Toyota to introduce merit-based pay system

TOYODA, Nagoya – Toyota Motor Corp. plans to abolish seniority-based pay for white-collar workers in October, and instead pay salaries based entirely on the individual’s work performance and ability, company sources said Wednesday.

This begs the question: Is there anyone in the company that is capable of making this kind of evaluation? In other words, do the evaluators have firsthand experience with the work they are evaluating, and were they good enough at it to know what is good and what is not? The evaluators should be tested by reviewing the individuals in story number two:

‘Hospital of Hell’ bunglers to be charged

YOKOHAMA – Staff members at a “Hospital of Hell” here who bungled January operations by mixing up a heart and a lung patient face charges after police sent documents to prose-cuters on Wednesday outlining the case.

The 18 employees of the Yokohama City University-affiliat-ed hospital, ranging from its former deputy head to nurses who assisted surgical teams, face indictment for gross negligence resulting in bodily injury.

Police said that on Jan. 1, nurses mixed up patients they were responsible for transporting to operating rooms. Surgeons failed to notice the patients’ respective charts. They subse-quently operated on the heart of a person due to undergo a lung operation and operated on the lungs of a person due to have their heart examined.

Please note the date above. They were even premature with Y2K.

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Yesterday afternoon I was told to call Tony at home, right away. So I did. He said he was in bed. I said, “Be gentle with me. This is my first time.” Little did I know it might be my last.

I have had to make only a few decisions where I have known in advance that they would have a significant impact on my life; decisions such as the choice of careers, marriage, or the purchase of a property. There are no course corrections or opportunities to turn back the clock.

I was asked whether I wanted to examine the heart of the lung patient, or operate on the lungs of the heart patient.

And could I please respond in 48 hours while away from my family, who incidentally, are the patients I have to treat. Hey—it’s my own fault for being away from them.

When I joined the USJ project I had three reasons I gave why I could not relocate: my marriage, my parents, and our house. 1) My wife refuses to relocate—which is within her prerogative. 2) My father is 92, and my mother is 91. They live in their own house just minutes from where we are. My father was up patching his roof just a year ago, and my mother was setting stones in the garden. But now my farther can barely shuffle and my mother needs oxygen in the mornings and during the night. 3) Our house is an adventure in remodeling. It has exceeded my time and energy to complete anytime soon. So now we have the Department of Building & Safety bearing down on us.

If just one of these problems existed, then some accommodation could be entertained. All I could think of was that when I called my mother to tell her I had arrived in Osaka safely, she was wheezing while trying to sound pleased. It’s bad enough facing myself in the mirror in the mornings, but what would it be like if my absence accelerated her decline, or the day of her demise? Or what would it be like to learn from my wife that she had to move out because the Building Department had condemned out house due to lack of progress?

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I get to the office, pour a cup of coffee, and closet myself in a conference room where I call Suezenne. We talk over a few things such as whether I’ll be able to meet up with our son and his wife, who is winding up her month-long tour of Japan with…(please insert drum roll here)…the Percy Faith Orchestra. Then I bring all the happiness crashing down.

I explain the options, the potential consequences, and ask for her opinion. As expected, we are in agreement. However, the discussion is not as simple and smooth as it is sounding. The awkwardness is not over either—tomorrow I have to let Tony know my decision.

As the project nears its end, I’ll miss seeing a lot of friends. One never knows, though—there may be missives issuing out of the Big Paella on the one hand, or the Big House on the other.

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I have Indian food on my mind. Other than that, my thoughts are preoccupied with the consequences of our decision. At lunch, I ask Sundeep for his Indian restaurant recommendations. We both agree that Ashoka is the best. Of course, I want to find better, newer, different.

Please note that I refuse to talk about the “lunch” I had at the commissary. However I will say one thing about somebody else’s lunch. Fergus demonstrated how one could play with tempura so that it looks like rubber flying fish.

When I get back to the Hilton, I check out the yellow pages for the location of other Indian restaurants. Regrettably, the phone book they used to have is no longer in the room, and the listings in the current one are extremely limited. So I look at a map. I notice that the Indian consulate is located at the Sakaisuji-Hommachi station. I go there and poke around the neighborhood, but can’t come up with anything—not even the consulate. The heat and the humidity outside seem to be getting worse as the evening approaches. I duck down to the subway, where at least the oncoming trains cool you down with that wave of air that they push.

Back to the map. It looks like there’s a bunch of hotels around the Osaka Shinkansen station. Maybe there’s a better cut of Indian restaurant up there. At the Shin-Osaka station I walk all around with no luck. I try to get out to the surrounding streets—also with no luck. Apparently, the station is in the middle of a railroad yard, and is serviced only by other trains, a cabstand, and a bus station.

The heat is getting to me so I cop out, and head back to Umeda.

At least those doctors and nurses had one thing right. When they read “heart” they understood it to mean a heart. When they read “lung” they knew what a lung was. But here I was the subject of a debate: Did I have a heart or lung problem? Simple observation would make you think I have a stomach problem. I wish that were all.

I wind up eating somewhere, eating something, but tasting nothing and starving for answers.

Udon Saga