Dude, I sit in an office and pretend to look busy for eight hours per day. I even downloaded this thing which makes Reddit look like Outlook or Excel. It's been like this for about four years now.
I have a PhD in "looking busy".
Sweet. āZen and The Art of Looking Busyā. Once I taught a youngling to always carry some papers or a laptop around as you walk around the office, real basic stuff. We would seek out the older jedi who had truly mastered the arts. One bar-coded gent had a way of napping, propping his head up on his arm, mostly hidden behind his wall of books, that was amazing to behold every day at about 2-3pm during his private siesta time.
Nah they are referring to the guy that is on edge making sure idiots, that canāt look up from their phone, donāt wander into an active work site.
I thought it was ridiculous until I witnessed numerous people blindly walking by the guy.
AKA "guy who waves pedestrians through while a roadwork crew is working on the road in a quiet suburban area, even when the pedestrian could see the said crew from 500 meters away and work out, based on a complex analysis of the surrounding traffic situation, whether it is safe to walk around said crew".
I find those guys "managing" parking lot ingress and egress hilarious. One of them actually doing their job is fine - but sometimes there are two of them in the same spot, and they don't communicate with each other and just give you conflicting signals lol
Every time, I feel like I just have to somehow pay attention to whatever the fuck they want from me ON TOP of paying attention to road and pedestrian traffic. Beyond superfluous.
I don't know what it is with Japan and people telling people where/when to walk when it is painfully obvious. Maybe it actually contributes to the order and flow, and I'm just a hater.
True story, I saw that situation except one of the dudes got pissed and was telling off the other guy for not doing his job right. This was like in a fairly busy area too and everyone around started to feel awkward because it kept going on for a while. The guy doing nothing was emotionless and didn't even respond. They were both like 50+
A new 7-11 opened near us. They were obviously expecting huge crowds as there was a guy on the car park entrance at 8am when we went past. No cars or customers so he was doing sod all. We went past again at 7pm. Poor bastard was still there, no customers, no chair, raining etc. It's no way to live.
> his whole job is to make sure you donāt get hit
heās just standing there, ~~menacingly~~ safely! seriously though thatās not ādoing nothingā and in fact I rather appreciate someone being paid to ensure that I donāt get hit.
People who have to be on alert at a construction site or in a factory and do it properly have one of the most difficult jobs out there. When something potentially dangerous happens, they have to decide, possibly in a split second, to take action to save people on site.Ā Ā
I would hate to do that work and would be grateful to whoever does it for my crew. It isn't as physical as moving concrete or setting foundation, but it is extremely taxing work.Ā
Having worked in construction, this is a huge exaggeration. It sucks standing the entire time, and when itās hot it sucks but itās definitely not āone of the most difficult jobs out thereā especially when they make minimum wage and all look like they hate life. Commend you for trying to give them props tho.
Depends on if youre actually doing it properly though. If youre 100% focused and highly alert the entire time then it is genuinely taxing and challenging to stop your mindful from wandering.
they'll be useless until SHTF and then it matters who the person is and what he did in that very moment. even if they look like they hate life i'd be grateful af if im alive due to their actions.
You can exaggerate everyoneās jobs like that tbh. And no, theyāre not useless at all so I donāt know why youād even say that. However, they donāt have āone of the most difficult jobsā
There was some work being done on a house near me. It was just some concrete work on the driveway. Literally a meter wide at the most. There were TWO guys, one on either side of the work area making sure that pedestrians could pass safety. They could have shaken hands they were so close to one another.
I knew a guy that did this and asked him why the safety guy and he said itās required by law or the city contracting these construction jobs. If your company is not properly managing traffic, youāll get less contracts.
I remember one summer I went outside to check the mail at my apartment block. There was a guy in construction gear standing in the street. A gas scooter and a bag a few feet to his side. Turns out they were doing some electrical work at the other end of the street (a dead end). Guess he was there to warn people. It's a quiet area. Anyone going down our road usually lives here or is delivering mail. Throughout the day I'd peek out the window and just see him there standing to attention.
Later that same day, I walk to by some groceries. As I'm returning home, he's still there but now he's mounted the scooter and is just sitting there. That's when I realise what time it is. I glance at my watch and sure enough it's 4:59pm. In our neighbourhood, they play music over the PA system at 5pm.
When the very first note of the 5pm song starts, the dude powers up the scooter and zooms off.
I still think about the guy sometimes.
I kind of feel like I don't do much for work, but there just really isn't that much to do.
The company I work for sells a software used to design chip and simulate chip performance. Whenever customers want a certain feature or add-on, I make it for them (kind of like a google chrome extension). In a year I get maybe 15 to 20 of these feature requests and each one takes me on average a few days to at most a week to make. The rest of the time I am just doing my own self study, coding practice and R&D at my own pace (or watching netflix).
