Workers in Japan can’t quit their jobs. They hire resignation experts to help

Tokyo CNN —

Yuki Watanabe used to spend 12 hours every day toiling away in the office. And that’s considered a short day.

A typical 9-to-9 workday is the bare minimum. “The latest I would leave [the office] would be 11 p.m.,” said the 24-year-old, who used to work for some of Japan’s largest telecoms and e-payment companies.

So intense were the demands that Watanabe — who used an alias to speak to CNN, for fear of jeopardizing future job prospects — began to develop health problems. She had “shaky legs and stomach issues.”

She knew she had to quit, but there was one thing in the way: Japan’s notoriously top-down work culture.

Asking to leave work on time or taking some time off can be tricky enough. Even trickier is tendering a resignation, which can be seen as the ultimate form of disrespect in the world’s fourth-biggest economy, where workers traditionally stick with one employer for decades, if not for a lifetime.

In the most extreme cases, grumpy bosses rip up resignation letters and harass employees to force them to stay.

Watanabe was unhappy at her previous job, saying her former supervisor often ignored her, making her feel bad. But she didn’t dare resign.

“I didn’t want my ex-employer to deny my resignation and keep me working for longer,” she told CNN during a recent interview.

But she found a way to end the impasse. She turned to Momuri, a resignation agency that helps timid employees leave their intimidating bosses.

For the price of a fancy dinner, many Japanese workers hire these proxy firms to help them resign stress-free.

The industry existed before Covid. But its popularity grew after the pandemic, after years of working from home pushed even some of Japan’s most loyal workers to reflect upon