Japanese people say asking workers to smile at work is form of workplace harassment: survey
Asking employees to smile is considered a form of customer harassment for nearly half of Japanese people, according to reports.
A poll from Kyoto-based Helpfeel Inc surveyed 1,070 people in Japan to determine which scenarios in customer service settings can be considered harassment.
According to the survey, as reported by The Mainichi, 45% of respondents considered saying "smile please" to store staff as harassment.
"Many people probably think that store employees feel resistant to being required to maintain customer service demeanour above a certain level," a Helpfeel representative told Mainichi.
The inclusion of asking store staff to smile in the poll comes after a previous Helpfeel survey in October also found that many respondents consider the act of asking customer service workers to "be more pleasant" as harassment.
McDonald's Japan is one of the organisations in the country that had long asked its crew to smile as part of their customer service.
In fact, it used to have a campaign called "Smile: 0 yen" that was offered as an official menu item in its branches, including its home delivery service.
But the company recently changed its manual from "Work with a Smile" to "Work with your Style" after their policy created issues on recruiting Gen Zs.
In fact, McDonald's Japan told Mainichi that many young people cited "smiling as a barrier to working" at the fast-food chain.
According to McDonald's, their previous smile policy was abused by some customers who took it for granted, leading to extra stress for the crew.
TBWA\HAKUHODO, an advertising agency, was tapped by McDonald's to introduce their shift in policy. It collaborated with ano to create a song about the diversity of working styles at McDonald's in a bid to attract more Gen Zs to the company.
"McDonald's released an original song… portraying the thoughts and feelings of real McDonald's crew members," the TBWA said on its website. "The tune updated their brand image from 'a place where smiling is mandatory' to 'a place that accepts smiles of all shapes and sizes.'"
The campaign resulted in a 115% increase in applicants for McDonald's, as well as a record number of 105,000 new hires, according to the TWBA.
