Bandai Namco reportedly tries to bore staff into quitting, skirting Japan’s labor laws The next time you feel dehumanized by rumors of surprise HR meetings popping up on calendars amidst layoff rumors, be glad you don't work at game studio Bandai Namco in Japan. Like other video game studios, Bandai Namco has been forced to confront an industry slowdown lately that many companies have reacted to by laying …
A very long time ago, I worked for an American bank in which two managers were competing for seniority by employing increasing numbers of staff surplus to business requirements. I spent a great deal of my day colouring in the O's in the newspaper and walking slowly backwards and forwards to the coffee machine. Weirdly, they really wanted us to stay (for reasons of their status) while having nothing for us to do.
Back then, before mobile phones and the Internet, it was quite difficult to apply surreptitiously for other jobs. I presume at least you at least have that opportunity to occupy your time in the modern era. Especially if you know they want you out.
Absolutely. Red tape and bureaucracy keep people in jobs but not really in productivity. Says me that my last 20 years work is the very definition of indulging in or meleeing with bureaucracy in order to try and get real things done.
If automation is going to replace people then why shouldn't society at large get the time time back to do what they want to do? A UBI becomes necessary? Arguably, already is and could cut overall costs already by stripping out much of the civil service nonsense & benefits administration.
My guesstime wasnt even focusing on red tape or any other government type regulation.
For starters you could easily remove 3/4 of all managers in all businesses and it wouldnt even make a difference, and 3/4 is a very conservative number.
Last time i visited a local bank, they had a staff member tell the public where to line up, in a place barely the size of 2 or 3 car spaces and only 2 tellers. I mean WHY ?
A few years back i visited a doctor, who shared their office with other doctors, maybe 5, and each one had a secretary who's only job was to arrange appointments. THere were more secretaries than paitents.
Its very very easy to find more and more examples.
Whilst in Japan earlier this year I saw a lot of that sort of thing. People waiting around by entrances to garages etc to wave flags and blow whistles if a vehicle was coming out. Also if there were some work going on with barriers/hordings/cones/etc then there would be a few people doing the work, and one lucky soul fully kitted out in day-glo stripes with a flag/baton just in case it wasn't obvious...
I would say that removing many managers would result in a net improvement, not "no difference".
In to many modern companies, management is the main threat to the heath and success of the organization. Not that you could get away with no management at all, just that most of the people with the job now aren't the people that should be in charge of directing traffic in a parking lot.
One of the things Graeber (misspelled name previously) discusses is precisely this. It's typically the perception (certainly from the private sector) that it's government and regulations that produce the phenomenon, but as mentioned above there are plenty of instances where it happens in the slim and mean private sector too (flunkies to make senior executives look more important being one example).
Common practice in Japan.
"The oidashibeya is in a sense madogiwazoku on steroids. Employees are typically placed in a room, often windowless, where they have nothing to do. In many cases their business cards are taken away, and they are forced to do menial, mind-numbing tasks, or given nothing to do at all."
Love it. Chuckled and chuckled.
The OP post was very portentious. As if their narrow experience of being a TEFL(?) teacher at a Junior High School in the Asa-endo-ofu-nowhere with the rice fields and mountains all around is uniform to all.
In central Tokyo, I rarely saw anyone do that back in 2010. I never did it myself as I'm English and not there to perform near-Victorian levels of equitte just because my language is crafted in such as way is it is near impossible for me not to comply with my betters.
When in Rome, DO NOT act as the Romans do. When in Japan, show some dignity and don't learn the language beyond basic stuff, and present the best of Blighty ('Ladies first' is prime example).
The OP doesn't mix in corporate circles as my family members there tell me they do like we do with touching phones. Since 1999 their phones could do it with IRDA.. Back then it was a race to get away from the cards.
What they are probably thinking of as ubiquitous is the name seal stamps like something from the dark ages. Felt like King John sending an order to kill RObin Hood every time I had to stamp some nonsense form.
