Japanese employees can hire this company to quit for them

For workers who dream of quitting but dread the idea of ​​having to confront their boss, Japanese company Exit offers a solution: It will resign for them.

The six-year-old company fills an exclusive niche for Japan’s unique job market, where job-hopping is less common than in other developed countries and overt social strife is frowned upon.

“When you try to quit smoking, they make you feel guilty,” said Exit co-founder Toshiyuki Nino. Al Jazeera.

“It seems that if you quit or don’t complete it, it’s tantamount to a sin,” he told the newspaper. “It looks like you made a bad mistake.”

Niino started the company in 2017 with a childhood friend in order to relieve people from the “soul-breaking hassle” of quitting smoking, as he told Japan Times.

Exit resignation services cost about $144 (20,000 yen) today, down from about $450 (50,000 yen) five years ago, according to media reports.

Exit did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CBS MoneyWatch.

As for how the service works, the procedure described in a financial times The article is simple. On a specified day, Exit will contact the worker’s boss to say that the employee is handing in two weeks’ notice and will no longer receive phone calls or emails. The Financial Times said most Japanese workers have enough paid leave saved up to cover the two-week period, although some take unpaid leave to prepare for a new job.

The company appears to have struck a chord with some disaffected employees in Japan. About 10,000 workers, most of them male, inquire about Exit’s services each year, Nino told Al Jazeera, though not everyone is ultimately signed up. FT and NPR reported that the service has spawned several competitors.

Companies are not thrilled

Japan is known for its grueling work culture and even coined a word – “karoshi” – for it death from overwork. Until recently, it was common for Japanese workers to spend money complete career in one company. Some dissatisfied employees have contacted Exit because the thought of quitting made them so nervous that they contemplated suicide, according to the Financial Times.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, employers are not happy with the service.


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One director on the receiving end of Exit’s resignation notice described his feelings to Al Jazeera as something akin to a hostage situation. The manager, Koji Takahashi, said he was so disturbed by the third party’s resignation notice on behalf of a recent employee, that he visited the young man’s family to check what had happened.

He said, “I told them I would accept the resignation as he wished, but I would like him to call me first to assure his safety.”

Takahashi added that the interaction left him with a bad taste in his mouth. He said that the employee who subcontracts the resignation process is “an unfortunate personality who only sees work as a way to make money.”

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