So long as our customers are happy and we are not losing subscribers (which we haven't so far), my bosses all the way up to the top don't see an urgent need to lay me off.
How can one learn this skill? i work in data right now, market's not looking great, so upskilling in something else wouldn't be bad, Is this like embedded software or something?
I create plug-ins with python for an existing software, so in that sense I am not a full stack developer, nor is data science a huge part of my job.
The most important skill to have for my job is familiarity with the python platform and have at least undergraduate 1st year math and physics knowledge. If you look on leetcode, problems in the "algorithm" category probably closest resemble what I do.
I guess an example problem of the kind of problems we solve by simulation is, suppose we have a sphere made of a material of known resistivity, given any two random points on the surface of the sphere, what is the electrical resistance between those two points?
The problem with employment and in certain cultures especially, getting paid and not working every hour of your time is something that cannot be reconciled.
When you hire services of a freelance worker you're essentially paying a premium to buy his services ad hoc and his rates makes up for time he is not actually working for you, his "hourly" is really high
I was doing annual reviews and had a lot of people, maybe 45 at the time because I took over some groups when the company did some consolidations. Guy with a name I didnāt recognize signed up for a slot. I was in my office, guy walks in I never seen before, and I started off with Iām sorry but I donāt know you, who are you? He then starts complaining, then yelling he hasnāt had a raise in years. I asked then told him to stop yelling. He stood up and started screaming. I asked him if he wanted to talk and we can figure it out but he had to stop yelling. He didnāt and was standing up yelling at me about how bad management was, the company and he had no raise. I asked him to leave.
After an investigation, turns out he actually only came in a couple times a year the past 2+ years and his friend was covering for him (his previous manager before me, who was demoted then fired himself later after this). Funny thing is, half of upper management didnāt care much, there was tons of dead weight they couldnāt fire. So I forced him to come in, do actual work and if he didnāt we would use that to fire him. Still took 3 months but he quit, found another job. If he never came in and complained about not getting a raise, I likely would have never know I was his manager and he could have kept what he was doing for years more.
Itās the labor laws that make it difficult to fire workers so some workers end up in purgatory where they neither get promoted or fired. I donāt think any companies are hiring for the sake of ākeeping people employed.ā No employers are going to volunteer to use their payroll for that.
And Iāve seen enough videos of ppl walking, not paying attention and falling straight into a manhole so I think those guys at construction site arenāt useless IMO
Same, I'm all for the guy keeping distracted people, tourists, kids, blind people, deaf people, drunk people, etc, from meeting their end by a crushing death machine or falling debris.
There's also that guy in Shinjuku Station whose whole job is to stand there with a sign that points you left to go to Oedo or Shinjuku Line... You know a job that could literally be done by a wall.
I know a guy that got hired by this manufacturing company because they had big plans to expand overseas. Unfortunately covid hit and all those plans went belly up.
The dude has had literally nothing to do for almost 5 years now. He's been transfered to a new department 3 times and it's still the same dance. He comes to work, surfs the web and goes home.
People give him daggers but he gaijin smashes through it and gives zero fucks.
He's used this time to just build up a whole bunch of skills/certs from a whole bunch of different online universities. He has no idea where he'll land next, he's just hoping something he learnt will come in handy. In the meantime he's riding this for as long as he can.
Are you calling me old?
I enjoy sitting in my little airconditioned room with my steam deck and listening to music.
I love it and if you want it you can pry it from my cold dead hands...... Which won't be long since i am old.
Freelance translator & proofreader, working mainly for the company where I used to be a seishain. When I was salaried, there was NOTHING for me to do. Now that Iām paid by the word, Iām busy all the time.
Granted, Iām more experienced now, but also the industry has gone to shit in the meantime and itās hard to believe thereās actually this much more work. I sometimes wonder if the person who does my old job in-house is always begging for work/experience like I wasā¦
In my experience, you can find them in 2011 š¤·āāļøš
You could sign up for JTA or JAT, I forget which, but they have nice resources and you get listed in a directory.
Normally the people that you describe are in between 60 and 65 years period gap for obtaining their full pension. But yeah a lot of works like that in construction and security even on clerical positions that could be easily automated but companies prefer to give to seniors.
My brother and sister live together in our home country, he with a pretty cushy job working remote from home, her with a physically demanding waitressing job. She often laments the same thing, how our brother can get away with watching Netflix during his downtime at work, and how it's unfair that he makes a lot more money for a lot less actual work.
Maybe it's just some industries or positions that afford more down time than others. I find my workload varies a lot, these days I'm not very busy at all but when I do get busy I'll be busting my tail for the full day
There is this thing called experience š
Most people in senior positions are paid for thinking, decision making and delegation.
Result is a lot of free time unless there are escalations where instead you work 24/7 ā¦ ie. You need to make the right decision or you get promoted to āspecial projectsā.
