I’m the person who sent an offer to the Osaka branch shortly after noon today.

This is Hajime Hara from the Universe Yokohama branch. I’m sure there was a reason, but I sincerely apologize for making you wait and causing you to feel anxious and uncomfortable. One possibility is that some days only one staff member is working at a branch, while on other days there are several staff members and plenty of coverage. If it happened to be a day with fewer staff, they may have been away from their desk for an extended period because several women were having interviews in succession. If you’re hoping to arrange something for today or tomorrow and need to hear from a club staff member right away, I’m sorry to trouble you, but why not call the branch directly and let them know that you’d like a prompt response? I don’t believe they’re intentionally ignoring your message out of malice, so please wait a little longer. If you still don’t hear back, try calling the branch. Thank you for your understanding.

Takahashi, the Kanto unit manager, will answer as well. Thank you for your question, and we sincerely apologize for keeping you waiting. Depending on factors such as staff availability and the other party’s work schedule, there may be various reasons for the delay. However, we understand that you may be concerned about the progress, so during business hours, we recommend calling us to check on the current status, even though we know this may be an inconvenience. We hope this is helpful.

Maezawa from the President’s Office here. Thank you for your question. Sorry to keep you waiting. However, Universe Club is, in a sense, understaffed—or perhaps just inefficient—and relies heavily on manual labor. When there are a lot of offers, we exceed our processing capacity, so it’s not unusual for replies to take half a day or so. I previously suggested that the “offer received” notification sent after making an offer could be automated, but for various reasons, it wasn’t implemented. If there were 200 offers a day, simply making that change would eliminate the need to send 200 emails and reduce the workload. That said, the company is currently working to improve efficiency while operating the new internal system introduced last year and adding features as needed. Ultimately, we expect efficiency to improve considerably. If you still haven’t received a reply by now, could you try contacting them via the email address or LINE account you usually use to communicate with them? There may have been some kind of issue, such as the message ending up in your spam folder.

I’m Kazu, a male member. What does it prove that she didn’t reply for four hours? When we say a woman is slow to respond, I think we’re talking about not hearing back for at least a day. Realistically, you can’t call a working woman unresponsive just because she couldn’t reply for a few hours. I’m sure you’ve been busy with consecutive interviews with women. Personally, I think meeting women is the top priority. Even if arranging dates came first, quickly replying, “We’ve accepted the offer,” isn’t the most important part of arranging a date.