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A typical day for that director begins with a sigh and ends with a sigh.<\/p>\n
When I say, \u201cGood morning!\u201d I get a gloomy reply mixed with a sigh: \u201cUgh\u2026 Here we go again.\u201d They attend the morning meeting reluctantly, sighing all the while.<\/p>\n
Above all, the part that caused me the most stress was when I had to prepare documents.<\/p>\n
My desk was across from the director\u2019s, and he let out a sigh about once every 30 seconds. To top it off, he\u2019d do so while venting his frustrations.<\/p>\n
\"Why does this always happen to me? Ugh...\"<\/p>\n
\"This isn't really my job, is it? Sigh...\"<\/p>\n
\"It's Saturday today. Sigh...\"<\/p>\n
When he made his latest complaint, I almost snapped back, \u201cYou\u2019ve been in the industry for a long time\u2014it\u2019s about time you got used to it,\u201d but given my position, I held my tongue.<\/p>\n
I was in charge of the patrol duties at that site.<\/p>\n
We conducted regular patrols at the start of the workday, at 10:00 a.m., at 3:00 p.m., and at the end of the workday, and those times were my only chance to take a breather.<\/p>\n
When I arrived at the site, the friendly workers cheerfully struck up a conversation with me. \u201dHow\u2019s \u201dSighing Uncle\u2019 (the site manager) in the mood today?\u201d they asked, sharing jokes while showing concern for me.<\/p>\n
So, with all that going on, I was somehow getting by day by day, but,One day, an incident occurred.<\/span><\/strong>\u3002<\/p>\n While working at a desk in the field office, the office manager\u2019s cell phone rang. The caller\u2019s voice could be faintly heard coming from the speaker. It seemed to be a complaint.<\/p>\n \"When the dump truck is driving by, the road gets dirty, so please clean it up.\"<\/p>\n Although the branch manager had initially responded calmly to the complaint, he couldn't help but let out a sigh over the phone\u2014a habit of his.<\/p>\n When the person on the other end of the line heard that, they flew into a rage and stormed into the on-site office, yelling.<\/p>\n The director getting yelled at right in front of me.<\/p>\n Even while being yelled at, he couldn't stop letting out his habitual \"Haa~\" sighs. It was such an inexplicable\u2014or perhaps bizarre?\u2014sight that I found it a little amusing.<\/p>\n The negative remarks toward the person who had come to file a complaint escalated further, and, unbelievably, the branch manager started to fly off the handle.<\/p>\n \"If you have time to call, why don't you clean up yourself!!!\"<\/p>\n What a childish, petulant outburst\u2014it\u2019s like something an elementary schooler would do (lol).<\/p>\n After being forced to listen to that conversation for so long\u2014and having held my tongue the whole time\u2014I finally reached my limit. Before I knew it, I had blurted these words out at the director.<\/p>\n \"If you hate your job that much and are always sighing, why don't you just find a new one? At the very least, your comments are making the people you work with feel negative too, so could you please stop saying things like that? It's a nuisance.\"<\/p>\n As expected, the director, having been told something like this by me\u2014someone younger than him\u2014started snapping at me, too.<\/p>\n \"Do you even know what the director's going through? Huh?\"<\/p>\n As I stood there frozen, unable to respond, an employee from a partner company who had been watching stepped in to mediate and reached out to help me.<\/p>\n \"This young person listened to your sighs and complaints day in and day out, yet never said a word and always stayed cheerful on the job. Isn't it part of your job as the branch manager to create a work environment where everyone can work comfortably together?\"<\/p>\n With those words, I felt all the stress I\u2019d been carrying melt away. The director seemed at a loss for words; he just muttered, \u201cI\u2019ll reflect on this,\u201d and that was the end of the matter.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been five years since then. I recently had a reason to visit that director\u2019s worksite for the first time in a long while.<\/p>\n As always, she let out a sigh\u2014\"Haah~\"\u2014but afterward, she had enough composure to joke to herself, \"Oh, there goes that bad habit of mine.\" Now, the two of us can laugh about that incident together.<\/p>\nI had reached my limit and ended up arguing with the director<\/h2>\n
The one who saved me from the angry director was\u2026<\/h2>\n