So, OP, quit your just-below-manual-labour-wage English job for the local comprehensive and get the Shinkansen to Tokyo. Go from there. See you at Rainbow Bridge in my GTR with a copy of 'Japanese Cliches from Early 2000s' for you. Expand your repertoire a little
When in Rome, DO NOT act as the Romans do. When in Japan, show some dignity and don't learn the language beyond basic stuff, and present the best of Blighty
Shades of Flanders and Swan in full flight "The English, the English, the English are best, I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest" ;)
Unfortunately an inescapable consequence of being in foreign parts is being surrounded by foreigners unless it's a package tour destination and then is arguably worse. ;)
I think I actually get the point - every nation and culture has its admirable and civilized practices which which visitor might respect or observe without shame or loss of dignity but equally each also has a share of demeaning, disgraceful, undignified and uncivilized practices which any self respecting visitor ought to avoid.
There's a whole culture and ritual around exchanging them as well. You're supposed to exchange in order of seniority, both within the room of people (if meeting more than one) and within the two of you exchanging at that moment, you must not put the card away until after the interaction is over (keeping it visible on a table or in your hand etc), and you must bow the requisite amount during the exchange etc etc based on seniority.
No it sounds like the whole reason they try to bore them is because it is almost impossible to fire anyone. If they could fire employees for slacking off, they can claim any employee is slacking off and fire them. If proof is required, just give them a large list of tasks to do and when they can't complete them all that's your evidence. Or give them an "impossible" project to complete, and fire them for its failure.
They can't fire them for slacking off, and they can't claim someone is slacking off when they are being given no work to do.
In the UK I believe that to count as 'being at work' you have to be available and willing to do work.
Whether your employer has anything for you to do or not is their problem.
Reading a book is therefore fine, as long as there's nothing you should be doing and you can put it down if some work does turn up.
I'm not that great on Japan either, but some of their work practices are positively ancient. For example in an office role you are expected to work extra hours (unpaid) to "show willing" and often people work themselves to the point of exhaustion (over many weeks) to keep up with their colleagues. People are often expected to go out with their colleagues after work as well to go drinking - more so than in the UK, it's offensive to refuse etc and will harm your chances of promotion in the future. Keeping in your boss's good graces is very important.
People are also expected to greet everyone in the office as they arrive (in more formal companies in order of seniority) and juniors should arrive before seniors (I.E. it'll be a black mark on your record if your boss gets to work before you do too often). You're also expected to thank everyone as you leave and apologise for leaving before them if you are their junior. If you take holiday, you must thank everyone in your team for "covering" for you whilst you are away, and are often expected to bring back gifts for everyone in the office as a thankyou for covering.
On a side note though it's perfectly acceptable for the most senior employee(s) in a meeting to fall asleep during it, it shows how hard they're working for the company.
It's a vague enough concept that, even though some laws probably forbid something like it, you could probably implement something to get around those restrictions. For example, a law might cover the doing nothing option, but might not cover doing something boring or annoying. In fact, if they actually have you doing nothing, you might find a way to employ the time even if you do have to be present in a location, so doing something stupid might be more effective.
Many contracts are unclear about what exactly counts as an activity you're employed to do, but if it really came down to it, you could always find some boring and pointless thing that sounds like it's part of your job. So you're an IT person, normally administering servers? Well, cleaning out old keyboards could be a job function. Remember that we want to verify that the keyboards still function well for fast typing, so you have to press each key a hundred times and verify how many times it missed. Meanwhile, next door, a programmer is writing a program to intercept and count key presses and verify the machine-generated report against the human-entered report. A manager is one door down from that and has to have a meeting every time the reports differ to discuss why there are inaccuracies in the report. The company can argue that each of those people is doing something related to their job function that could have a beneficial effect on the company if they had to.
I feel guilty for coming up with that method. I hope nobody actually does it.
This post has been deleted by its author
"Oddly enough, I first heard about this in the context of US car makers in the late seventies or so - perhaps John DeLorean's autobiography. They couldn't sack them, for whatever reason, but they could bore them into resigning."
