this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2026
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Yeah, no, when someone’s secluded, they’re often put in an empty room without so much as a window, and given literally nothing to do, but sit there. Can’t even have a phone out. It’d drive me mad enough to quit, and the same is true of lots of people.
This is the story of a man named Stanley...
imaginary friend game weak
So you're saying it works.
Not legal in countries where you cant outright fire people. You have to get them tasks. No phone out wouldnt be enforceable unless they sit you in a bunker with no connection.
It being illegal doesn't stop people from doing it.
Take the company to court and get a fat payout 🤷
People gotta remember that Japan isn't USA or Europe when it comes to worker rights, or most rights, really, and that justice in each country can vary wildly
Way are you telling me that Japan has worse worker rights than USA?? that's wild, how the fuck can you fuck up more than the US of A
I did not say nor implied that. I said that people should not expect worker rights, or any rights, to be universal among countries, much less the whole judicial process and its consequences.
Whether Japanese worker rights are better or worse than USA/EU, I do not know.
My bad
All I know are black companies where staff dies from exhaustion lol.
On the other hand company cannot fire you easily and they do have special rooms for workers they wanna let go, with menial and useless jobs assigned to basically force you into quitting.
Also quitting is so socially frowned upon that people hire other people to handle that for them.
That's crazy
And then never get hired by any company again.
Or just take the hint and get another job. Not saying it's right, but you need to be realistic.
Taking them to court is also realistic.
From what I understand about Japanese work culture, no, I don't think that would be a realistic option.
Courts are now work culture, are they?
Put the justice boner away. If you make a name for yourself as the whistleblower, you will tank your career.
I don't agree with it. I don't think it's the way the world should work. But I recognise you can't go guns blazing and not expect to get shot down.
You have to pick your battles.
It's not whistle-blowing, what in the world are you talking about? 😩
I can't, this is too dumb for me. Should've know with a username like that.
No, you prefer to be "realist." Others have the will to fight. Any attempt to get others to conform to your lack of fight for workers rights is class sabotage.
Don't be one of those wage slaves telling others not to fight for freedom because it's illegal and the beatings aren't that bad anyway.
I live in a country with much better worker's rights then Japan or the US. I've gone through disputes with employers. I can tell you that it's rarely worth the battle. And if you do "win" you wouldn't want to work at that place any longer. If it's about something that could pay out big, it's usually better for your mental health to have left that place a long time ago.
Being realistic is knowing when it's better to move on and find a better job. Sticking around just so you can "win" a legal battle will just make your life miserable.
In countries with half decent worker protections this is not a problem.
Your task is to hand write copies of the company slogan for every working hour.
Is it? It's your boss' duty to provide you with work and they cannot dock your pay (outside of special circumstances) if they don't have work for you, but they can absolutely pay you to sit around and drink coffee in case work comes around.
I believe what they're saying is you can't use work assignment to pressure someone to quit as a way around labor protections.
As with a lot of legal stuff, the intent matters.
How is using apostrophes so hard that you just ignore it?
you can't reassign them to paint watching?
This would be considered power harassment in Japan and you can sue for it. Companies try to do it anyways though.
In Japan, thats the whole point. The business will do this to make you quit instead of them firing you. They have whack employment laws.
Sounds good in a way because you can take as long as you like applying for other jobs without losing your current income.
Often comes with a job title change and people notice those sorts of things in Japan.
Better than being homeless whilst trying to find a new job
Japan is weird I'm not sure if it's still this way but at one point homelessness or a resume downgrade would be a legitimate hard decision.
Aren't they given a computer at least to "work" on
Nope. The same happened In Austria with our ex-state owned telecommunication business; because it was state owned before privatization, they had quite a lot of nearly unfireable workers outside of extreme circumstances - state businesses often used "pragmatization" to secure people they thought weren't replaceable and to provide those people with security with a bit of a lower pay grade (at least it started that way - later on this system was ripe with corruption, using "pragmatization" as a bonus for people who were loyal to whomever).
Those workers often had pretty high salaries in comparison to the newly arriving employees, accumulating pay raises for the last 20-30 years. And they didn't want to leave their jobs, because many knew that their skillset was severely outdated and they would struggle to get another job at 50 years of age. The new owners had no use for them because they simply were too expensive and the large amount of unfireable personell dragged stock prices down.
So these workers had to come in every workday, just to sit in an nearly empty room for 8 hours - no work, no entertainment, nothing. Even the most lethargic person gets depression, anxiety and desperation after a few years of that. If you stopped coming in, they actually had leverage to get rid of you. If you called in sick, i heard of quite a lot of cases where they tried to make sure that they really were sick, because if not, it would be a fireable offense.
One of my uncles was one of the people just sitting in the "Pool", as it was called. He was NOT happy, but he was one of the few people who actually still had some useful skills even in a modernized telecom company (there's always need for people who are able and willing to competently work on phone lines high up on poles, and at that time nearly every phone line was copper cabling, VoIP was just starting to spread), and later on was able to at least get assigned some normal work, but most people who were sitting in the "pool" surrendered sooner or later when getting offered a golden handshake.
There are things like this in the USA, too, usually for people who have contracts that make them unfirable, but still fuck up something huge at work. Most famous example is probably the NYC Dep't of Education "Rubber Rooms" that they euphemistically call "Reassignment Centers."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reassignment_center
In the land of Hitler, I'm not surprised.