‘They refused to let me go’: Japanese workers turn to resignation agencies to quit jobs
M ari was just two months into her new job when she decided she had had enough. The position at an online bank in Tokyo, found through a staffing agency, had looked like a perfect fit for the 25-year-old, a member of Japan’s legions of temporary workers.
But she quickly became despondent. “On my first day they gave me a thick manual to read, and when I went to my boss with questions he said: ‘What the hell are you asking me that for?’”
Mari, who asked that her real name not be used, was regularly forced to work late, and her boss’s behaviour became more threatening. “He would ask me why I was taking so much time to finish a task and pretended to punch me when he thought I’d made a mistake. And he’d do things like deliberately knock my pencil case on to the floor. It was power harassment, pure and simple.”
Unable to summon the courage to tell her boss that she wanted to quit, she sought help from a company offering proxy resignations, a rapidly growing service for Japanese workers who can’t bring themselves to hand in their notice in person.