I've seen this done (or attempted) in the UK within a division of Ford, about 1988. The deputy plant director "T" of a certain truck assembly plant hated senior manager "K". He couldn't find grounds to sack him - if he'd been a prole then that would have been easy, FMC were always into sacking people when Detroit wanted to announce savings actions to Wall Street. However, since K was a senior manager that wasn't going to wash, even after K's team of production engineers were reorganised from under him, and K had neither staff nor responsibilities. If the plant director had wanted K gone, then he probably would have been sent packing, but that wasn't the case. So every day K would come into the office, get himself a coffee, go into his huge goldfish bowl office about fifty feet from my desk and read the newspaper cover to cover, have a natter with his former team, go for a walk round the plant, read the technical press, have a snooze after lunch, arrange his desk, and eventually go home without having done a stroke of work.
I don't know if K managed to make it through to retirement which would have been another four or five years because I left before that, but the practice of trying to bore staff into quitting was certainly for real.
It's a vague enough concept that, even though some laws probably forbid something like it, you could probably implement something to get around those restrictions. For example, a law might cover the doing nothing option, but might not cover doing something boring or annoying. In fact, if they actually have you doing nothing, you might find a way to employ the time even if you do have to be present in a location, so doing something stupid might be more effective.
In the UK it would be referred to as Constructive Dismissal.
Most countries with protections against it don't define Constructive Dismissal as simply "providing no work", but by some intolerable change in conditions, breach of contract or poor conduct by the employer. It's deliberately broad enough that employment tribunals or courts have latitude to judge whether an employer's conduct in a specific case if sufficient to qualify. In the UK, Constructive Dismissal can either be "statutory" or "repuditory", statutory being something like arbitrary unfair behaviour, bullying, disproportionate disciplinary penalties, etc. Repuditary breaches are where they basically decide to ignore your contract (whether oral or verbal), so things like cutting pay, persistent delayed wages, etc.
It can be useful to know that intolerable changes to working conditions can include changes to location beyond reasonable commuting distance. So it's unlawful to simply close your office and offer you a transfer to somewhere at the other end of the country on a "take it or leave it" basis (at least not without bundling a moving expenses/relocation package) - there would need to be some sort of exit option for Voluntary Redundancy for those who don't want to move. The same may also be true of telling people hired on a remote contract that they now have to be in-office and oh, look at that, the only office is in Soho when you're in Liverpool. You can't just force them to resign - there has to be an exit option like VR.
Which is why I made up my scenario. Getting any kind of employment claim has some difficulty, but it is probably relatively easy to get one for "they told me to sit in a room and not move". Getting one for "I am a programmer and they want me to write a stupid program that nobody really needs" or "I am a manager and they're making me check and correct reports that nobody really needs" sounds pretty hard to spin as intolerable changes. Giving a lot of latitude to a court makes things more ambiguous, but it may favor a company that has an employment law expert on call when the changes they're making are specifically intended to bypass other labor laws.
"read all the Gartner reports and then compare with what actually happened and explain where Gartner got it wrong."
Could probably freelance for the Vulture with a weekly column like "Nutters* Omens" which could describe predictions of Gartner and other defective crystal ball gazers contrasted with what actually and necessarily happened.
* Agnes excepted of course.
I'll take that in the spirit of humour that it is hopefully intended
I've worked in frozen chicken factories where lifers have spent 30 years smelling of chicken at sub zero temperatures for minimum wage, worked at the roadside pouring hot tar in sweltering weather and I'm not quite so spoiled as to turn my nose up at this offer when i've a family to feed
Yes, you would receive similar pay, although you can give up on raises, but remember that this is entirely to get you to hate it and quit. Some people, certainly I would be one of them, would already hate it at that point. I would find that quite cruel, and although I'd still do it for the funds while finding something else, I would not be content. Maybe you would, but they would notice. They're not paying you to count paper clips because they want them counted, so they will give you a different demeaning task until they hit on something you're not happy to continue. I'm not sure what it would be, but if mere mindlessness is not enough, they have lots of other aspects to add in. For example, how about counting paper clips under a strict time and quality standard so you can't count them well enough? Or they can look for a more unpleasant menial task to assign you. Maybe you would be happy getting paid the same without using your skills, but there is a level of drudgery at which you would not be.