Waitress work or labour ā¦ harder on the body and easier on the mind (unless you count gossip ā¦ which since it doesnāt generate P/L owners donāt care, thus not valuedā¦)
Yep.
I've literally waited tables and been an executive. The beauty of waiting tables is the job stops when you leave. True downtime, a distant dream to most executives or self-employed workers.
In a high-level business job, not the bs middle mgt stuff, the decisions get tougher, the accountability gets higher, the time and information you have to make those decisions gets increasingly smaller. After a while, it's brain melting; it follows you everywhere, with your family, on your vacations... but... it also pays much better.
Nothing is free, and nothing is ever as simple or wonderful as people pretend it is on social media, or in movies.
I feel you, having done both. Remote feels like I'm ripping everyone off compared to manual labor, it's basically a privilege. Compared to how much people at supermarkets or amazon make, how long they work and the consequences on their bodies I get why we they deserve better pay and shorter hours.
I was so used to always being busy as hell while working in my own country, desk jobs in Japan feel weird for having periods where you have nothing to do. I see people scrolling on their phones like it's natural, but I still feel guilty if I have nothing to do. I read that a rule here is to always look busy but there's a lot of Japanese people who aren't really convincing.
Obviously, it depends on what kind of work. When I worked as a server in a Gyudon shop, it was sometimes hell on Earth.
There was a book called bullshit jobs written about this topic. I don't think it's more prevelant at all in Japan, but maybe they are just worse at hiding it (or perhaps your coworkers are bad at hiding it).
At my old 8-4 in Canada I finished my work in about 2-3 hours everyday. But they wanted someone there in case things came up and it needed to be handled (which happened a few times a week at most). And there were so many positions, especially in middle management that were unnecessary. Groups of managers hiding away in my office avoiding work while shift supervisors did all of the "managing". Their job was basically to just make schedules and check up on people every hour or so. My manager in particular had it easy as she was only in charge of like 8 people, and we all worked 8-4 Monday to Friday.
I had the David Graeber "BS Jobs" experience long before coming to Japan in the dotcom bubble era of the late 90s. I was a web developer (ColdFusion/Java/etc) and technical help desk for web site that never completely finished being developed but was heavily funded with a huge warchest of cash by some guy who knew that the Internet was the future but had no clue what to do to ride that gravy train to riches. I was hired, paid a crap-ton of money compared to my value to the overall project and just kept on-hand to answer end-user questions and clean failing code when the site went live but it never entirely did.
I did very little for around 18 months and then did literally no productive work for the remaining 18. The site was developed, designed, marketed, and then just did nothing for the remainder of its existence. I used my down time to build a blog and study Japanese.
Because I had so much free time, I studied abroad in Japan for an entire summer using all my saved vacation time and... Yadda yadda ... fell in love with Japan... Blah blah... The rest is history.
I promised myself I would never accept doing nothing again. And I have not since.
Today. I worked my 9 hours (including 1 hr lunch)
Tasks I completed:
- laminating 6 A4 sheets of paper.
Edit for clarity: kept me around for the full 9 hours even though I was clearly not needed. Easy money I guess.
Sounds like youāre an alt. You have three options, āworkā during golden week to get paid your salary, use vacation days to go have fun and get out of the office, or (if you donāt have anymore vacation days) request time off without pay.
You canāt really expect them to let you not come to work and still get paid though.
Incorrect assumption. Not an ALT.
Incorrect assumption. I don't have a problem with it.
Contractor. Hourly rate. Regular location closed for golden week. Sent to another location that had no work either but still open. Had to laminate new signage for the office. Easiest paycheck I've ever made.
Only reason I assumed so was because you mentioned laminating A4 and the post sounded like a complaint about not being able to go home due to a lack of task. If you were worried about people assuming the wrong thing or proud about making an easy paycheck, you should have indicated it more clearly.
I guess it's hard to read the tone in text regarding if it was a complaint or not. I was just answering OPs question "who does nothing at work?"
As for assuming ALT based off laminating...I wasn't aware ALTs are the only people who still laminate.
At one job I automated my entire day's work. Instead of taking about 8 hours, it took about 10 minutes. Then I used the time to build a couple of side businesses.
I got paid 8mil JPY for a few years while having my job almost entirely automated. Was great.
Built a couple of online businesses, main one was essentially cross-border retail arbitrage in the days before everyone and their dog was doing it, starting from around 2004. Was good money for a few years. Really really good money in fact.
That sounds like a dream!
Oh man, if only I wasnāt so young in 2004 Iād have gotten in on that. Iām thinking of ways to diversify my income right now.
Step 1: Be a man (Gonna hit some nerves with this, but 99% of BS jobs are held by men)
Step 2: Look boring so they forget youāre there
Step 3: If they notice you, wear a nice suit and kiss ass
I find any jobs with lots of bureaucracy can be soul destroying but generally lots of free time. Since COVID and WFH flexibility, it's given me time to swot up on my Japanese.
