This guy really didn't want to go to work. A 22-year old navy officer gagged his mouth, tied his hands, and threw himself into the bushes off of a Kanagawa road earlier this week. When authorities found him, he said he had been assaulted and kidnapped.
The only thing was, he spent so much time tying himself up that he forgot to create a credible story. So when cops questioned him, they figured out he was lying and got him to admit that he had just put on the act so doesn't have to go to work.
Even though this guy's way of doing it was kind of stupid, his efforts shed light on a bigger societal issue. In Japan, it's really hard to quit your job. Almost impossible, in fact. It's also very hard to fire someone. Oftentimes employment is perceived as a long-term relationship, kind of like the one you have with your family. I read an article in a weekly last year about how employees who wanted to quit were blackmailed by their bosses to stay. I also personally know of bosses who want to fire their secretaries for quite some time, but have to think of sneaky, back-handed ways to "make them quit" instead. Thus is the corporate culture of Japan.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and while this guy's measures were more offbeat than most, I think he got the message across—albeit very passive aggressively—that he wasn't happy with his job.
That's news to me, and pretty upsetting. I would hope that incidents like these cause the employers to look at their situations with a more scrupulous light. It's obvious something needs to change.
Posted by: Jenanime | July 14, 2007 at 11:08 AM
Yeah, I have a friend who recently quit his job in Japan. They gave the him a request form for it. However, since he isn't Japanese he didn't have the same problems with telling them that his quiting was not an optional thing.
Posted by: Brent Ross | July 15, 2007 at 10:55 AM