An increasing number of companies and government agencies are giving their employees permission to change their name tags, keeping their real identities secret. What’s driving this change? A spike in so-called “customer harassment.”
Almost 1 in 2 service employees face “customer harassment”
Japan has a reputation abroad for being a kind, gentle, and polite country. While there’s a grain of truth here, at the end of the day, it’s a nation of people. And some people will always try and take advantage of others.
In Japan, some customers use the traditional notion in business that “the customer is god” to take advantage of service employees. This can include pressuring employees for discounts, demanding that an employee who somehow did them wrong bow down in apology, or even stalking or committing assault.
In Japanese, this is called “customer harassment” (カスタマーハラスメント), or “kasu-hara” (カスハラ) for short. It isn’t a new problem – I’ve been writing about it since 2019. However, this year, I’ve seen a huge spike in Japan in both awareness of the issue and in companies and governments laying out proactive strategies to address it.
Research shows that harassment of service employees in Japan is a real and severe problem. A recent survey by labor union UA Zensen of 33,000 service workers found that 46.8% – nearly half – had been harassed by customers in the past two years.
What kind of people harass service employees in Japan? According to the survey, over half of the harassers – 70.6% – were men. (Shocking.) And most of them are old: people over 50 comprised 75.7% of the culprits.
Companies, governments move to address customer harassment
The ubiquity of customer harassment in Japan has forced some companies and jurisdictions to lay down the law. For example, Japan Railways East recently announced that it would stop doing business with customers who harassed their employees. The company said it’ll pass this consumer health penalty on anyone who engages in physical or verbal attacks, intimidation, or discrimination.
Meanwhile, the Tokyo Metropolitan Area is working on legislation to deter customer harassment. The proposed bill, due to pass and come into effect in April of 2025, would compel businesses to take positive action to protect their employees from harassment.
The Tokyo legislation would be the first of its kind. However, some are questioning how effective it’ll be, as it doesn’t impose fines or other penalties on non-compliant businesses.
Removing kanji, using pseudonyms on name tags
Meanwhile, many companies and local governments are taking a different tack to protect their employees from abuse – by hiding their identities.
Traditionally, service employees in Japan have either their last names or even their full names on their name tags. These are written in kanji or katakana (the latter especially for foreign service staff).
Sadly, this has enabled harassers to target specific employees on social media. It also gives harassers information they could use to pinpoint other information about the employee, such as their personal social media accounts.
To counter this, both stores and governments are allowing employees to change how their names appear on name tags. For example, convenience stores Family Mart and Lawson are allowing employees (with a given store’s permission) to use pseudonyms instead of their real names. They’re also allowing employees to use Roman letter initials in lieu of their full names.
It’s not just private businesses doing this. Many local governments are also allowing their public-facing employees to hide their identities. In Nagano Prefecture alone, 16 of 19 cities polled by Asahi Shimbun print only an employee’s last name on name tags.
The move extends to public transportation as well. In August 2024, Japan’s Ministry of Transportation dropped a law that required bus and taxi drivers to display their full names inside their vehicles.
3COINS “Staff” name tags earn social media praise
Recently, discount shop chain 3COINS made a similar move – and their particular spin on the problem earned them a heap of praise from Japanese social media users.
Starting this month, 3COINS employees no longer have any names on their name tags. Instead, their tags simply say “Staff.” The solution protects staff completely from having their names leaked on social media. It also prevents customers from flooding the store with complaints about a specific staff member.
3COINS is run by PAL Group, which says it made the move to create “a safer environment” for both staff and customers. It says it’s implementing the policy across its brands on a case-by-case basis.
Social media users praised the move, saying it raised their opinion of the 3COINS brand. This welcome reception probably means we’ll see other brands follow suit. Given how vicious social media harassment can be, I can only see this as a positive trend.
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Sources
コンビニ名札、本名なしも可能に カスハラにローソン、ファミマ. Kochi Shimbun
埼玉 羽生市 職員の名札 ひらがなで名字だけに変更へ. NHK News
3COINS、従業員名札を匿名化「素晴らしい」と評判 運営会社「スタッフの安全を守るため」. JCast News
店員の名札、仮名やイニシャルもOK ファミマとローソン. Asahi Shimbun
サービス業の従業員 2人に1人がカスハラ被害. Tokyo MX
東京都が「カスハラ」防止へ条例案を提出 「社会全体で対応」と明記、罰則は定めず 4月施行を目指す. Tokyo Shimbun
