Choosing keigo in a part-time job phone call
You are a Year 12 student doing work experience at a small Japanese bakery in Melbourne. Your supervisor, Mr Tanaka, asks you to phone a regular customer, Mrs Sato, to confirm her weekly order. You have met Mrs Sato once; she is about 70 and is a retired teacher. You need to (a) confirm that her order of 12 melon pan will be ready by 10 a.m. Saturday, (b) explain politely that the price has risen from $4.00 to $4.50 per item because of butter costs, and (c) ask whether she would like the items bagged separately. You have only one phone call and no script. Mr Tanaka says, 'Just be polite, like you would to a customer in Japan.' You are unsure how much humble language to use, since you are speaking to a customer on behalf of the shop, not about your own family.
1. Explain which register (sonkeigo, kenjōgo, or teineigo) you should use for each of the three points, and why.
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The key judgement is that you are speaking as a representative of the shop, so you use humble forms for the shop's actions and respectful forms for the customer's actions, all within teineigo (です／ます) as the base.
- Confirming the order (the shop's action): use humble/neutral-polite, e.g. 「ご注文のメロンパン12個、土曜日の午前10時までにご用意いたします」. ご用意いたします is humble because the shop is preparing it. Do not use くださいます or いらっしゃいます here, because those raise the shop's action, which is wrong.
- Price increase (the shop's situation): explain with a soft apologetic frame: 「大変申し訳ございません。バターの値上がりのため、一個400円から450円に変更させていただきました」. させていただきました is a humble form of the shop's decision. Starting with an apology is expected.
- Asking about bagging (the customer's preference): use respectful/neutral polite question forms: 「別々の袋にお入れいたしましょうか」 or 「袋は分けたほうがよろしいでしょうか」. お入れいたしましょうか combines respectful お〜 and humble いたす, which is appropriate when offering to act for the customer.
Overall: base teineigo, humble for shop actions, respectful for customer actions and preferences. Avoid over-humbling yourself personally (e.g. わたくし) since you are acting for the shop, not lowering your own status as a private person.
2. Mrs Sato says something quickly that you do not catch. Write what you would say to recover politely, and explain why this is better than pretending to understand.
Read the worked answer
A good recovery line is: 「申し訳ございません。電話が少々遠くて、もう一度おっしゃっていただけますでしょうか」 or more simply 「すみません、よく聞こえなかったのですが、もう一度お願いできますか」.
Why this is better than pretending:
- Accuracy of the order matters. If you guess and confirm the wrong quantity or bagging preference, the shop makes a real error with a regular customer, and Mr Tanaka has to fix it.
- Politeness is preserved. Using 申し訳ございません plus a humble request (おっしゃっていただけますでしょうか) keeps the respectful frame; it does not sound rude or impatient.
- It protects the customer's face. Blaming the phone line (電話が遠くて) rather than the customer's speech avoids implying she spoke unclearly.
- It is realistic for a learner. A short, well-formed repair phrase is more credible than a long improvised sentence you cannot control.
Do not simply say 「何？」 or 「え？」, which is too casual for a customer.