lo One fast-food company is well known in Japan for its extensive worker manual and the sales talk it covers. From the book, workers learn how to greet a customer, how to bow, how to take an order, pack a bag and give correct change. 5 Customers find the same nice service in all the franchised outlets, which contributes to both customer satisfaction and *corporate profits. One day, a mother came into one of these restaurants, and while she was ordering at the counter, her baby grabbed an 10 employee's hat and began to play with it. He was surprised and embarrassed. He could not concentrate on what the customer (2) was saying and had to ask her to repeat her order twice. He knew he was losing his dignity as a company representative by having an infant tearing up part of his uniform, and he wanted to 15 take it back, but at the same time he didn't know what to say or do. He stood there ( 3 ) until the mother *retrieved the hat and gave it back to him. He put it on again, resumed his normal calm attitude, and took her order efficiently as if nothing had happened. But everyone in the restaurant could see that a 20 one-year-old child had the power to bring the operation to a halt and must have wondered about it. What was the problem here? Simply put, the manual, detailed as it may be, fails to cover what to do in a situation where a young child steals part of your uniform. And without the manual to guide his behavior, the employee was lost. This is a trivial example of a very serious problem in Japan: the inability to 48