Wily women grab control of condom roll-out

By Ryann Connell
February 16, 2005

Takako Ueno is in a hole-istic line of work -- if the condom inspector misses even the tiniest pinprick in a prophylactic, it could potentially send users of her products to meet their maker, according to Spa!.

Ueno earns an annual salary of around 3 million yen working eight-hour shifts, five days a week, checking up on condoms as they roll through the assembly lines at Fuji Latex, one of Japan's biggest manufacturers of condoms.

"Once the condom has been molded into shape, it's placed on a phallus shaped prong and moved along the assembly line, where an electrical current is pumped through it to see whether it has any holes in it. It's my job to give the condoms a visual check before that and remove any with scratches or flaws," Ueno tells Spa! "Sometimes the prongs come out with nothing on them, or there'll be the a defect, or the leftovers of a burst condom still attached. At those times, it's my job to slip on a condom by hand as quickly as possible."

Ueno's hand speed is phenomenal. With 150 condoms on prongs rolling past her every minute, she's got to pick out any that don't meet her rigorous standards and replace them with a single hand. When a foreigner visiting the Fuji Latex factory saw her handiwork, he was breath taken, muttering only, "wonderful" and "beautiful."

Ueno rolls on about 66,000 condoms a day, meaning that she has slipped on more than 100 million in the eight years she's been doing the job, which she likes most because once you've learned how to do it, condom inspection is a skill you have for life.

Requirements for becoming a condom inspector differ according to the maker. At Fuji Latex, aspiring condom inspectors go through a training course before they're put on the line under the care of a veteran handler who watches over them for at least half a year. Once the trainee is judged to have become used to the position, they are allowed to take a company test, with those who pass designated as fully fledged condom inspectors.

Despite the high degree of skill involved in examining the sheaths and considerable amount of training involved before being suitably qualified, condom inspectors receive no special allowances, putting them on the same pay scale as anybody else in the prophylactic production process.

"When I started out, my hands used to get rubbed red raw and I developed tendonitis. It was really tough," Ueno says, adding that the worst part of her profession is going home reeking of rubber. "Now that I'm used to the work, though, the only problems I have is tiredness in the eyes and shoulders if I've been working for too long."

Ueno is one of Fuji Latex's 16 condom technicians, all of whom are women. Ueno says it couldn't possibly be any other way.

"Women can stick with the job for longer," she tells Spa! "Guys are useless."

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