.

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

I do the same in Izakaya. I refuse to be served a drink by someone of non-drinking age.

Not sure if you are joking or are being deadly serious.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

While growing up I would buy my tampons at the local mom and pop grocery store, one of my closest teenage friends was the clerk. I would walk up, lay them on the counter, he'd take my money and we never felt embarrassed or shamed. I was a purchaser in the store he worked in, it was his job.

I don't get the embarrassment when buying feminine hygiene products. It's just merchandise for the retailer workers.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Why does everyone think condom vending machines were invented?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

As polite as clerks are, most shoppers are just as respectful toward the hard-working individuals who are ringing their purchases up.

I suppose that's true if one considers grunts in response to questions being respectful.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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