Note: This post contains spoilers for What You Are Looking For Is in the Library!
In chapter two of What You Are Looking For is in the Library, we meet thirty-five year old Ryo Urase, an accounting staff in a furniture-manufacturing company. Ryo is frustrated with the monotony of his current job and dreams of one day opening his own antique shop. However, he’s constantly demotivated by his lack of resources to do so. Ryo wonders whether his dream will remain just that - a faraway, unattainable dream.
As I reread Ryo’s story, I find that we can understand it from the lens of Herzberg’s two-factor theory of motivation-hygiene. Please bear in mind that I am not a psychology student - I stumbled upon Herzberg’s theory while reading another (non-fiction, non-English) book. I thought it was insightful. In this part, I’ll look at Ryo’s dissatisfaction through the lens of Herzberg’s theory. Part two will discuss the solution Ryo eventually lands on.
The search for satisfaction
Psychologist Frederick Herzberg names two factors that contribute to how satisfying a job is. The first is called the motivation factor, consisting of mostly (I think) internal things: personal growth, feeling appreciated, sense of achievement, and the sort. In a nutshell, I believe we can think of it as finding meaning and purpose in our job. The other factor is called the hygiene factor. It concerns things like salary, work environment, what the boss and coworkers are like, company policy, and so on. A good job is one that has good motivation and hygiene levels.
Here’s what I think is interesting. Herzberg doesn’t think of satisfaction and dissatisfaction as opposite ends of the same spectrum. He argues that when the motivation factor is great, workers feel satisfied. But when it’s not, it doesn’t make workers dissatisfied. It puts them in a “neutral” state of being not satisfied. On the other hand, when the hygiene factor is great, it prevents us from feeling dissatisfied. But when it’s bad, we feel dissatisfied.
If you’re confused, here’s how the other nonfiction book I read put it: The presence of motivators make you like (or even love) your job, but their absence simply makes you don’t like it. Not liking is different from hating. Good hygiene makes you not hate the job; bad hygiene makes you hate it. So according to this book, someone can like and hate their job at the same time.
And now we return to Ryo, whose job unfortunately exemplifies poor motivation and hygiene factors.
Motivation-wise, his accounting job doesn’t fulfill him internally. Ryo mentions that this job doesn’t excite him and that it “doesn’t require great passion”. He even says that it’s easy enough for those who like this kind of job.
But he isn’t exactly that kind of person. I think Ryo’s personality amplifies this feeling of not being satisfied with his work. Ryo is naturally the kind of person who looks for meaning and connection. We see this in how he is able to spend a lot of time imagining things, such as where his antique spoon might have come from, who might have used it, and so on. We can also see this trait of his when he recounts the story of how he met his girlfriend Hina. Ryo and Hina met while Hina was scavenging the beach for sea glass. He tells us:
…She sees the world the same way I do, with the same eye. I squatted down beside her to look in the sand and spotted all kinds of things: desiccated seaweed, pieces of driftwood, pebbles, a single beach sandal, plastic bags, bottle caps. The kind of flotsam that mostly gets labelled as garbage. Yet from another perspective, these are treasures, and the beach is one vast foraging ground for finding such things.
Ryo and Hina are both able to find meaning in what would appear to other people as trash. Similarly his passion for antiques reflects the same thing. There might be people who do not see the value in old things, but Ryo does.
So naturally, a meaning-seeker like Ryo would feel bothered by the lack of meaning in his daily job. Yes, he might have been able to put up with it - proven by how he hasn’t quit his job - but it’s not like he doesn’t have any desire for change either. We see that he does want to do something that to him is more meaningful: Opening an antique shop.
Workplace hygiene
To make things worse for Ryo, the lack of workplace motivators is compounded with a lack in hygiene. First, he doesn’t seem to be in a good social environment. Ryo mentions that he has “an incompetent boss” and “an assistant with an attitude”. Said incompetent boss, Mr. Taguchi tends to be forgetful. He has a habit of interrupting Ryo’s work to ask about something he’s previously asked about. Ryo has to teach him the same thing again and again, wasting his precious time. His assistant isn’t all that helpful either. She doesn’t seem able to professionally handle a business call nor report, and appears to be more interested in beauty care (to the point that she manages to find time at work to trim her split ends). This situation screams of poor hygiene.
To repeat a point above, Ryo’s personality might have amplified the stress he gets from social relationships. He appears to be an introvert. In his own words:
I have a hard time knowing how to deal with people. It’s a good thing I was assigned to Accounts, my first choice, and not somewhere like Sales. But I know that no matter where I work, the stress of human relations is not something I can easily escape.
My dream is to quit this job and open my own shop. I’d fill it with things I like, and never have to talk to anybody except customers who are like-minded antique lovers….
We also have hints that Ryo is displeased with his workload. Right before Ryo (internally) labels Mr. Taguchi “an incompetent boss”, Mr. Taguchi admits that he hasn’t finished a draft budget, indirectly requesting Ryo to take over - which he did. Hina’s father even asks him something related: “Are you getting lumped with other people’s work, Ryo?”. And then, Ryo also complains of coming home and not being able to stop thinking about work. I think this also refers to the fact that there are times where Ryo has to continue working at home. We’ve actually seen him do this the day he visits an antique fair. He wants to visit the fair before it ends, so he decides to bring his unfinished work with him and do it at home later. Ryo has a lot on his plate!
Is it time to quit?
Let’s try to conclude Ryo’s satisfaction levels based on all of the above. To begin with, his job doesn’t excite him. I think it’s safe to say that motivation-wise, Ryo lands on Herzberg’s neutral state of “not satisfied”. Next, in terms of hygiene, I think Ryo is somewhere very near to being 100% dissatisfied. The one thing preventing him from full-on disliking (or even hating) his job is his salary.
Ryo chooses to hold on to his job despite all the inconvenience because of his salary. Quitting would mean zero income. Ryo himself knows this:
Nevertheless, it is a worry that it [my job] might be under threat. Much as I dislike it, I depend on my job and desperately want to protect it. It has always been that way and no doubt always will.
(He dislikes his job, but also feels the need to protect it. The two-factor theory helps us understand this “contradiction”.)
Also, let me just mention a random bit of trivia. When Ryo first meets Ms. Komachi, she asks him what kind of books he’s looking for. Among other things he mentions books on how to successfully resign from a job. This reminds me that resigning from a job in Japan can be very difficult! It’s so difficult to the point that Japan has companies offering “resignation services” to help you resign from your job. Yep.
This appears to demonstrate that the significance of a hygiene or motivation factor varies depending on the individual. Someone with a certain personality and certain life circumstances might find having a good salary enough for them to continue doing their monotonous job. But to another person feeling fulfilled can be the most important thing. As a result, they might choose to quit - despite having a good salary - due to the lack of motivation.
Nevertheless, at the end of the day, the most ideal situation would be having both great motivation and hygiene factors!
To conclude…
In this chapter we meet Ryo Urase, an accounting staff who is frustrated with his job. This frustration comes from both poor motivation and hygiene factors. Nevertheless, he can’t simply quit and go pursue his dreams, since he needs his job in order to have a stable income. Ryo exists in a seemingly contradictory stance toward his job: He dislikes it, but doesn’t want to lose it.
This is the end of the first part (that was long), and I’ll continue in the second part. There, I will explore the solution Ryo settles on. Keep your eyes peeled for part two, and thanks for reading!
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