Kyoto office employs a bunch of dummies
NHK reported this week that a Kyoto prefecture public relations office that deals with complaints and citizen requests is using dummies to increase work efficiency.
The five upper-body-only mannequins sit on the staff desks facing the employees to ensure they don’t relax. Each is given a name, age, gender and occupation. Yoshiko Naniwano, for example, is a 66-year-old lady from Osaka who came to visit Kyoto for sightseeing. She has some complaints to make. Another is a 32-year-old woman raising her kids. And there’s a 24-year-old graduate student who is job hunting.
“I feel like being watched. The tense feeling in a good sense makes me work more efficiently,” says one employee. The initiative has been so successful so far the office plans to employ more dummies soon.
[Story and Photo via CNNGO]
[Tagged: Marx’s theory of alienation, Weber’s “iron cage”, Foucault’s surveillance]
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