Do I need to say hello when I go to the restroom in a Japanese convenience store? Is it OK to use the restroom in a Japanese convenience store?

More and more tourists are coming to Japan. Many friends are worried about language communication difficulties. What should they do if they suddenly feel urgent and need to use the toilet while shopping? There are many large and small convenience stores in Japan. , so can you just enter a convenience store to use the restroom?

Friends who study and work in Tokyo and Osaka may have deep feelings about this matter, especially in central and bustling areas, borrowing convenience store restrooms is not only You have to say hello to the store clerk. If you say hello, you may not even be allowed to use it.

After staying in this type of city for a long time, you may even draw inferences and think that all of Japan is like this, but this is not necessarily the case.

In many cities in Japan, you don’t need to say hello to the store clerk to borrow a convenience store restroom. You can use it casually without anyone caring about you.

And the toilets are very large. Some convenience stores even have three toilets in order to reduce queues and facilitate customers.

For example, in Hokkaido, I have never seen anyone having to say hello to the clerk when going to the restroom in a convenience store.

So, the conclusion of this matter is that in convenience stores with reminder slogans like "トイレご用の方は店_に声をかけてください", you need to advance in advance For greeting the store clerk, if there is no sticker, you can use it casually. You can also say hello to the store clerk. In most cases, it will be polite, but in some areas and stores, it may make everyone a little embarrassed.

Because I have lived in a regional city in Japan for a long time, when I first saw this slogan in a convenience store in Tokyo many years ago, I was a little confused and a little resistant to this rule. Even disgusted.

At that time, I thought this was just an individual requirement of some convenience stores, so I went to three convenience stores in a row. It turned out that whatever I let you use was fine, and some convenience stores directly refused customers. Since then, convenience store toilets have become only for clerks.

This kind of regulation is actually very unfriendly to both store employees and customers.

For store clerks, not only does it increase their workload and they have to accept customers' "requests" to go to the toilet, but it is also easy for them to cause friction with customers and make them unhappy. There have also been cases of customers retaliating maliciously and engaging in petty acts because a store clerk refused a customer's request to use the restroom.

For customers, if they have to go to the toilet urgently and have to ask the store clerk to apply, many people will be shy and embarrassed to say it. When the store clerk is busy, for those who are embarrassed, It was even more difficult to open my mouth.

Furthermore, can you imagine what it would feel like for an anxious person to rush to a convenience store and then ask the clerk to use the restroom? Some clerks would even give the customer a blank look or even directly refuse the customer's use ( Sometimes it is true that the toilet is not available to customers). When this happens, it will really explode on the spot.

Since this does not bring much benefit to either the clerk or the customer, why do some convenience stores continue to implement it? Because there are indeed many problems with the use of this toilet.

The toilets in Japanese convenience stores were not open to customers in the past. In 1997, Lawson announced the declaration of opening toilets. Firstly, it is convenient for customers. Secondly, the opening of this toilet can also play a certain role. Drainage effect. At the beginning, the effect was indeed pretty good. Customers came in to use the restroom, and bought bottles of water, ice cream, and packs of cigarettes, all of which increased sales.

However, some problems gradually emerged later. For example, some people would read newspapers in the toilet and squat for a long time without coming out. Some people would use the toilet to steal things from the store, and some homeless people would squat. If they don't come out of the toilet, some people will steal toilet paper and deodorant in the toilet and make the toilet very dirty and messy. There are even some perverts who will do some shameful things in the toilet.

There is a cost for toilets in convenience stores, whether it is toilet paper or water and sewerage. Many customers do not buy anything after using the toilet, but just walk around and leave, which also disappoints many customers. The convenience store owner felt unhappy, thinking that such customers had no empathy and were ungrateful.

Therefore, many stores have to adopt this kind of mandatory greeting method, so that customers who go to the toilet can be more conscious, feel the supervision of the store staff, do not do illegal and uncivilized things, and keep the toilet clean. While it is tidy, it also makes customers feel a little embarrassed. Due to the pressure of reading the air, they can buy something before leaving.

However, to be honest, I personally don’t like this rule. I have to go out of my way to say hello to the store clerk to go to the toilet, although I do understand the store’s difficulties.

Fortunately, the city I live in does not have this rule at all, and almost all convenience stores have parking lots, even exaggeratedly large parking lots, for convenient parking.

When customers feel comfortable, they may be more willing to buy more. If there is a dispute or conflict with a convenience store over going to the bathroom, the customer's anger will definitely expand to the entire chain brand. For example, if there is an unpleasant incident with a Lawson convenience store over going to the bathroom, then this People, maybe they won’t go to any Lawson store to buy anything in the future.