Asking to leave work on time or taking some time off can be tricky enough. Even trickier is tendering a resignation, which can be seen as the ultimate form of disrespect in the world’s fourth-biggest economy, where workers traditionally stick with one employer for decades, if not for a lifetime.
In the most extreme cases, grumpy bosses rip up resignation letters and harass employees to force them to stay.
Yuki Watanabe was unhappy at her previous job, saying her former supervisor often ignored her, making her feel bad. But she didn’t dare resign.
“I didn’t want my ex-employer to deny my resignation and keep me working for longer,” she told CNN during a recent interview.
The way this has worked is that the Japanese economy has bifurcated with the graduation-to-retirement employment being available to a ever smaller group of white collar workers called salary-men. To become a salary-man you have to go to college and get hired the year you graduate through campus recruiting. If you miss your “window” then you can’t become a salary-man and will be stuck in contingent work for the rest of your life.
The people quitting in this case are not salary-men (a salary-man quitting would be pretty unthinkable) but their bosses probably are, hence the cultural divide.
Sometimes salary-men do lose their jobs due to bankruptcy of the organization for instance. Typically the solution if that happens is to jump in front of a train.
The social pressure and societal loss of face is very bad in Japan. There has to be a better way.