I still remembered the recruitment of a maritime trading company in Tokyo. The boss said two words impressive. 〝Remember that we here is not the classroom. And my company has not the boat neither the goods. We live on the perfect and excellent service between shippers and ports.〞At that time, I didn’t quite understand his concrete meaning, but from then on, I experience almost everyday the weight of this two sentences.

 

 

     The company is small.Besides the boss, there is only one formal employee who is a woman at the age of twenty-five or six. And then it’s me who is a temporary worker reporting to the company three days a week. The company has a lot of business, so boss’s madame and daughter often come to help. The surname of my female colleague is Hutian, that is very like the Japanese prononciation of “tiger”, so I call her Tiger- girl privately. My desk is next to the Tiger-girl’s, and boss is sitting on the right face of us, seeing all the things, with a little stateliness under his control.

     On the first day of the work, Tiger-gril handed me four familiarest contratct stylebooks. After her simple explanation, he left me one hour to familiarize the content. He said bluntly: “ Our everyone has a heap of things to do, so it is impossible that we spend the time teaching whatever. You can only come on.” After one hour, she handed me else a fax and two booklets noting all kinds of data and materials concerned the boats and goods and said: “ As to things given to you, you will print four contrats with the company and do it well in 80 minutes.” “ But I don’t know anything!” I nearly cred out. Tiger-girl didn’t take care of it, so I hurried to busy myself according to the sample.

     On the next day, the content of my job was added another one: answer the call. “ It is a necessary basal ability for the office staff. En telling me that, Tiger- girl gave me a piece of paper, on the which were the basal languages written densely a full piece for answering the call in all cases. “ You should pay attention to the politeness and must use the honorifics.” In that afternoon, the landlady called twice to test my skills and repeated again and again that I should do more and more practice and that it would be absolutely impossible to continue like that. One day down, I had almost no courage to speak Japanes. The third day, the fourth day… Everyday I had several new things to learn. Two weeks later, like the graduate in the crash course, I went so far as to work independently.

 

      With such a forced hurry to the battle, the “ trouble” happened soon. One day, when I just begun the work, the boss, knocking a stack of contract lists that I had done, whispered to me: " Mrs Shi, you can not work like that!” I thought that there were must some big mistakes happened. " How did you cover this chapter? The place is not correct and you didn’t cover them clearly. There is also the data of this table, which is not aligned line by line. Here, the above date is used with the figures, why you used the Chinese characters below ... ..." On one piece of paper, 15 problems were circled. "This kind of thing handed to the customers, they will see that our company was not in the good working situation... ..." I was a little relieved. It was fortunate that they were the major issue about money. I just started, how could I notice so many small problems. But because that the boss was not satisfied, I had to all rework. Tiger-girl ordered, the whole morning sitting behind me, monitored me strictly, which was probably "the highest cultivation” since I did this job. 
      Staying with the boss and the tiger-girl a whole day, watching their gloomy face, I could not help feeling a bit emotion: in the classroom, it’s excellent, you can say, if we have a mark of 80 in the test; while in the office, the requirement in the office is even more than 100. 

 

Self-reliance and self-motivation 
      
       For one time, the boss needed a group of data. So he let me find it out for him, and told me that it was in the front pages. With boss’s more and more higher "straight turn", I turned hurrily in the wind. Finally, the boss anxious, staring at his pair of eyes always blood red, stretched over across to grab the brochure and turned to the other direction in the wind, en whispering: "you know really the Japanese?" I suddenly realized: because the Japanese book is mostly vertical layout, then the page numbers were corresponding the right to the left, which was exactly opposite of our Chinese habit. I was quite satisfied with my Japanese ability and thought that I could think basically with the Japanese, but at the crucial moment, I was still full of  "Chinese awareness. During the lunch break, as an interesting story, I told it to the boss's daughter. What I did not realize was that when I just prepare to go home after work, the boss called me back, apologized to me for the morning incident, and insisted to invite me to have a drink. This is Japanese that once realising  owing to others, he will find ways to correct his mistakes.

      Gradually I could undertaken the whole work. Two months later, the boss gave me an increase wage. But I realized that my original idea was totally wrong. At that time, I thought very simplely: "As I am sitting in the office with the costume, how much I can feel tired compared with so many dirty and tired jobs?" However, I did not expect that this "white collar" required almost to pay all the life.