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Japanese restaurant’s recruiting ad promises time off for anime conventions

Casey Baseel Sep 23, 2014
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On the application for a lot of jobs in the service sector, they’ll ask if you’re willing to work nights and weekends. Oftentimes, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a trick question. On the one hand, candidates obviously want to put their best, most eager face forward, and if you say you’d rather not take shifts then, you’re opening yourself up to the very real possibility of losing the job to someone who’s, at least on paper, more industrious.

Honestly though, no one really wants to be working at those times, since nights and weekends are some of the best times to enjoy spending the money you earn as part of raising your overall quality of life. Thankfully, one udon chain seems to understand this, and as part of their recruiting advertising, points out that working at its restaurants won’t get in the way of the more important things in life, life spending your weekends at an anime convention.

Marugame Udon makes a pretty tasty version of one of Japan’s most popular noodle dishes. As a matter of fact, by offering good food served quickly at a reasonable price, they’ve been voted one of the country’s best inexpensive restaurants, even when they’re not serving up ridiculously large portions.

Of course, all that wouldn’t be possible without the hardworking staff at Marugame’s more than 700 branches across Japan. Staffing hundreds of restaurants requires thousands of workers, and Marugame’s HR department seems to understand that at least some of them would like Saturdays and Sundays off, as shown in this snapshot shared by Twitter user Inushii.

The manga heroine with the ‘70s-style super-long eyelashes is tearfully pleading, “Let me go to Comike on Saturday and Sunday,” referring to Comic Market, Japan’s largest gathering for independently-produced comics and animation. Comike, also called Comiket, is held twice a year at Tokyo’s Big Sight, with the summer iteration in particular taking place over a weekend.

Since there’s a lot of overlap between the demographics of young restaurant workers and hardcore fans taking on a part-time job specifically so they’ll have a little extra cash to blow on Comic Market merchandise, Marugame is upfront about the fact that it’s looking for suitable candidates even if they want weekends off. “At Marugame, taking shifts only on weekdays is OK!!” the text promises, leading to the manga character’s relieved expression in the bottom right corner of the ad.

▼ “Wonderful…now I can go to Comike…!”

Overall, Internet commenters were impressed by Marugame’s open-minded approach, although a few suspect it might be too good to be true.

“I wanna work there.”
“Hang on-gotta run out and turn in my application!”
“Do they offer the same deal if you want to go to the Tokyo Motor Show too?”
“Yeah, but when the time comes, will they really let you take those days off?”
“They might be able to draw in a few anime fans, but won’t this turn ordinary people off from working in their restaurants?”

One commenter even went so far as to declare, “Let this stand as proof that not all otaku are leaching off their parents.” He’s got a point, although given that it’s not at all unusual for two-episode anime DVDs in Japan to cost 5,000 yen (US $47) or more, it can be a hard hobby to finance if you get in the habit of turning down too many weekend shifts.

Source: Hamster Sokuho
Top image: Twitter
Insert images: So-Net, Twitter, Yahoo! Japan