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.
How does the boss ripping up a resignation letter “force” them to stay? Are the employers falsifying the end of the employment as a firing for cause, or are the ex-employees going to get blackballed, or what?
Being an American who clearly doesn’t get their cultural hangups, which I assume is the whole problem, I don’t understand why they don’t just just video themselves handing over the resignation letter (or e-mail it, or mail it in with whatever kind of receipt Japan’s postal service offers, or fax it since Japan apparently still does that (LOL)) and then quit showing up.
I also don’t understand why, if it’s so hard to get bosses to “let” them leave, employees don’t just work-to-rule and leave after 8 hours, expectations be damned.
From the article it sounds like a mostly psychological thing, like they have been so conditioned to do what they are told that bosses can bully/shame them into staying even after saying they quit.
The culture is very different.
Imagine you are 9 years old, and you want to move away from your parents who are more on the violent side than on the nice listening side… Your little letter you hand crafted (because you know no one that had done it before personally, you just imagined you could, so you did your best) is now being ripped up by your angry father who skreams at you to go to your room!
What do you do?
Stab. But I was a bad kid.
There was a scene in Back To The Future Part II (1989) where Marty’s Japanese boss fires him via fax in 2015.
It’s 2024 and the Japanese are still using faxes.
Your doctor is still using fax as well. It’s much more secure than email and is the gold standard for confidential materials since it requires a physical wiretap to access.
Get outta here with that bullshit. Encrypted email has been standard for like 20 years now, Fax is functionally plaintext across a telephone line. Most places that interact with technophobes that still utilize fax are using email-to-fax services.
Hospitals use it because regulations that have not been rewritten this century, and it’s an easy bare minimum to meet.
Yup! Fax is considered “analog” where as email is “digital” so the Hipaa/Hi-Tech laws are a lot easier on faxing then emails.
Faxes were used much later than you’d expect but usage has fallen off considerably in the past 10 years. Sony also finally quit making VCRs in 2016.
Bipedal robots and faxes, but it’s getting better
I posted above, but it does not. A regular, full-time employee without any other special circumstances needs only give 2 weeks of notice (make sure to keep receipts) and the company can pound sand thereafter.