Japanese man leaves horrible job, gets horrible letter from the company

Thankfully my own manager (whom I was leaving) had my back and pointed out that since I was leaving for a permanent role (CDI) which my current employer had not yet offered to me in writing (though informally expected me to carry on), I could get around this.

I honestly don't know what they were expecting. How can you carry on working for a company against your will with the threat of being sued if you tried to leave, what sort of a working environment is that?

The way Europe (Italy in particular) treats for example guest farm workers is hardly better if not worse.

Edit:

Downvoters might want to take a look at this for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/world/europe/a-womans-dea...

This is probably the same sort of thing, an expert quitter can turn in your resignation and wont won’t be enticed/coerced to take it back

Quitting a job is similar. I think even outside Japan it can be awkward leaving a job if you feel in some way indebted to your company. Now imagine your boss shouting at you, or maybe worse, appealing to your obligations not to leave the company, convincing you how doing so would make you unworthy of being considered a decent person, or even threatening to give you bad references, etc.

Sometimes it's actually that the other party isn't even malicious and doesn't have to be as ugly as described above. They may truly believe it's in your best interest not to abandon something.

Many people give in when faced with back pressure in those situations or at least struggle with going through such a stressful situation, i.e. many people know they may not be strong enough to go through with it when facing confrontation, so is it a surprise that a service that acts on your behalf is something people would use?

Now add to that that in Japan people generally try to avoid confrontation (esp. those likely to suffer at the workplace / school) and then imagine maybe being in a company that bullied you for years and you've seen others struggle with mustering up the courage to leave. Also, as far as I know, job hopping is still not seen as good. Many people still hope to stay at the first company they got into for a long time, with parents and partners hoping the same (and often pushing back against job changes).

>Yuichi: In Japanese business culture, there is a situation where you have to visit a company and say I’m deeply sorry for what I did and just bow and bow. Occasionally, I dream about that.

>Morin: How does that work when you’re hired to do that in real life?

>Yuichi: Usually, I accompany a salaryman who made a mistake. I take the identity of the salaryman myself, then I apologize profusely for his mistake. Have you seen the way we say sorry? You go have to down on your hands and knees on the floor. Your hands have to tremble. So, my client is there standing off to the side—the one who actually made the mistake—and I’m prostrate on the floor writhing around, and the boss is there red-faced as he hurls down abuse from above. Sometimes, I wonder to myself, “Am I actually doing this?”

[0]https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2017/11/paying-fo...

The term black company is thrown around with varying levels of severity but "actual" black companies like the one being described here aren't just shitty companies to work for, they are straight up abusive.

With these types of companies you'll be expected to be at work before your boss arrives and leave work after your boss leaves. This applies for everyone including leadership all the way up to the top which results in ground level employees being forced to arrive very early and work until long after the end of the day all the while receiving no overtime.

In the cases where you do get off early, it's normally because of "mandatory fun" aka going to an izakaya (basically a bar with isolated or semi isolated rooms), pouring drinks for everyone senior to you, and drinking copious amounts of alcohol late into the night. Of course not drinking at pace with your seniors is varying levels of "disrespectful".

On top of this, the less senior you are, the more toxic BS you have to put up with.

Leadership (including more senior members who aren't actually your boss) can just push off work onto you and it's your fault if it doesn't get done.

The least senior woman will often be expected to act like a waitress and pour drinks at meetings largely regardless of their status.

On the worse end of things, these companies if you consider leaving have no qualms threatening to badmouth you/make you unhireable to the other companies in the industry in the area. Alternatively or even at the same time they often attempt to guilt you and turn your coworkers/friends against you with some variation of "you leaving is going to make your coworkers suffer" or "you are trying to destroy the company and you'll be responsible when your friends are unemployed". Of course this is varying levels of successful at preventing you from getting a job however it's near textbook abusive behaviour to keep you from leaving.

TLDR: Black company is used with varying levels of accuracy but true black companies are closer to a corporate personification of an abusive spouse than just being a shitty company to work for. They'll try to cut off lifelines (aka connections outside your work) and replace your identity with a dependency on your work by consuming all your time and forcing you to spend your little "free time" with your bosses and coworkers. From here any attempt to leave is met with standard abusive rhetoric.

Because of just how abusive these companies are, it's preferable to pay someone to resign for you so that they can't bully you into staying or even intimidate you into backing out from resigning before you actually enter the building. Once you hire them it's done and you can mentally mark the action as "complete" and prevent yourself from backing out.

along with their twitter account: https://archive.is/VNQg8

Really, just weigh the likelihood of a company taking the time to write such an over-the-top letter, against the insatiable desire of many people on social media for notoriety.