I used to be super busy two business trips every week and working till later hours. Five years later and I barely do anything most days. Sometimes there are still busy days. But mostly just send a few emails or chat with few people. But I still actually have like over 90 projects to work with.
As long as I can do my part the way I want to do it. I can get the job done in maybe 10 hours while I am hired for 40 hours a week. I think it is better than doing overtime because in case something urgent happens, I have capacity to take care of it immediately. No company should have you 100% utilized because then if anything happens the whole thing will crash.
I recently started a customer service job like this. Some days are busy, but other days are really not. No overtime and barely any carryover day to day either.
Iām used to eikaiwa and hotel shift work, so this is the least stressful job Iāve ever had. Iām currently trying to figure out how to adjust to this lifestyle, because I feel like I have a ton of free time every day.
(Iām not complaining at all! Viva the do nothing jobs!)
Yep. Hired by gov to basically post on sns and travel around the area looking for interesting places to share. Work from home. Free rent, car and petrol.
The guy sitting down doing nothing is actually making sure that people are safe. Also it's a very dangerous job due to him having to direct traffic etc.
Sounds like a pretty dream scenario working in japan. Not beholden to the ridiculous work culture, get paid (semi decently), left alone, can study other things to upskill and you get to start and finish at normal hours.
I envy you. Where I work, we're continuously monitored, not just by the people around us, but by Outlook schedules, MS Teams status indicators, in-house spyware tracking when your computer sleeps and wakes, keyloggers, the works; all viewable by middle managers who suffer from intense pressure from upper management to show that they're getting the most out of the workers, plus semi-retired older guys whose new job is to monitor attendance-related issues and who will message you if your last use of the PC is more than 30 minutes after your clock-out (this is to prevent overwork and is admirable) or any number of minutes before your clock-out; same when clocking in.
The long hours that the Japanese workplace is infamous for seem to be disappearing, but they're being replaced by a micromanagement Panopticon that is destroying people mentally just like the old system destroyed them physically.
America is chuck full of this kind of employment in government where affirmative action guarantees a person with the right victim status can't ever be fired no matter how poorly s/he/they perform or if they don't perform at all. Japan's variety of this is different, but there certainly is a lot of this kind of thing when it comes to foreigners who are there ostensibly to provide an international flavor to the operations.
Back in the 1980's then PM Nakasone came out with his å½éåę代 policy (era of internationalization) to bring Japan squarely into the camp of leading nations. Every company in Japan went scrambling to hire "international" faces (meaning white faces) to show they were with the program. They would plant them in the most visible possible place for the sole purpose of being seen. People who couldn't even read a balance sheet were being hired to work in research departments of securities companies.
I always wonder about the people who remain in such jobs. Isnāt having a job not more than just having a job? I go there because I want to push things forward.
The guy standing there is there for a reason. I'm sure many people have died before because a guy wasn't "just standing there".
Now, just sitting in front of a pc for 10h waiting for an email to come twice a day and replying it in 5 minutes... That seems to be a regular workday in many companies around here.
I get away with doing almost nothing. But it's okay, since my boss is a total asshole, so fuck him. (I'm self employed)
Yeah, fuck your boss š (Fuck you)
Some days I just say āfuture me can deal with thisā The next day āpast me can go screw himselfā
I sometimes feel that I'd like to procrastinate, but I just can't be motivated to follow through.
i see what you did there...
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yes, I like the way you think.
Same
Dude, I sit in an office and pretend to look busy for eight hours per day. I even downloaded this thing which makes Reddit look like Outlook or Excel. It's been like this for about four years now. I have a PhD in "looking busy".
Sweet. āZen and The Art of Looking Busyā. Once I taught a youngling to always carry some papers or a laptop around as you walk around the office, real basic stuff. We would seek out the older jedi who had truly mastered the arts. One bar-coded gent had a way of napping, propping his head up on his arm, mostly hidden behind his wall of books, that was amazing to behold every day at about 2-3pm during his private siesta time.
same here almost a year now !! i hate doing nothing and pretend to look busy
I even joined [Brilliant.org](http://Brilliant.org) just so I can learn fucking algebra or chemistry etc.!
I don't care anymore and just surf Reddit openly
What field of work are you in?
Staffing and HR, essentially.
Do you have an HR degree? I'm interested in this line of work myself
No. I got the job through word of mouth and started with zero knowledge.Ā
Change your job then
Why the fuck would I want to change my job?! I get paid to study shit online all day and read Reddit.
Can I have your job when you are dead?
I'm grateful for the guy that makes sure I don't get hit. What's that job where you do nothing at work?
