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 they would just make it extra shitty. Nothing to do plus normal workplace rules: no sleeping, no private conversations or electronic devices, nothing not work related on the computer. Enjoy doing nothing nothing, where anything remotely resembling a mental escape is not allowed.
That sounds like a set of rules that could create, but in reality it’s actually hard for them to pull it off. If you violate some of the rules, like if you’re sitting in a room with nothing to do and then you pull out your phone and start texting, they could try to reprimand you and start the ball rolling on firing you. But then you get the union involved, and then you can gather evidence about the reasonableness of their effort to fire you. At some point it will go before a judge and the judge will ask your boss why they have to block you from having a cell phone if you were just sitting there doing nothing. When your boss can’t answer, then you will win your lawsuit.
In other words, companies that try this tactic have to be very careful about exactly how the implement it, because labor law has a surprisingly large number of protections.
Yeah, I was in a similar position earlier this year. I barely made it a month. It’s soul sucking, especially for someone like myself (I work in IT) who’s used to staying active and engaged with my job. Felt like just waiting for time to pass so I could drive home. The fact that they made me drive to an office just to do nothing was like adding insult to injury.
Says them. What are they going to do, fire me?
Yes. And because you are technically at fault, there will be no compensation.