More than likely, they’re just getting warmed up too.

Not much good can be said about the COVID-19 pandemic, but perhaps one silver lining is that 2020 saw little to no incidents of baito-terror. This is a Japanese term combining the words for “part-time work” (arubaito) and “terrorism” (tero), and refers to said staff abusing their access to equipment to pull disgusting stunts.

The main motivation appears to be to record these gross acts and then post them on social media for attention. It stems from the culture of bakatter which is a combination of the words “baka” (stupid) and “Twitter.” Bakatter encompasses a wider range of stupid behavior outside of workplaces, such as climbing into a clothes dryer, but also includes baito-terror.

▼ One of the earliest documented photos of bakatter from 2013 showing a bento shop worker in the freezer

https://twitter.com/moyashi0320/status/1404868478104834053

More recently the more convenient video options of Instagram gave birth to bakastagram, and many are predicting the next trend to be bakatok. This era came to hilt in 2019 when an employee at revolving sushi chain Kura Sushi recorded himself throwing fish into a trash can before serving it. This incident is said to have cost the company over two billion yen in market value.

However, COVID-19 had brought everything to a grinding halt, and cases of baito-terror plummeted. It could be theorized that an increase in sensitivity to hygiene during the pandemic was a factor, but since consideration for others isn’t a defining trait of the baito-terrorist, it was probably more due to lack of opportunities with reduced operating hours.

Regardless, this past month has seen a significant uptick in baito-terror. In the beginning of June an employee of a Domino’s Pizza was recorded licking leftover milkshake off of a spatula in the kitchen.

▼ News report on the Domino’s Pizza incident

About a week later, another video emerged showing an employee in the backroom of a CoCo Ichibanya restaurant reaching into his pants and pulling out pubic hair which he then drops on a plate of curry. Due to the somewhat graphic nature of the video involved, mainstream news coverage has been relatively light, so it’s mostly been relegated to YouTube news channels.

▼ Here’s in-depth coverage and analysis of the CoCo Ichibanya incident by a panda with heterochromia.

Although it looks as if neither case involved food that was directly served to customers, it’s all undeniably gross. It is still early though, and online comments are certain things are only going to get worse.

“I’m surprisingly traumatized by this. I like Domino’s, but I don’t want to order from there.”
“It looks like young people are going back to the way things were before COVID-19.”
“Companies are having a hard time because of this.”
“They should release the location of the stores involved. I don’t want to go to any of these restaurants because I’m afraid it might be the one.”
“Firing is not enough of a deterrent for these people. They need to be sued and sued hard.”
“It’s horrible enough in the first place, but the worst part is that it isn’t even funny in the least.”
“I feel bad for the companies that have to apologize for this nonsense.”
“This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

It certainly seems like things are just getting started on the baito-terror front and as COVID-19 continues to become less of a thing in Japan we can expect more revolting acts to get posted on social media.

In most cases the videos are posted to private accounts and only shared among “friends” so perpetrators are often confident that a leak would never happen to them, until it ultimately does. Because of this false sense of security, all the lawsuits and contract terminations in the world will likely do little to deter it from happening again.

It’s almost enough to make one long for the good old days, when Japanese kids used to get weird haircuts, beat each other up, and steal each other’s puffy pants and cork helmets.

Source: J-Cast News, Hachima Kiko (1, 2)
Top image: ©SoraNews24
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