Military here. We still do that. Classified systems have to be mustered (counted) regularly. Electronic records can be hacked/altered/spoofed remotely. In many situations that clipboard on a hook remains a perfectly valid security device, especially for systems/weapons/things that are not powered up 24/7.

There's this perception that "digital = better", but that's not always how it works. Actually, in quite a few cases the analogue solution was quite a bit better (analogue buttons, for example, but also just having some things on paper was a lot easier IMHO, like bus tickets and whatnot).

I also should have specified this was in an e-commerce company, so no state secrets or anything like that.

Show me a machine that can go from room to room, from vehicle to vehicle, counting rifles without error. In the dark. In the mud. When all the vehicles are parked in different places every day. Or another regular task at my unit: itemizing first aid kits. Good luck telling a robot to count the number of tourniquets in a locker without making a mess of things.

>>and "good enough" technique.

These aren't good enough things. The human being counting things and signing a piece of paper is better than the automated/online system. A human's positive control cannot be hacked remotely. Go to a hospital and see if the surgeons are ok with their tools being cleaned and counted by machines, without human backup. Will never happen.

I reckon it's more that initiative is not expected, or even discouraged. You will work on what the direct superior tells you, end of story. And the more people the boss can lord on, the bigger his empire looks like; so there is little incentive for middle-managers to pursue efficiency.

Let alone the fact that in IT, you can rarely produce something worthwhile after 4-6 hours.

It would also be hard to respect arbitrarily chosen rules, that have no proven effect on productivity.

It's hard to see Japan being competitive with archaic rules like the above.

The rep from a textbook company would go to the teacher's lounge every semester, bow to each of the teacher's one at a time in front of their desks, and ask them what they wanted to order from the catalog. The teacher's could've easily put in an order online or over the phone and I imagine the salesman had to go to each school in person.

Of course, with statistics like these one has to consider the fact that second-income earners working part-time jobs make the statistic skew low, which means that in countries where wages are high enough to feed a family with only one parent working, the numbers will skew higher despite less actual hours worked. I am note sure to what degree the statistics address this issue.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...

Employee is now a loaded word. Does this statistic include contractors or just hired "employees"? A great many workers in the US, from delivery drivers to doctors, are no longer actual employees. Do their hours count?

Overtime, until very recently, went uncounted and was unpaid. So the statistics you quote are almost certainly very wrong.

Recently the government has been cracking down on overtime (and especially on unpaid overtime), and requires companies to track overtime. It's only considered excessive overtime if it's more than 45 hours extra hours a month, to give you an understanding of just how much people are working.

If you compared two families using this same system:

* Family A - 1 worker, 40 hours per week, 1 non-worker

* Family B - 2 workers, 20 hours per week each

You'd get an average of 40 vs 20, which makes it appear as though Family A works "more" than Family B.

As walking around with a clipboard looks a lot more busy than typing.

Japan is placed somewhere in the upper middle among OECD countries when it comes to average working hours per year and the percentage of workers working more than 60 hours per week.

I wonder if those statistics are wrong, or perhaps misleading.

By all means, the statistics could very well be wrong or misleading, but the number of stories you've heard isn't really evidence.

If we tried to extrapolate that hypothesis, shouldn't it imply that countries with considerably lower averages (e.g.: Germany, France, Sweden) ought to be considerably further ahead in automation than they currently are?

There was this one data center in Tokyo that we needed to put stuff into - and we needed a GPS antenna on the roof of the DC piped down to our cage...

The DC itself was the most aesthetically beautiful DC I have been to; Bamboo forest and waterfall in the lobby, black granite everywhere, the receptionists were two beautiful women... The place was pristine in look and super super clean.

We met with the execs that ran it and they agreed to all our requests - to pull lines from the roof to our cage, etc...

But in the end, they said yes to everything, but didnt actually do anything that was requested.

It was a waste of a trip (aside from the fun we had while not doing work), but it was stunning how much work was turned down based on them saying yes, but not actually doing any of the work requested...

Japanese use a lot of back-channel chatter when they talk to indicate that they are actively listening (Auzuchi). This includes saying "Yes" to indicate "Yes, I understand what you are saying" instead of "Yes, I agree that we should do as you are suggesting". They may not always indicate disagreement by saying "No" either, but simply by not committing to your suggestion when its their turn to talk (or some other, subtler expression than "No", such as a head tilt and an intake of breath)

This active listening behavior has apparently led to similar misunderstandings before.

Of course, if you made sure you actually came to a clear agreement with the execs, it's an entirely different story.

After the meeting the customer was very upbeat but in the end the supplier never did anything they had promised.

It was interesting to observe this as a somewhat independent outsider. I came away with the impression that the people at the supplier had some disdain for their customer.