Japanese workers turn to resignation agencies

Recently I someone living in Japan on Reddit who experienced a "they won't let me quit" scenario which may provide some perspective on what it's like: https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/1gk4enr/current_... https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/1goyw04/end_of_a...

Personally (living in Japan) I've never experienced something like this, but it does happen.

Yeah nobody I know has told me they’ve experienced this, but maybe it’s common amongst some groups and not others. Black companies are something else.

why can't you just email them and stop turning up?

It’ll become messy if they keep paying you?

Typical contracts will require a 1 month period between you announce you're quitting and you effective termination date.

If you have enough paid vacation you could pad that period with your vacation, but it requires pre-acceptance, so cooperation from your employer. Otherwise you're into non-accepted vacation territory, which could lead to financial penalties (basically withdrawing your salary, with potential tax adjustements. They could also try to sue you, and given you're fleeing assume they'd get a default judgement for instance)

Then there's all the paperwork you actually want to have properly done by your employer. They're legally obligated to, but it's always harder if you're in adversarial mode.

All in all, you can still quit cold turkey ("bakkure"), but that's a usually a PITA. Getting a pro to negociate a clean separation will be better than just disappearing, if you're not in the mood/capacity to face your employer.

PS; There are magical words that would give any employee an immediate option to never see their employer again. I don't want them in my comments, but anyone interested will find them with a simple search.

The second reddit link above includes an example, where the person has a visa change and would get in trouble with immigration if they continue to remain employed.

If the person was leaving because they accepted an offer from another employer, being on two payrolls simultaneously might also be a problem.

Contracts might require it, but the law says 2 weeks (on a regular full time contract or a limited contract after the first year) and contracts can't supersede the law.

>I don't want them in my comments

Why not? Are they obscene somehow?

I presume you are referring to sekuhara (sexual harassment), pawahara (power harassment) and the like

People don't want to deal with the fallout of saying that, hence quitting agents

> If you have enough paid vacation you could pad that period with your vacation, but it requires pre-acceptance, so cooperation from your employer.

It doesn't necessarily need their cooperation. A letter sent by registered mail saying "I am using my paid leave for x days from y day", then another one saying "I resign on y day + two weeks" is enough. Of course, people would actually need to know and be willing to use their labor rights in order to do that, which is the service that quitting agents are providing.

Yes. The law clearly set 2 weeks [0].

It puts the employee in the strongest position, but doesn't completely voids a contract. For instance the employer can still fight it by justifying a necessity for them to have a longer period, or convincing a court the contract had enough provisions to make it a reasonable clause.

It would be a huge PITA on both sides though, I don't see many companies wanting that much trouble just for a single employee trying to leave the boat.

[0] https://jsite.mhlw.go.jp/miyagi-roudoukyoku/library/miyagi-r...

> Personally (living in Japan) I've never experienced something like this, but it does happen.

I have some friends-of-friends living in Japan. It’s interesting to hear their experience with culture evolve over time. They openly admit that they get a free pass around some of the more difficult cultural situations due to not being born and raised originally in Japan.

Hearing their stories has definitely given me a different perspective on some of the overly idealized views of Japan that get repeated online. A lot of social media posters with experience in Japan fall into a routine where they post about how things in Japan are so much better and more straightforward than in the United States (and other countries) because it gets attention. They conveniently leave out a lot of the less romantic and positive differences though.

Are the actual official Japanese words for sexual harassment and power harassment... just Japanese pronunciations / abbreviations of the English terms?

A friend of mine in Japan recently needed a lawyer to quit their job. Very unusual to me, being an American.

Yes. In Japanese this kind of abbreviation does not carry the childish/frivolous connotations it does in English.

I'm a bit surprised that people are so caught of guard.

I have never had a resignation period of less then 1 month in several European countries (BeNeLux and Poland)

My last job had resignation period of 7 week from the Monday after sending my notice.

