Bandai Namco has reportedly turned to the unspoken Japanese tradition of layoff-by-boredom by stuffing unwanted employees into oidashi beya, or “expulsion rooms.”
Employees banished reassigned to oidashi beya are left to do nothing, or given menial tasks at best. According to Bloomberg’s unnamed insider sources, Bandai Namco has moved around 200 of its 1,300 person team to these rooms in recent months.
The goal of sticking someone in an expulsion room is to literally bore or shame them into quitting, and Bloomberg’s sources claim it has worked on around half the people Bandai Namco has stuck in there so far.
I think we’re misunderstanding the rooms here. Everyone in the comments is saying “ooooh, I’d love that!” But imagine, the company gives you a tough but manageable quota of lines to write out by hand from the dictionary. Every day, 8 hours of writing. No phone, no music, no talking, no distractions, just quietly writing.
For anyone with a decent salaried job, that sounds horrible.
As a software developer writing out lines from the dictionary isn’t part of my job description… they’d be violating my employment contract.
Bosses can’t just demand you do something… your work needs to be stuff you agreed to do.
You probably have another duties ad required clause somewhere. If not, fine one dev to another, asking for hundreds of shitty useless QA tests. Same stupidity but if they can demonstrate a reasonable employee should finish X in Y time…
As a QA professional, I take exception to that!
If you get into a situation like this please reach out to a labor lawyer - it’s extremely likely that you could make a case for constructive dismissal.
so don’t make your quota.
what are they going to do, fire you?
Responded before but if you don’t hit the quota, they can probably fire you for cause (removing the severance, maybe pension etc.)
It’s why all the back to office mandates sorta work (in terms of reducing headcount) you can’t just show up and do nothing. If thr company can prove you’re doing nothing, you can probably be terminated for cause. Happened to guys I know in a public, govt funded job with the reason as, iirc “time theft” and the union didn’t really fight for them because the evidence was pretty damning that they hadn’t done fuck all most mornings.
For anyone it’s horrible. Making someone do monotonous unproductive work is a form of torture. Just look at Sisyphus.
I mean, Camus argued he could at least find satisfaction/meaning in rolling that damned rock. (As part of his “why committing suicide is bad” essay, I think called the Myth of Sisyphus.)
That’s not what’s done, though.
Yes but comparing our Western lack of shame to Japanese culture is also pretty silly. My example is more balancing the scale.
I would start to suspect my employers of bank robbery.
Heck, now I just want to read this before understanding the joke. Be warned, you’re going to get a message in some months thanking you for the reference.