Certainly a thing, but hard to actually argue (in the UK for example you have to quit and then pursue a claim against the employer, having to spend money and time while searching for a new job or getting to grips with one).
Also, that page makes no mention of Japanese law, which can of course be different. Some of the links from the current article do discuss the situation in Japan:
The rather fascinating "Employment Law World View" take seems to be pitching "we can give foreign corporations legal advice to help them do it":
The fact there's actually a name for them suggests that, whatever the law might actually be, the practice is not unknown.
It seems Ubisoft devs are currently on strike over management's plan to impose a return-to-office mandate for 3 days per week. In this evening's newscast, some were suggesting that this mandate was a ploy to enact sizeable layoffs (as yet another covert strategy for doing so -- like rg287's "Constructive Dismissal" in another comment above) ...
It is possible, but it is ambiguous. If, for example, these people used to work in an office and were allowed to go remote during the pandemic, then their contracts may specify the office. As long as that office is still available, not only is that not an intolerable change, from a legal perspective it's not a change at all. I've known many people who want things they don't like to be illegal, but just because a law theoretically lets a court decide doesn't mean they have a strong case. Those who continue to ignore this sometimes find that they've relied too much on a bad assumption.
> If, for example, these people used to work in an office and were allowed to go remote during the pandemic, then their contracts may specify the office. As long as that office is still available, not only is that not an intolerable change, from a legal perspective it's not a change at all. I've known many people who want things they don't like to be illegal,
IANAL, but I believe that is not totally true.
The in-practice performance of a contract can be considered in enforcing it, the behaviour of the parties to the contract.
For example, if a contract has a penalty clause (every time you fail to deliver 10 widgets on time you pay a $100 penalty), if the party who can enforce that penalty clause don't enforce it for a long period of time, then it can be ruled as unenforceable going forward due to the fact that the parties involved got 'used' to that being how the contract terms were being (or not being) enforced. "Specific performance"? I think it's called? Something like that. Where the parties get used to specific performance applied to the contract, therefore that becomes the fact of the contract going forward rather than the clause that was never enforced.
It obviously requires some extended period of time for that to come into effect, whether 3? 4? years is long enough I don't know. But it is not always the case that "the contract says this, you have to do this" if it can be shown by the actions of the parties involved that no-one ever expected that to be enforced so that becomes the specific performance of the contract.
Edited to add: I just did a quick seach and the term I'm looking for is definitely not "Specific performance", that's the exact opposite, forcing the party to comply with the terms!
That is not what "specific performance" means. Specific performance is a court order to follow the terms of a contract. For example, if I've signed a contract to deliver a certain amount of items to you and I don't, you can sue me. Perhaps I'll be ordered to pay you damages in cash, but I might also be ordered to comply with the terms of that contract and deliver the items, with more penalties from the court if I don't. That would be specific performance.
I am not a lawyer either, and so maybe such a construct exists. I have not seen it used, nor could I find it with some web searches. It seems like a bad idea, but worse ideas have been enshrined in law, so that's no proof it doesn't exist. However, I have a feeling it's going to fall into a similar category as things above, namely that even if it does, chances are that it's not going to apply and it's not a good idea to rely on it. For instance, in the specific case of remote working, an employer can say that they were required to allow remote working for safety, if not by law, and therefore the change was not made by choice. Therefore, their nonenforcement of the come to office bit was not because they didn't want it. The contract says it and doesn't have provisions to alter it. The court can be presented a reason to justify other actions. In fact, you might have had a stronger case if you sued your employer for starting remote work than for stopping it.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