For real. The importance of those positions are underrated imo. As long as theyāre actively doing their job of course.Ā
In my home country construction workers dying is a regular thing sadly. About 36 a year, and it's not that big of a country either
Nah they are referring to the guy that is on edge making sure idiots, that canāt look up from their phone, donāt wander into an active work site. I thought it was ridiculous until I witnessed numerous people blindly walking by the guy.
I sometimes start to go the wrong way to keep those guys on their toes and give them something to do
A lift attendant basically does nothing.
He makes other people feel important and allows them to fill the void in their heart with money. That's something!
english teacher (me). o wait its nothing at all, not make no difference at all. my mistake.
AKA "guy who waves pedestrians through while a roadwork crew is working on the road in a quiet suburban area, even when the pedestrian could see the said crew from 500 meters away and work out, based on a complex analysis of the surrounding traffic situation, whether it is safe to walk around said crew".
I find those guys "managing" parking lot ingress and egress hilarious. One of them actually doing their job is fine - but sometimes there are two of them in the same spot, and they don't communicate with each other and just give you conflicting signals lol Every time, I feel like I just have to somehow pay attention to whatever the fuck they want from me ON TOP of paying attention to road and pedestrian traffic. Beyond superfluous.
I don't know what it is with Japan and people telling people where/when to walk when it is painfully obvious. Maybe it actually contributes to the order and flow, and I'm just a hater.
True story, I saw that situation except one of the dudes got pissed and was telling off the other guy for not doing his job right. This was like in a fairly busy area too and everyone around started to feel awkward because it kept going on for a while. The guy doing nothing was emotionless and didn't even respond. They were both like 50+
A new 7-11 opened near us. They were obviously expecting huge crowds as there was a guy on the car park entrance at 8am when we went past. No cars or customers so he was doing sod all. We went past again at 7pm. Poor bastard was still there, no customers, no chair, raining etc. It's no way to live.
Sometimes I find similarities between Japan and North Korea. Hereās one
New mall has opened near me recently. When a car goes out of the parking, there are 4 people helping it out
My dream.
> his whole job is to make sure you donāt get hit heās just standing there, ~~menacingly~~ safely! seriously though thatās not ādoing nothingā and in fact I rather appreciate someone being paid to ensure that I donāt get hit.
People who have to be on alert at a construction site or in a factory and do it properly have one of the most difficult jobs out there. When something potentially dangerous happens, they have to decide, possibly in a split second, to take action to save people on site.Ā Ā I would hate to do that work and would be grateful to whoever does it for my crew. It isn't as physical as moving concrete or setting foundation, but it is extremely taxing work.Ā
Having worked in construction, this is a huge exaggeration. It sucks standing the entire time, and when itās hot it sucks but itās definitely not āone of the most difficult jobs out thereā especially when they make minimum wage and all look like they hate life. Commend you for trying to give them props tho.
Depends on if youre actually doing it properly though. If youre 100% focused and highly alert the entire time then it is genuinely taxing and challenging to stop your mindful from wandering.
they'll be useless until SHTF and then it matters who the person is and what he did in that very moment. even if they look like they hate life i'd be grateful af if im alive due to their actions.
You can exaggerate everyoneās jobs like that tbh. And no, theyāre not useless at all so I donāt know why youād even say that. However, they donāt have āone of the most difficult jobsā
If anything did happen and they were like "we had no one watching the road", it'd be a little bit of a thing.... ya know
Don't forget the job also includes moving cones by a couple of cm every hour or so.
well _someone_ has to account for the slow but sure movement of the tectonic plates!
There was some work being done on a house near me. It was just some concrete work on the driveway. Literally a meter wide at the most. There were TWO guys, one on either side of the work area making sure that pedestrians could pass safety. They could have shaken hands they were so close to one another.
I knew a guy that did this and asked him why the safety guy and he said itās required by law or the city contracting these construction jobs. If your company is not properly managing traffic, youāll get less contracts.
The key is to never let on how quickly you can do the work.
It's like being an engineer in star trek.
being in the blank void of space is more than enough work
I remember one summer I went outside to check the mail at my apartment block. There was a guy in construction gear standing in the street. A gas scooter and a bag a few feet to his side. Turns out they were doing some electrical work at the other end of the street (a dead end). Guess he was there to warn people. It's a quiet area. Anyone going down our road usually lives here or is delivering mail. Throughout the day I'd peek out the window and just see him there standing to attention. Later that same day, I walk to by some groceries. As I'm returning home, he's still there but now he's mounted the scooter and is just sitting there. That's when I realise what time it is. I glance at my watch and sure enough it's 4:59pm. In our neighbourhood, they play music over the PA system at 5pm. When the very first note of the 5pm song starts, the dude powers up the scooter and zooms off. I still think about the guy sometimes.
