Meet X-san. He has a desk job, works nine to nine, six days a week, processing orders for a big company that makes small microchips. He's your regular leave-me-alone salaryman, happy with his crisply ironed shirt and packet of ciggies. Nothing wrong with that.

But then one day a few months ago, an Elvis Presley fanatic (that's Koizumi) woke up in the middle of the night after having had a dream about a world without ties. By the time he was washed, dressed and had had his hair suitably worked into that bouffant shape, that dream had transformed into CoolBiz. A boon for the clothes shops. A bloody nightmare for the I'll-wear-the-same-as-yesterday salaryman.

So at the start of the summer, acting on Koizumi's wishes, X-san's boss sent out a memo instructing his staff to drop the tie and jacket for the duration of the summer. He told them to "wear something you feel comfortable in".

But poor X-san got it all wrong. He went to work dressed like this and proceeded to be viciously ridiculed by his ruthless colleagues. Welcome to CruelBiz. They called him names to his face, laughed at him from across the office, and sniggered whenever he walked over to the coffee machine.



However, X-san is not alone. Having finally summoned the courage to 'go cool' after agonising for hours over the dress-down range on offer in their local Uniqlo, many other garmently-challenged salarymen are getting torn to pieces by their merciless colleagues who meanwhile remain smugly at their desks in their woolen suits and fur ties, sloshing around on their seats in pools of warm sweat.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 14, 2005 at 12:29 pm. You can skip to the end and leave a response.