Anxiety-Stricken Japanese Employees Who Want to Leave Their Jobs Pay An Agency to Quit For Them

Most of the time, when you leave a job, particularly a bad one, it can be a liberating moment to announce your departure. Proclaiming "I quit!" serves as a cathartic release of any frustration or dissatisfaction you may have towards the company or individuals you work with.

However, in Japan, there's some people who find this idea rather daunting, to the extent that they are resorting to hiring a company to handle their resignation on their behalf.

 From Aljazeera: 

When Toshiyuki Niino wanted to quit a job he was unhappy at some years ago, he found himself struggling to work up the courage to confront his boss.

After working at several other Japanese workplaces, Niino knew that his decision would face resistance.

“When you try to quit, they give you a guilt trip,” Niino, who lives in Kamakura, a coastal city about 65km south of Tokyo, told Al Jazeera.

“They try to make you ashamed and guilty that you quit your job in less than three years, and I had a very difficult time.”

Niino’s experience gave him and his childhood friend Yuichiro Okazaki an idea: What if you could avoid the ordeal of quitting your job by getting someone else to do it for you?

So began Exit, a startup that handles the awkward business of handing in your notice on behalf of Japanese employees who are too ashamed or embarrassed to do it themselves.

For a fee of 20,000 yen ($144), Exit will contact the client’s employer to inform them of their decision to quit, allowing the employee to avoid any anxiety-inducing confrontations with their superiors.

Since its launch in 2017, Exit’s business model has been adopted by about two dozen other companies, spawning a niche industry of resignation outsourcing in Japan.

This cultural difference is truly fascinating.

In America, workers are often perceived as easily replaceable, so quitting is generally not considered a significant event. If anything, announcing your resignation provides an opportunity for employees to make their presence felt and their voices heard within a company, particularly in the case of large corporations.

On the other hand, it appears that in Japan, there is a higher value placed on workers, which could explain the sense of guilt associated with leaving a job. Although one should not be pressured to the extent of hiring a company for quitting, the existence of such services is intriguing, regardless.