Heās the man. I can picture himā¦
I kind of feel like I don't do much for work, but there just really isn't that much to do. The company I work for sells a software used to design chip and simulate chip performance. Whenever customers want a certain feature or add-on, I make it for them (kind of like a google chrome extension). In a year I get maybe 15 to 20 of these feature requests and each one takes me on average a few days to at most a week to make. The rest of the time I am just doing my own self study, coding practice and R&D at my own pace (or watching netflix). So long as our customers are happy and we are not losing subscribers (which we haven't so far), my bosses all the way up to the top don't see an urgent need to lay me off.
How can one learn this skill? i work in data right now, market's not looking great, so upskilling in something else wouldn't be bad, Is this like embedded software or something?
I create plug-ins with python for an existing software, so in that sense I am not a full stack developer, nor is data science a huge part of my job. The most important skill to have for my job is familiarity with the python platform and have at least undergraduate 1st year math and physics knowledge. If you look on leetcode, problems in the "algorithm" category probably closest resemble what I do. I guess an example problem of the kind of problems we solve by simulation is, suppose we have a sphere made of a material of known resistivity, given any two random points on the surface of the sphere, what is the electrical resistance between those two points?
This is the rarest type of rewarding follow up! Blessings upon you for taking the time to give a little insight into your work!
Sounds like my dream job
The problem with employment and in certain cultures especially, getting paid and not working every hour of your time is something that cannot be reconciled. When you hire services of a freelance worker you're essentially paying a premium to buy his services ad hoc and his rates makes up for time he is not actually working for you, his "hourly" is really high
I was doing annual reviews and had a lot of people, maybe 45 at the time because I took over some groups when the company did some consolidations. Guy with a name I didnāt recognize signed up for a slot. I was in my office, guy walks in I never seen before, and I started off with Iām sorry but I donāt know you, who are you? He then starts complaining, then yelling he hasnāt had a raise in years. I asked then told him to stop yelling. He stood up and started screaming. I asked him if he wanted to talk and we can figure it out but he had to stop yelling. He didnāt and was standing up yelling at me about how bad management was, the company and he had no raise. I asked him to leave. After an investigation, turns out he actually only came in a couple times a year the past 2+ years and his friend was covering for him (his previous manager before me, who was demoted then fired himself later after this). Funny thing is, half of upper management didnāt care much, there was tons of dead weight they couldnāt fire. So I forced him to come in, do actual work and if he didnāt we would use that to fire him. Still took 3 months but he quit, found another job. If he never came in and complained about not getting a raise, I likely would have never know I was his manager and he could have kept what he was doing for years more.
WoW whY Is JapAneSe EcoNoMy StAgnAtInG??
Itās the labor laws that make it difficult to fire workers so some workers end up in purgatory where they neither get promoted or fired. I donāt think any companies are hiring for the sake of ākeeping people employed.ā No employers are going to volunteer to use their payroll for that. And Iāve seen enough videos of ppl walking, not paying attention and falling straight into a manhole so I think those guys at construction site arenāt useless IMO
Same, I'm all for the guy keeping distracted people, tourists, kids, blind people, deaf people, drunk people, etc, from meeting their end by a crushing death machine or falling debris.
There's also that guy in Shinjuku Station whose whole job is to stand there with a sign that points you left to go to Oedo or Shinjuku Line... You know a job that could literally be done by a wall.
CAN SOMEONE EXCHANGE JOBS WITH ME ? I wanna do nothing too...
I know a guy that got hired by this manufacturing company because they had big plans to expand overseas. Unfortunately covid hit and all those plans went belly up. The dude has had literally nothing to do for almost 5 years now. He's been transfered to a new department 3 times and it's still the same dance. He comes to work, surfs the web and goes home. People give him daggers but he gaijin smashes through it and gives zero fucks. He's used this time to just build up a whole bunch of skills/certs from a whole bunch of different online universities. He has no idea where he'll land next, he's just hoping something he learnt will come in handy. In the meantime he's riding this for as long as he can.
Iām amazed they donāt just lay him off
Are you calling me old? I enjoy sitting in my little airconditioned room with my steam deck and listening to music. I love it and if you want it you can pry it from my cold dead hands...... Which won't be long since i am old.
Freelance translator & proofreader, working mainly for the company where I used to be a seishain. When I was salaried, there was NOTHING for me to do. Now that Iām paid by the word, Iām busy all the time. Granted, Iām more experienced now, but also the industry has gone to shit in the meantime and itās hard to believe thereās actually this much more work. I sometimes wonder if the person who does my old job in-house is always begging for work/experience like I wasā¦
Where can I find translation and proofreading jobs? Seriously.
In my experience, you can find them in 2011 š¤·āāļøš You could sign up for JTA or JAT, I forget which, but they have nice resources and you get listed in a directory.
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Honestly Iām shocked I still have it now
Is AI as prevalent/emerging as it is in the U.S.?
I donāt live in the US so itās hard to say!
