Bandai Namco reportedly tries to bore staff into quitting, skirting Japan’s labor laws

Yeah, I was in a similar position earlier this year. I barely made it a month. It's soul sucking, especially for someone like myself (I work in IT) who's used to staying active and engaged with my job. Felt like just waiting for time to pass so I could drive home. The fact that they made me drive to an office just to do nothing was like adding insult to injury.

Says them. What are they going to do, fire me?

That sounds like a set of rules that could create, but in reality it's actually hard for them to pull it off. If you violate some of the rules, like if you're sitting in a room with nothing to do and then you pull out your phone and start texting, they could try to reprimand you and start the ball rolling on firing you. But then you get the union involved, and then you can gather evidence about the reasonableness of their effort to fire you. At some point it will go before a judge and the judge will ask your boss why they have to block you from having a cell phone if you were just sitting there doing nothing. When your boss can't answer, then you will win your lawsuit.

In other words, companies that try this tactic have to be very careful about exactly how the implement it, because labor law has a surprisingly large number of protections.

Same at my job. Busy half the year, dead the other half. I also have great bosses who understand we can't help it if there's no work to do.

It'd be pretty horrible being given nothing to do and knowing it's because they want you to quit. That's not a good environment for anyone. Eventually showing up out if spite will wear on you. What a shitty practice. I'm glad their being called out for it.

You probably have another duties ad required clause somewhere. If not, fine one dev to another, asking for hundreds of shitty useless QA tests. Same stupidity but if they can demonstrate a reasonable employee should finish X in Y time...

Exactly! You accidentally hit the nail on the head here.

The goal of the company is to get rid of employees. But they have permanent hire, so the bosses can't simply fire them without cause (and the bar for cause is very high in Japan). They want employees to quit, or they want employees to clearly fail to perform their duties.

What the employees want is to keep doing decent work at that company, probably until they retire at age 65. Permanent hire is highly treasured, for good reason. The reason permanent hire exists, and is so widespread as required by law, is that Japan values employee well-being more than it values the bosses' well-being. It's hard to get a big loan (for a house or apartment) if you don't have permanent hire. It's hard to get a high-paying job that doesn't have permanent hire. Many companies will not give you good positions if you're over the age of 35, too, which makes changing employers in your 40s-60s very challenging.

Responded before but if you don't hit the quota, they can probably fire you for cause (removing the severance, maybe pension etc.)

It's why all the back to office mandates sorta work (in terms of reducing headcount) you can't just show up and do nothing. If thr company can prove you're doing nothing, you can probably be terminated for cause. Happened to guys I know in a public, govt funded job with the reason as, iirc "time theft" and the union didn't really fight for them because the evidence was pretty damning that they hadn't done fuck all most mornings.

I mean, Camus argued he could at least find satisfaction/meaning in rolling that damned rock. (As part of his "why committing suicide is bad" essay, I think called the Myth of Sisyphus.)

Yes but comparing our Western lack of shame to Japanese culture is also pretty silly. My example is more balancing the scale.

Heck, now I just want to read this before understanding the joke. Be warned, you're going to get a message in some months thanking you for the reference.

Yep. There is a reason why "layoff-by-boredom" exists and works. It's uncomfortable for most us to be bored.

I'd take slow and nothing to do over getting worked to the bone daily every time, I've had both. I have an active imagination, I manage.

Yup. I used to work at a toy store in my local mall that was just not doing business. Anytime I worked, I'd get maybe 5 customers a shift, and these were like 10-6 shifts.

I was so bored I felt like I could cry just to pass the time. There were a couple times where I straight up took a nap behind the counter because I was so tired and bored.

If you know they are just trying to get you to quit and don't actually want you to do anything, I imagine it's easier than a job where you have to worry about how you appear to bosses and others. The facade of being productive itself can be taxing.

But it also depends how much leeway they give to do whatever. If you know you can just stay up all night and come in to sleep 8 hours, the time could pass pretty quickly...

Not for me. I can zone out for hours like it's nothing.

Pick up a hobby, read a book. Not sure how Japan or other countries are living, but one thing we still have in the USA are public libraries. We can download an app and check out books. For free. There is a lot more stuff at the actual library, but downloading books and reading them for money sounds like something I can retire doing. I take book reading days at my current job. As long as I put in "8 hours" of work they don't care how I spend my 8 hours.

Not to sound too Korean..... but, that's kinda the social repercussion of electing war criminals, then the children of war criminals, and the grandchildren of war criminals to lead your country.

Modern Japan is a weird poly-sci experiment examining what would happen if you took guns away from a fascist government.

You don't get to do whatever you want. You sit in a small room and sort small pieces of paper into two piles. Then you mix them up and do it again. Then you go home until you come back and do it again for eight hours. For five days a week. Same paper. Two piles.