Can I Talk About Problem Customers?
Recently, I had an exchange with a customer.
Repeated cancellations and showing up late. So I got angry. He came back with, “Don’t get so worked up, mistakes happen, just forgive me.” So I told him, “I don’t want to feel bad anymore, so I’m going to turn you down.” And his response was — “Don’t treat me like I’m your bitch.”
(I’m attaching the screenshot. You can read it for yourself.)
To be honest, he’s from a particular country. And people with phone numbers from that country tend to treat Japanese people rudely. Of course, there are good people too. I don’t want to blame nationality. But when I started thinking about why this keeps happening, I arrived at one hypothesis.
Religion. Or law.
Laws that criminalize homosexuality. The belief — or mandate — that men must love women. Religious doctrine. People who have grown up inside those rules can’t let loose in their own country. So they travel to gay districts abroad and use gay services.
But they don’t know how to behave as gay men. They’re not used to it. So they treat us the way they’d treat a woman or a child. They try to act masculine. They go their own way. They behave not as individual human beings, not as gay men, but as rigid, selfish “men” locked inside their own stereotypes. They’ve been suppressed their entire lives in their home countries. They can’t accept the version of themselves they actually want to be — the gay self. They don’t know what it means to live as a gay man.
And this isn’t just something I see at Noir Tokyo. I’ve talked about this with owners and staff at other establishments too. I’m in Shinjuku Ni-chome constantly — bars, restaurants, the community — and I do occasionally see people who just seem completely out of place. Not all the time, but it happens.
It’s a sad thing. They’re gay, but they can’t be gay. Can’t fully become it.
This is entirely my own observation, with no research to back it up. But after hundreds of conversations, I’m certain.
Even among people from that same particular country, there are those who are perfectly respectful. Usually they work for international companies, or they’re self-employed — open-minded people who’ve been exposed to different cultures. Dual citizens. Immigrants. Which is to say, nationality isn’t really the issue.
I consider myself pretty open-minded — at least I think so — and I have no interest in being racist or attacking any religion. But if religious doctrine, laws, and cultural values are shaping a person’s character and behavior, that’s not just a personal problem. It’s a problem with the system that planted those values in them. It damages the reputation and interests of their country. It doesn’t belong in this era. Laws that punish homosexuality, doctrines that forbid men from loving men — those things should be abolished. Immediately.
And those people are victims too. People whose true way of living has been sealed off by society, religion, and law. When I think about it that way, I can understand why they act the way they do.
But I won’t forgive it.
Why? Because we are human beings too. Our staff, myself — we’ve all faced what it means to live as gay men. That’s precisely why we can’t accept behavior that uses gay services while looking down on gay people. Understanding someone and tolerating their behavior are two very different things.
I use pretty rough language myself, and I’m no saint. But I treat the vast majority of my customers with sincerity. Because I believe we’re all in this together. Nationality doesn’t matter.
And that’s exactly why I’ve been logging every single incident and conflict over the years. Now I’m building a customer scoring system using that data — a framework for deciding who we accept and who we don’t, regardless of nationality. I want to take what’s only ever existed inside my head and turn it into something my entire staff can use. So the store can run without me. I’m not a programmer by trade, but I love building things like this. To put it plainly — it’s a system designed to filter out problem customers. To reduce the burden on all of us.
People say, “Turning away customers? You’re going to lose money.” Someone once told me, “Your store will be gone in a year.” Mind your own business. We have incredible repeat customers from all over the world, regardless of nationality. We’re already at a point where we don’t need to bow down to anyone. I have no intention of killing my soul to make money. Good customers, good staff, good sessions. That’s enough.
So if you’ve ever felt like our service was rude — please check your own behavior first. There’s almost never a reason for someone to be treated rudely out of nowhere.
And what I really want to say in the end is this — I want to keep doing this work for as long as possible, and I want to do it with pride. To do that, protecting good customers and good staff is what matters most. Filtering out problem customers is just one of the ways we do that.
Thank you for reading.
NOIR TOKYO Ohara