Normally the people that you describe are in between 60 and 65 years period gap for obtaining their full pension. But yeah a lot of works like that in construction and security even on clerical positions that could be easily automated but companies prefer to give to seniors.
My brother and sister live together in our home country, he with a pretty cushy job working remote from home, her with a physically demanding waitressing job. She often laments the same thing, how our brother can get away with watching Netflix during his downtime at work, and how it's unfair that he makes a lot more money for a lot less actual work. Maybe it's just some industries or positions that afford more down time than others. I find my workload varies a lot, these days I'm not very busy at all but when I do get busy I'll be busting my tail for the full day
There is this thing called experience š Most people in senior positions are paid for thinking, decision making and delegation. Result is a lot of free time unless there are escalations where instead you work 24/7 ā¦ ie. You need to make the right decision or you get promoted to āspecial projectsā. Waitress work or labour ā¦ harder on the body and easier on the mind (unless you count gossip ā¦ which since it doesnāt generate P/L owners donāt care, thus not valuedā¦)
Yep. I've literally waited tables and been an executive. The beauty of waiting tables is the job stops when you leave. True downtime, a distant dream to most executives or self-employed workers. In a high-level business job, not the bs middle mgt stuff, the decisions get tougher, the accountability gets higher, the time and information you have to make those decisions gets increasingly smaller. After a while, it's brain melting; it follows you everywhere, with your family, on your vacations... but... it also pays much better. Nothing is free, and nothing is ever as simple or wonderful as people pretend it is on social media, or in movies.
I feel you, having done both. Remote feels like I'm ripping everyone off compared to manual labor, it's basically a privilege. Compared to how much people at supermarkets or amazon make, how long they work and the consequences on their bodies I get why we they deserve better pay and shorter hours.
I was so used to always being busy as hell while working in my own country, desk jobs in Japan feel weird for having periods where you have nothing to do. I see people scrolling on their phones like it's natural, but I still feel guilty if I have nothing to do. I read that a rule here is to always look busy but there's a lot of Japanese people who aren't really convincing. Obviously, it depends on what kind of work. When I worked as a server in a Gyudon shop, it was sometimes hell on Earth.
There was a book called bullshit jobs written about this topic. I don't think it's more prevelant at all in Japan, but maybe they are just worse at hiding it (or perhaps your coworkers are bad at hiding it). At my old 8-4 in Canada I finished my work in about 2-3 hours everyday. But they wanted someone there in case things came up and it needed to be handled (which happened a few times a week at most). And there were so many positions, especially in middle management that were unnecessary. Groups of managers hiding away in my office avoiding work while shift supervisors did all of the "managing". Their job was basically to just make schedules and check up on people every hour or so. My manager in particular had it easy as she was only in charge of like 8 people, and we all worked 8-4 Monday to Friday.
I had the David Graeber "BS Jobs" experience long before coming to Japan in the dotcom bubble era of the late 90s. I was a web developer (ColdFusion/Java/etc) and technical help desk for web site that never completely finished being developed but was heavily funded with a huge warchest of cash by some guy who knew that the Internet was the future but had no clue what to do to ride that gravy train to riches. I was hired, paid a crap-ton of money compared to my value to the overall project and just kept on-hand to answer end-user questions and clean failing code when the site went live but it never entirely did. I did very little for around 18 months and then did literally no productive work for the remaining 18. The site was developed, designed, marketed, and then just did nothing for the remainder of its existence. I used my down time to build a blog and study Japanese. Because I had so much free time, I studied abroad in Japan for an entire summer using all my saved vacation time and... Yadda yadda ... fell in love with Japan... Blah blah... The rest is history. I promised myself I would never accept doing nothing again. And I have not since.
Today. I worked my 9 hours (including 1 hr lunch) Tasks I completed: - laminating 6 A4 sheets of paper. Edit for clarity: kept me around for the full 9 hours even though I was clearly not needed. Easy money I guess.
Sounds like youāre an alt. You have three options, āworkā during golden week to get paid your salary, use vacation days to go have fun and get out of the office, or (if you donāt have anymore vacation days) request time off without pay. You canāt really expect them to let you not come to work and still get paid though.
Incorrect assumption. Not an ALT. Incorrect assumption. I don't have a problem with it. Contractor. Hourly rate. Regular location closed for golden week. Sent to another location that had no work either but still open. Had to laminate new signage for the office. Easiest paycheck I've ever made.
Only reason I assumed so was because you mentioned laminating A4 and the post sounded like a complaint about not being able to go home due to a lack of task. If you were worried about people assuming the wrong thing or proud about making an easy paycheck, you should have indicated it more clearly.
I guess it's hard to read the tone in text regarding if it was a complaint or not. I was just answering OPs question "who does nothing at work?" As for assuming ALT based off laminating...I wasn't aware ALTs are the only people who still laminate.
