Japanese Banks and Overhead, cont.

I wanted to mail a letter today. (I needed to send some forms to my rental agency.) I did what any corporate worker would do: I asked the smiling individuals sitting at the reception on my floor if they could put a letter in the outgoing mailbox for me, or at least point me in the right direction.

After several confusing minutes, since they do not speak much English (aren't my intentions clear if I'm awkwardly standing there holding a stamped, addressed envelope?), they told me to go to the mail room 10 floors below. They then made a phone call, and told me that I had to speak to the administrative assistant who is coordinating logistics for my project team.

I returned to my computer to read the following email from that administrative assistant:

"The 10F reception complained to me that some of you asked them to send regular mail.
As I told you (only to [some of you]?), the receptionists take care of only guest reservation as they don't know any other things."

Apparently, I had forgotten about this email that I received last week:

"You asked the reception to get one more key for your room, but the receptionists don't know about the keys, they just do only meeting booking."

So now, not only is there an absurd number of people sitting in the lobby of a floor of a bank which occupies the entire building, they are incapable of doing anything except room bookings

(We also asked them if someone could empty the garbage can in our room, and their first reaction was that we could empty it ourselves down the hall.)

Ridiculous.