My company "morning routine"
Working for a Japanese company from Fukuoka involves a particular “morning routine” before beginning work (also called in Japanese 朝礼・chourei). In my office, the official hour we begin work is 8:45 AM, but in fact we have to arrive before 8:30 AM.
From around 8:30 to 8:40 is cleaning time! Vacuum, wash windows, tables, dust, board, throw the rubbish, clean the sidewalk in front of our door… Everyone has a task.
We are in Japan, there is no cleaning staff who come to do the office cleaning, this is employees that have to do it themselves. As Japanese people do the cleaning of their classroom since elementary school, I guess they are used to it.
So after the cleaning done, everyone gather, and we start the “exercise” part. Every morning, we are doing 100 squats. Someone stands in front of everyone, counting at each squat, and we repeat after him.
When I arrived in the company, the first time squats began, I was really surprised. When everyone began squats, I first thought it will end at 20, and then after seeing it continues, I was wondering “okey, maybe 50!?” and so on… arriving at 80, I understood it was going to be until 100, and so, every morning.
After that, everyone announce his schedule of the day (what you are going to do today, where you go, which appointment you have...), and people share important information linked to work.
There are a lot of other parts in the "morning routine", such as someone who read an article of the newspaper and then give his opinion about it, or to recite all together the corporate rules...
I get used to our morning routine, and I find it quite usual now, even if I have heard that a lot of japanese companies don’t do it anymore.
H.