For some reason, many Japanese people find it incredibly difficult to quit their job and prefer paying a third party hundreds of dollars to quit on their behalf rather than have to face their boss and co-workers and handing in their resignation personally.
Senshi S LLC is a Tokyo-based startup founded by childhood friends Toshiyuki Niino and Yuichiro Okazaki last year. It operates ‘Exit’ a unique service that basically handles job resignations on behalf od clients, for a fee. Rather, than having to tell their bosses that they can’t or don’t want to work for them anymore, Exit clients prefer to pay between 40,000 yen ($350) and 50,000 yen ($450) to have someone else do it for them. Exit’s founders declared themselves surprised that so many people find quitting their jobs so stressful, but they have been more than happy to help hundreds of them get through this process.
Photo: Lukasbieri/Pixabay
“We’d been discussing about doing something together for a long time, and this concept seemed promising,” Yuichiro Okazaki told The Japan Times. “There’s definitely demand out there. Personally, I’m perplexed as to why people find it hard to quit, but I do sense that this atmosphere is prevalent in Japan.”
No matter how stressful or tiring they consider their job, or how good of an offer they receive from another employer, some Japanese employees can’t bear the thought of having to tell their bosses and co-workers that they are quitting, so they are more than happy to have Exit do it for them. Once a request is received and the mandatory fee is deposited, Exit employees will contact their employer and relay the message that they have decided to resign and how, in most cases, they will not be coming to work anymore.
Some bosses demand to speak directly with their employees, but so far they have all complied with the request, eventually. All necessary paperwork and details such as remaining paid leave or any items that need to be returned are to be handled by mail, with Exit acting as a middleman should any party have any questions during this process.
“Quitting should be something positive,” Toshiyuki Niino said. “It’s good for companies, too. Employees thinking of resigning generally aren’t very productive. It can resolve the talent mismatch at an early stage and would help enhance labor market fluidity.”
Having quit a few corporate jobs himself, 28-year-old Niino had a pretty good idea what employees wanting to resign had to face – mountains of paperwork, superiors trying to talk them out of it, and mean gazes from their co-workers. He himself remembers going through hour-long meetings with five of his superiors asking him to stay, and a human resources manager reminding him of the resources that the company had invested in him. So he came out with the idea of a service that handles resignation on behalf of clients.
In just one year since its inception, Senshi S LLC, which will soon become Exit Inc., has already mediated the resignations of around 800 clients all around Japan. With Exit getting a lot of attention in the media lately, that number is expected to surge in the near future.
