Bandai Namco reportedly tries to bore staff into quitting, skirting Japan’s labor laws
Bandai Namco reportedly tries to bore staff into quitting, skirting Japan’s labor laws
Welcome to the oidashi beya, aka expulsion rooms
Bandai Namco has reportedly turned to the unspoken Japanese tradition of layoff-by-boredom by stuffing unwanted employees into oidashi beya, or "expulsion rooms."
Employees banished reassigned to oidashi beya are left to do nothing, or given menial tasks at best. According to Bloomberg's unnamed insider sources, Bandai Namco has moved around 200 of its 1,300 person team to these rooms in recent months.
The goal of sticking someone in an expulsion room is to literally bore or shame them into quitting, and Bloomberg's sources claim it has worked on around half the people Bandai Namco has stuck in there so far.
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Bandai Namco has reportedly turned to the unspoken Japanese tradition of layoff-by-boredom by stuffing unwanted employees into oidashi beya, or "expulsion rooms."
Employees banished reassigned to oidashi beya are left to do nothing, or given menial tasks at best.
Ever since I watched Silicon Valley I'ved dreamed of being oidashi beya'd.
Like, you're just gonna give me zero work and a room to nap in for 8 hours along with a salary?
Fucking sold man. Let me live that Bighead life, dude is a nihilist spirit animal.
I think they would just make it extra shitty. Nothing to do plus normal workplace rules: no sleeping, no private conversations or electronic devices, nothing not work related on the computer. Enjoy doing nothing nothing, where anything remotely resembling a mental escape is not allowed.
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?
Yes. And because you are technically at fault, there will be no compensation.
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.
I mean, they probably wouldn't bother doing this if the legal framework wouldn't make this a viable strategy. If it is culturally and legally difficult to fire your employees it makes "sense" to instead bore them into quitting, ethical concerns aside.
Yes, of course some companies are using it. That's what the article is about. The point I'm making, and it matters to employees in Japan, is that if employers want to use this strategy and avoid losing lawsuits, they have to be very careful about exactly what they do. Many judges have and continue to side with employees over employers. But filing lawsuits is expensive and time-consuming, and somewhat risky financially because you might lose, so sometimes companies get away with these shady tactics.
And depending on how much money you were making, you might just be better off using a couple of months of that boring time to prepare your resume and apply to other jobs, and then quit once you've lined one up.
Anyway, if your boss does this to you, and you go to your union and that doesn't work, and you eventually hire a lawyer and file a lawsuit against them, the judge is going to ask the company to justify all of the decisions they made. If the company says that they're trying to convince the employee to quit out of boredom, you will win your lawsuit. If the company can provide some kind of plausible explanation for the adjustment in the duties that they're asking you to do, the specific facts are going to come into play, and you might win or lose, depending on them.
I didn't miss your point, mine was just that a global corporation will not commit to doing this without the realistic expectation that it will work out for them. Perhaps Japan has less or no unions, perhaps the legal system does not provide for the employees suing them on the basis of "you made my job deliberately boring". Just that especially a large corp such as this will not do this unless they crunched the numbers and it has been calculated this is the cheapest way towards their objective.
Eh even with being allowed to do things, it still sucks after a while. My job is seasonal with half the year being insanely busy and other half has practically nothing to do after work dries up. Luckily the bosses are chill about it, just show up and "pretend" to be busy and you can watch TV on your phone while "cleaning" the same tools or trays etc over and over. It's nice for a few weeks after the demanding busy season ends, but even with being allowed to listen to music or watch stuff on your phone, take extra breaks, chat with people as much as you want, it still gets old having to be at work 40 hours a week with nothing truly productive to do.
That's with good bosses that want to keep the workers happy, doing tedious mind numbing work for bosses that are trying to get you to quit sounds like hell. No thank you.
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.
I actually heard a story (friend of a friend but whatever) where their American friend got oidashi beya'd and loved it so eventually the company did release him. I think it's such an interesting cultural difference when japan and us work culture, in many ways similar has this huge difference.
I wonder if it's more effective because of the mandatory after-work hangouts? I suppose if i were the work pariah that part would suck