Hasta La Ideas

The customer service in Japan is legendary, and the year I spent living there bore that out. As one example, I wandered into a McDonald’s during a slow time of day, and the high school kids behind the counter were role-playing: One of them stood on the customer side and pretended to place a difficult and unusual order, while the two behind the counter yelled “hai” and scurried to accommodate his demands. But this train station ticket vending machine is the absolute cake-taker:

The Japanese will often use our English word for service, rendering it “saabisu.” But clearly we Westerners ought to be using their word instead.

(more…)