Convenience Store Woman

I knew from the Books and Bao review of Convenience Store Woman that the main character would be a bit odd, but I think the cute cover art threw me off, and I didn’t realize just how odd.

Mid-thirties Keiko works in a convenience store, where she’s worked for the last 18 years. As much as she takes joy in anything, she enjoys the routine, familiarity and clear rules in her store. Human interactions confuse her, and not in the usual adorably-awkward kind of way. Adult Keiko is still unsure why hitting a classmate over the head with a shovel or wanting to eat a dead bird upset her mother so much, but she does know that people get upset when she doesn’t copy their behaviors. So, when her coworkers greet each other cheerfully in the morning, she does the same. When they gripe about work frustrations, Keiko repeats their comments, pretending that she too feels emotions, and noticing that others seem to enjoy sharing certain complaints. She copies her coworkers’ style, sometimes by creepily checking the labels on their clothes in the locker room, in order to present herself as a normal human female.

When acquaintances ask about her status a long-serving part-time cashier, she lets her coworkers believe she takes care of her parents in her off hours, and lets her classmates believe she has a chronic illness and can’t work too much. These excuses are crafted by her sister, since Keiko is quite content to be a part-time store clerk, even if she does occasionally notice that she’s isolated from the whole world of marriage and children.

Convenience Store Woman is told by Keiko, and here our unreliable narrator is awkwardly attempting to tell the truth, a bit like in The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-Time or a more recent read, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. And, just like in Eleanor Oliphant, Keiko’s internal monologue sometimes felt uncomfortably like my own.  Just like Keiko, I get so much of my life satisfaction out from my efficiency at work. At certain times in my life, I’ve enjoyed just being good at my job, and not being a human disaster outside of work. 

Through work — of course — she meets a man who’s basically a walking incel message board. Like Keiko, he feels socially isolated and overage for part-time cashiering, but unlike Keiko, he blames others and lashes out. The story is very Japanese… until we see yet another example of male rage turned outward, and it starts to feel universal. Ugh, I just wanted him to go away, and I was even sort of hoping Keiko would quietly and efficiently hit him over the head with a shovel. (No luck.)

I often see a certain kind of inspirational p0rn on social media. You know that type of post, sunsets and mountains with slogans in soft fonts saying follow your bliss or do what you love, for people who are bored at work to double-tap. But when Keiko works in the convenience store, she really is following her bliss (or at least as close as she gets to having such an emotion). When she hears the song of the drink coolers and promo endcaps, and decides to work in a new store, I felt as happy as if a romance had concluded with a fairy-tale wedding.