Job Discussion Forums

gaijinalways · Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 2279

Glad I don't have to pity those that choose to be workaholics. Then again, I sometimes envy their wealth, the smart workaholics that is.

crankyjiji · Joined: 11 Nov 2007 Posts: 21

One of the students in this class had his 28th birthday recently. At home he has 3 sons under 6 years old. He was half embarrassed and a fraction proud to say that when the class finished at 7, he was going home. His boys were at home waiting for Papa to come home so they could present his birthday cake. Because usually they are fast asleep by the time he gets home. So only one day out of 365, he gets to put his family "group" ahead of the office "group?" He seems to be reduced to a sperm donor.

If you are a cultural relativist who thinks I can`t judge this "culture" or "tradition", sorry. Because I will. Just as a Japanese person could visit America and judge an idiotic "custom" of the U.S. I wouldn`t take offense if their arguments were right.

And I have lived in Japan off and on for about 10 years, so it`s not like I just got off the boat and think everything back home is superior. Actually, when I visited my sister`s house over the summer I told my brother in-law he needed to replace his water guzzling toilet. His response was "No way! It works fine." I told him about the ones here that let you choose to use less water if you were only flushing urine. That`s just one example of how one "culture" can be more enlightened than another.

AgentMulderUK · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 2:00 am Post subject:

Well, Japanese industry is obsessed by the use of robots.

I prefer to call it cloning.....

/cynicism

southofreality · Joined: 12 Feb 2007 Posts: 579 Location: Tokyo

An informative piece from CNN.com:

http://edition.cnn.com/video/

Scroll down and select the video titled 'Worked To Death?'

cornishmuppet · Joined: 27 Mar 2004 Posts: 642 Location: Nagano, Japan

I have no problem with people working overtime, I just think that they should get paid for doing it. A Japanese man once told me that everyone was perfectly entitled to overtime pay, but no one would claim it because it implied that they weren't working hard enough.

I think its all very well if you own a cornershop and want to work hard to make it a success, but when you're working ten or twenty or more hours a week for a huge profit-making company like Sony or Hitachi which you aren't getting paid for, you should get something for it. A higher manager on a huge salary is being paid for having the responsibility, and having responsibility sometimes requires extra, unscheduled work. A bottom rung paper pusher on 18man a month or equivalent (like I was back in England) shouldn't be expected nor feel the obligation to put in hours of extra work for some huge conglomerate that amost certainly won't notice.

As I said before, its a personal choice, and you could argue that putting the family first means bringing in the money. But when you're going to bring in the same money if you leave at five as if you leave at nine, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense taken as it is.

gaijinalways · Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 2279

I guess part of it is a cultural perception problem. The average Westerner generally speaking, doesn't feel as much pressure to conform as the average Japanese does. If a Japanese feels isolated from his group, he may in a sense feel very lonely indeed (almost dead in some cases Laughing

). This is why I believe many Japanese will tell you that they would be afraid to live overseas for a long time, simply because they are afraid to lose the 'support' groups in Japan that they have built up back in Japan.

So IMO many Japanese feel they must do what the others are doing in their company so that they are not perceived as an outsider within their own company. There are some Japanese that go againist the grain, but not so many are willing to risk what they feel as extreme social isolation. We would simply see it as working to live, not living to work Cool

.

gaijin4life · Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 1:10 am Post subject:

SeasonedVet · Joined: 28 Aug 2006 Posts: 236 Location: Japan

gaijin4life wrote:

southofreality · Joined: 12 Feb 2007 Posts: 579 Location: Tokyo

gaijinalways · Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 2279

alexcase · Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 215 Location: Seoul

For me, it boils down to whether you want to live in a country where people stupidly accept unpaid overtime as one of those things or actually strangely enjoy the challenge of staying awake through it (Japan, although not true for everyone and not for much of the younger generation), or live in a country where people work the longest hours in Europe and bitch about that every moment after 5 o'clock and do as bad a job as they can to punish their company for it (the UK).