close on New Year's Day!
last month, Mitoshi Matsumoto went from being one of the
thousands of franchised convenience store owners in Japan, to somewhat of a
national celebrity, He and his wife had bought the 7-Eleven store in
Higashi-Osaka back in 2012, and everything went smoothly until Mrs. Matsumoto
tragically passed away in 2018, leaving Mitoshi to handle the store mostly by
himself, He was putting in 14-hour work days and because he couldn’t find
people willing to work there, he had to ask his son to quit college to come
help him with the business, by
February of 2019, Matsumoto had gotten so tired of the work hours
demanded by 7-Eleven that he announced he would be closing down his store
between 1am and 6am,
Matsumoto’s
announcement was taken pretty badly by 7-Eleven, the company announced the
franchise owner that he risked having his contract revoked as well as a
$155,000 fine, but he didn’t budge, and started closing down his shop for a few
hours every night, then the big one, He announced he would be shutting down for a whole day so
that he and his two full-time workers could have New Year’s Day off, that was
the last straw, and 7-Eleven terminated his contract. The official reasons
offered by the company were that Matsumoto had been complaining about the
7-Eleven brand on social media and because of repeated complaints from
customers, but the store owner and his supporters claim the company just wants
to make an example out of him, “I still think this is 7-Eleven,” Matsumoto
told SoraNews24, “Basically, we’re just selling off the stock
until the dispute is settled. After that, if the court decides I’m wrong, I’ll
hand over the store and walk away. If I’m right… I’m not sure what I’ll do
next.” the case of the rogue 7-Eleven has sparked a heated debate in Japan,
with some siding with the parent company of 7-Eleven and other convenience
store chains and arguing that Japanese konbini store are traditionally open non
stop and that Matsumoto knew what he was getting into from the very beginning.
Others claim that long work hours are already a huge problem in Japan, and that
this non-stop knobini culture is only making things worse, so where do you sit on this one? for myself if you can not organise your life well enough to not go to a convenience store for one day, give your keeper a good pay rise!
2 comments:
It's funny too, because 7-Eleven was named based on it's business hours. Back when 7-11 first opened in the 1940s, it was impossible to go buy something like beer, bread, milk, or cigarettes after 6 or 7 p.m. So 7-Eleven stayed open until the late, late hour of 11 p.m. (Obviously, they opened at 7 a.m.)
Dear Jil, that was exactly what I thought, staying open to 11.00 in the evening, but I guess the goalposts have been moved, radically! having said that I would imagine that the 24 hours open or else would be in the original contract, it is sad that due to unforeseen reasons the owner could not honour it, but there it is, best regards, Stan and Diana.
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