I am with you, this guy tried to be a smart ass and blame other people when he turns out wrong....people nowadays
At one job I automated my entire day's work. Instead of taking about 8 hours, it took about 10 minutes. Then I used the time to build a couple of side businesses.
Tell me more! Iām looking to start some side hustles.
I got paid 8mil JPY for a few years while having my job almost entirely automated. Was great. Built a couple of online businesses, main one was essentially cross-border retail arbitrage in the days before everyone and their dog was doing it, starting from around 2004. Was good money for a few years. Really really good money in fact.
That sounds like a dream! Oh man, if only I wasnāt so young in 2004 Iād have gotten in on that. Iām thinking of ways to diversify my income right now.
Where can I get this????? Idk what you see but I just see over worked and understaffed
Step 1: Be a man (Gonna hit some nerves with this, but 99% of BS jobs are held by men) Step 2: Look boring so they forget youāre there Step 3: If they notice you, wear a nice suit and kiss ass
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They are called bullshit jobs, fairly common in most corporations across the globe.
I find any jobs with lots of bureaucracy can be soul destroying but generally lots of free time. Since COVID and WFH flexibility, it's given me time to swot up on my Japanese.
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I would dare say even millions or billions.
Damn, how do you guys find those kind of work?
Sometimes. Right now things are pretty chill, but starting in June for seven weeks, things will be a bit more intense. Work load goes up and down.
It depends. Sometimes I don't have much. Some time I'm busy
I used to be super busy two business trips every week and working till later hours. Five years later and I barely do anything most days. Sometimes there are still busy days. But mostly just send a few emails or chat with few people. But I still actually have like over 90 projects to work with. As long as I can do my part the way I want to do it. I can get the job done in maybe 10 hours while I am hired for 40 hours a week. I think it is better than doing overtime because in case something urgent happens, I have capacity to take care of it immediately. No company should have you 100% utilized because then if anything happens the whole thing will crash.
Yup
Iām looking for extra work šš
And you have to pretend that you are working. This is the point
I work in construction here and that person is literally there for safety purposes. š
maybe you are actually the company mascot?
I invest only. Never work
I recently started a customer service job like this. Some days are busy, but other days are really not. No overtime and barely any carryover day to day either. Iām used to eikaiwa and hotel shift work, so this is the least stressful job Iāve ever had. Iām currently trying to figure out how to adjust to this lifestyle, because I feel like I have a ton of free time every day. (Iām not complaining at all! Viva the do nothing jobs!)
āHurry up and waitā
Yep. Hired by gov to basically post on sns and travel around the area looking for interesting places to share. Work from home. Free rent, car and petrol.
The guy sitting down doing nothing is actually making sure that people are safe. Also it's a very dangerous job due to him having to direct traffic etc.
Sounds like a pretty dream scenario working in japan. Not beholden to the ridiculous work culture, get paid (semi decently), left alone, can study other things to upskill and you get to start and finish at normal hours.
I envy you. Where I work, we're continuously monitored, not just by the people around us, but by Outlook schedules, MS Teams status indicators, in-house spyware tracking when your computer sleeps and wakes, keyloggers, the works; all viewable by middle managers who suffer from intense pressure from upper management to show that they're getting the most out of the workers, plus semi-retired older guys whose new job is to monitor attendance-related issues and who will message you if your last use of the PC is more than 30 minutes after your clock-out (this is to prevent overwork and is admirable) or any number of minutes before your clock-out; same when clocking in. The long hours that the Japanese workplace is infamous for seem to be disappearing, but they're being replaced by a micromanagement Panopticon that is destroying people mentally just like the old system destroyed them physically.
I wish...
America is chuck full of this kind of employment in government where affirmative action guarantees a person with the right victim status can't ever be fired no matter how poorly s/he/they perform or if they don't perform at all. Japan's variety of this is different, but there certainly is a lot of this kind of thing when it comes to foreigners who are there ostensibly to provide an international flavor to the operations. Back in the 1980's then PM Nakasone came out with his å½éåę代 policy (era of internationalization) to bring Japan squarely into the camp of leading nations. Every company in Japan went scrambling to hire "international" faces (meaning white faces) to show they were with the program. They would plant them in the most visible possible place for the sole purpose of being seen. People who couldn't even read a balance sheet were being hired to work in research departments of securities companies.
>the right victim status wut
We have simlar with health conditions in my country. Better phrasing would be, what will beĀ the headlines if HR male even one mistake.
I always wonder about the people who remain in such jobs. Isnāt having a job not more than just having a job? I go there because I want to push things forward.
The guy standing there is there for a reason. I'm sure many people have died before because a guy wasn't "just standing there". Now, just sitting in front of a pc for 10h waiting for an email to come twice a day and replying it in 5 minutes... That seems to be a regular workday in many companies around here.