4 full calendar months for my current resignation period, e.g. if I resign today, my last official day will be the 31 March (December, January, February , March).

In my experience, the connotations are very similar to English use. What matters is the context. Say sekuhara or sexual harassment at work: very serious connotation. Amongst friends or in media (comdey/anime/etc): potentially frivolous/unserious connotation.

> A lot of social media posters with experience in Japan fall into a routine where they post about how things in Japan are so much better and more straightforward than in the United States (and other countries) because it gets attention. They conveniently leave out a lot of the less romantic and positive differences though.

That kind of whataboutism is a common issue in politics though. Why can't we all go and look for every field of politics look what other countries do and if what they do is better, then do that as well without taking the worse parts?

For example, look at Switzerland when it comes to education, to Germany's Mittelstand and trades education system for a vibrant and healthy SME business field, to the US for access to venture capital and cutting-edge research, to Austria or Denmark for their pension system, to Japan for public transport reliability...

I'd compare it to jury nullification, it's something anyone probably knows, but you wouldn't want to be posting on SNS while being a juror.

Did they say why?

Often, because some entrenched interests stand in the way.

Famously, NYC builds new subway tunnels very expensively, about three times more expensively than Paris. What stands in the way of a substantial cost reduction? Many factors, including local unions that defend their lucrative turf.

The French withdrew from the project of the Californian High-Speed Rail blaming total governmental dysfunction and comparing Californian public sector negatively to Morocco, where a French-built HSR actually was built successfully.

Well, Morocco can hardly be called a democracy [1]. It's easier to (literally) bulldoze through obstacles when you're a kingdom looking for a fancy toy for the ruler to show off, compared to building infrastructure in a democracy.

[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/538683/umfrag...

It makes one feel a bit better about At-will employment, which is a two way street.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

Still, plenty of democracies managed what California couldn't, and built a useful HSR network.

Which in Cali would mean SF to LA, and that is probably not going to happen.

Many of these projects were started in times where the needs of the infrastructure had priority over local objections and environmental protection laws were not much of a thing though. There's a reason most of Europe's rail network is decades, sometimes centuries old, and there hasn't been much new construction for a loooong time.

"There's a reason most of Europe's rail network is decades, sometimes centuries old, and there hasn't been much new construction for a loooong time."

I beg to differ. There is quite a lot of HSR construction in Europe going on right now.

Italy: Brescia-Verona, Verona-Vicenza, Vicenza-Padua, the Brenner Basis Tunnel to Austria, Turin-Lyon, Naples-Bari, Palermo-Catania-Messina

France: Bordeaux-Toulouse, Lyon-Turin to Italy

Spain: Murcia-Almería, the Basque Y, Burgos–Vitoria-Gasteiz, Madrid-Extremadura

Austria: Koralmbahn, Semmering Basis Tunnel

Germany-Denmark: Fehmarn Tunnel

UK: London-Birmingham

The Baltic States: Rail Baltica

All in active construction right now. Some with delays, as usual.

I believe the Japanese problem has a lot to do with culture, not just law.

In the US we have at-will employment, which online people like to only talk about the negatives (employer can fire you at any time without notice), but it goes the other way too: We can quit with no notice. It's still courtesy to give two weeks notice though, to handle transferring work/knowledge.

Over a month seems really long to me.

I would assume most HN users are in the United States, where the notice period is two weeks by custom, or thirty seconds if you are mad enough that you don't care about things like references and eligibility for rehire. The latter is considered unprofessional but generally won't keep you from getting another job. Most people aren't aware that European-style job contracts exist.

I've had lots of arguments with Europeans on the internet about whether the benefit of their job security exceeds the costs of what Americans who are aware of the European system tend to perceive as indentured servitude.

Nah, but it sounded like a very stressful situation that they even had to.

It's very different IME. A catchy abbreviation of a serious subject would almost always be inappropriate in English-speaking spheres, especially in a business setting.