HOME / moneybox: Commentary about business and finance.

Can't Robots Press the Elevator Buttons?Japan, the world's most efficient economy, has lots of gas station attendants and elevator operators. Why?

By Daniel GrossPosted Monday, June 29, 2009, at 12:29 PM ET

Eager's cardboard robot mannequinsMore than any other country in the world, Japan is a case study in the triumphs of human engineering. Every Japanese manufacturer prides itself on energy efficiency and zero-landfill waste policies. The train and subway stations are models of precision and the application of information technology. Late last week, I visited Toyota's astonishing Tsutsumi auto plant, near the car company's headquarters in Toyoda City. With a capacity of 400,000 vehicles per year—this is where the Prius is made—it's clean, bright, full of erector-set conveyer belts, and thinly staffed. The welding shop is like a scene from The Terminator—a thicket of robots extend their arms, moving large pieces of metal and blasting them with shots of heat. (The section where robots stamp "Obama '08" and "NPR" bumper stickers on the hybrid vehicles must have been around the corner.) On Monday, I visited a small company in Osaka that hopes its cardboard, female-shaped robot will garner a share of the mannequin market. The engineers also demonstrated a robot that can dance and act and a third that can identify whether people are men or women ("You are a beautiful lady!") and guess their ages (inaccurately, it turns out).

RSS

And yet, while traveling around Japan with a group of journalists, I've also continually encountered what seem to be exquisitely engineered inefficiencies. There are a large number of people whose jobs seem to be standing around and calling out greetings and gesturing the way to enter stores, restaurants, hotels, and office buildings. Walk into a midrange hotel, and a swarm of bellmen and desk clerks worthy of a Four Seasons springs into action. At the Takashimiya department stores, two women flank each bank of four elevators, pushing the call button. Parking garages in Tokyo feature a half-dozen uniformed parking attendants who call out greetings and farewells. When we visited the Japan Iron and Steel Federation, we saw three women on their hands and knees working on stains. (What, there's no robot that specializes in stain removal?)

Everywhere you go, there seem to be human redundancies, people spending valuable time doing things that don't need to be done or that could easily be done by a single person. At a luncheon for about 20 at the Nippon Press Center, we were waited on by a half-dozen waiters, as if we were aristocrats. Even rarely visited government agencies have multiple press officers. Visit a company or a government agency in the United States, and you're likely to get key data and presentations on memory sticks or CDs. Here, we've been buried in paper everywhere we've gone—laboriously printed out and handed out with great ceremony. When I went to a police station (a lost passport scare; don't ask), it took 30 minutes to impart a small amount of information, which the officer dutifully wrote down on a sheet of paper. There was no computer in sight.

A lot of the human inefficiencies have to do with Japan's high regard for politesse and manners. Social and business transactions take time because of the need for extensive greetings and farewells. Technology here seems to be for moving people, goods, and information—not for completing human transactions. And with universal health insurance and a national pension program, there's a dignity to low-level service jobs in Japan. It could be that the inefficiencies have something to do with a societal desire for full employment.* Japan would prefer to have its citizens in make-work jobs than not working at all. For much of the postwar glory years, Japan's unemployment rate was in the 2 percent range. Even now, amid a deep global recession, it's at about 5 percent.

*Correction, June 29, 2009: This sentence originally and incorrectly ended with the word unemployment.

E-MAIL

RECOMMEND... Get Slate RSS Feeds

Daniel Gross is the Moneybox columnist for Slate and the business columnist for Newsweek. You can e-mail him at and follow him on Twitter. His latest book, Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation, has just been published in paperback.

COMMENTS

I have heard about the Japanese "social jobs", or whatever you may call them. You are exactly right about the (limited) benefit these jobs provide. I have lived in three countries (Germany, France, US) and seen many more travelling; I can tell you that the US has way more social/comfort jobs than there are in Western Europe.... it's often bare bones staffing there. Go into a larger German store (not a small family owned), and try to find a salesperson. Go into a German hospital at night and count how many people you find working there (you will almost never find security personnel, phlebotomists, transport people, housekeeping, ward secretaries ... all is run by nurses, a few nursing aides and doctors). In the US, you have greeters (not only at Wal-Mart), doormen, security guards etc. I think this is a good thing as long as it is not excessive and the additional people are friendly. Certainly better than having them sit at home ... although there might be more important stuff they could be doing.

-- traugott
(To reply, click here)

I lived in Japan a total of 6 years (3 years at a time) and I always found it quite nice to have elevator operators in the department stores announcing the floors (it's much easier than getting off on the wrong floor). I also liked having to deal with a REAL person rather than what we have now which is some disconnected computer voice that can't answer your questions. Technology is not always a help. Sometimes good old fashioned person to person contact is what's needed.

-- SassyGirl
(To reply, click here)

What did you think of this article?

Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum

POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES