In Japan, It's a Riveting TV Plot: Can a Worker Go Home On Time? (independent.co.uk) 170
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Last month, as Americans tuned in to the final episode of "Game of Thrones," Japan was indulging in its own television fantasy world. In this one, a woman dares to leave work at 6 p.m. sharp. The determination of Yui Higashiyama, a 30-something project manager who wants nothing more than to get out of the office and into her favorite bar for happy hour, rocks the fictional web design firm where she works. A conniving supervisor and overachieving co-workers try to foil her plans. When her team faces a seemingly impossible deadline in Episode 9, she puts aside her steely commitment to work-life balance, dramatically declaring, "I will work overtime!" Ms. Higashiyama is the protagonist of "I Will Not Work Overtime, Period!" -- a modest television hit in Japan that has struck a chord in a country with a dangerously intense, at times deadly, national work ethic (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source).
It has prompted workers to talk about their own difficulties in finding work-life balance, even as Japan's major corporations and government officials have increasingly encouraged them to ease off. In April, just in time for the debut of the TV show, a new law took effect limiting overtime to no more than 45 hours a month and 360 hours per year, barring special circumstances. And Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has promoted a program it calls Premium Fridays, asking employers to let employees leave a few hours early on the last Friday of every month. On the show, the enlightened chief executive at Ms. Higashiyama's company encourages workers to leave the office on time. What holds her co-workers back are employees and supervisors who simply cannot stop themselves -- a feeling familiar to fans of the show.
It has prompted workers to talk about their own difficulties in finding work-life balance, even as Japan's major corporations and government officials have increasingly encouraged them to ease off. In April, just in time for the debut of the TV show, a new law took effect limiting overtime to no more than 45 hours a month and 360 hours per year, barring special circumstances. And Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has promoted a program it calls Premium Fridays, asking employers to let employees leave a few hours early on the last Friday of every month. On the show, the enlightened chief executive at Ms. Higashiyama's company encourages workers to leave the office on time. What holds her co-workers back are employees and supervisors who simply cannot stop themselves -- a feeling familiar to fans of the show.
Go look up some YouTube Videos (Score:5, Funny)
We're slaves, all of us. Like sharks that die if they stop swimming the complete lack of a safety net or worker's rights in nearly all countries means if you stop for an instant somebody else takes your slot and you lose everything. And you're never, ever paid enough to build up a nest egg to be safe with.
Meanwhile in America the ex CEO of StarBucks, who's publically said he'll run a spoiler candidate if a progressive in favor of single payer healthcare or even a moderate like Liz Warren gets the Democratic presidential nomination, took a 3 month vacation to rest his back.
Now get back to work peons. It's good for you. Builds character. And besides, what would empty shells like you do if you didn't work all the time anyway, right? Idle hands are the devil's plaything.
Starbucks Guy is out. (Score:4, Interesting)
Meanwhile in America the ex CEO of StarBucks, who's publically said he'll run a spoiler candidate
Starbucks dude was beat up hard by the left, backed out of choice to run. Too bad, I'd have voted for him.
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Too bad, I'd have voted for him.
Why? You got Biden...
And furthermore, democrat sheepdogs are not "left". They are democrats. And like republicans, they make money for their friends. Everybody's happy.
Biden? He's long gone (Score:2)
Why? You got Biden...
Creepy Joe Biden has a zero percent chance of being the Democratic nominee at this point. If Yang gets it I'd consider but it's unlikely, most likely candidate is Warren.
You'll see after the debates.
Everybody's happy.
Well someone's not paying attention to the Zeitgeist now, are they!
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Creepy Joe Biden has a zero percent chance of being the Democratic nominee at this point.
I know, right? He would do so much better if he ran as a republican!
But don't be surprised if the DNC puts him on the ballot anyway.
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Creepy Joe Biden has a zero percent chance of being the Democratic nominee at this point.
I know, right? He would do so much better if he ran as a republican!
But don't be surprised if the DNC puts him on the ballot anyway.
Exactly. It's pretty amusing that the attack dogs are using 1990 style sexual purity tactics.
Sorry Republicans, you have set the bar so low that Bill Cosby meets the sexual purity litmus test now. So get out there, and grab them by the pussy!
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I know, right? He would do so much better if he ran as a republican!
Have you notice anything about #metoo? All of the offenders are prominent lefties, from DC to Hollywood. That's because there's been a multi-generational culture of abusing women among powerful people on the left, right up to the president molesting interns. There has been deep-seated spirit of "we can get away with anything as long as they need us to keep abortion legal" for most of Biden's career. It's very much a Democrat thing, sadly.
All the Democrats need to do to beat Trump in 2020 is find a candi
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I know, right? He would do so much better if he ran as a republican!
[AUTOMATICALLY TRANSLATED]I am an idiot[/AUTOMATICALLY TRANSLATED]
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Creepy Joe Biden has a zero percent chance of being the Democratic nominee at this point.
I know, right? He would do so much better if he ran as a republican!
But don't be surprised if the DNC puts him on the ballot anyway.
For all those geniuses who think that the Dems have gone so far left that Biden is now a Republican, on the other side, the GOP too has moved way right that guys like McCain, Kasich, Collins, Murkowski no longer have a real home in the party. Any traditional Republican has little chance of winning a GOP nomination in a post Trump world, and the only way Mike Pence would get it is if he successfully managed to convince voters that he's a KAG guy as opposed to a traditional Christian conservative
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After Walter Mondale's campaign promise to raise taxes torpedoed his campaign, I don't think Warren's campaign promise to do exactly the same thing is going to be any more successful.
Re:Starbucks Guy is out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even so, he would be better then a lying egomaniac who sucks up to dictators and betrays his country.
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Yeah, that's what I want: a political leader who can't stand up to criticism and folds.
Totally agree, wouldn't vote for him after that caving in.
Even so, he would be better then a lying egomaniac who sucks up to dictators and betrays his country.
Obama is not running as much as many would wish that were ether case.
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Do you keep your Klan robe in a drawer when it will not be so obvious or hanging in a closet where it will not be so wrinkled?
Oh, he's just a troll. At least I hope so, because as a troll, he's amusing. A person holding those actual views would be more sad than funny.
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Starbucks dude was beat up hard by the left, backed out of choice to run. Too bad, I'd have voted for him.
Just what we need- another disconnected billionaire playing at politics to inflate his ego.
You would happily elect a dictator if he had a cool logo and spouted bullshit lines that satisfied your need for an authoritarian daddy-figure.
He said as long as Biden gets the nomination (Score:2)
He also just told a room full of billionaires that nothing will change [salon.com] with him as president. Meaning he won't undo Trump's disastrous tax cuts (if you don't know, putting that much money in the hands of the 1% is making a mess of the economy and will lead to over inflation and eventually a massive 2008 style crash).
OTOH Shultz has kept his threat of running a
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Jesus christ, travel a little.
Re:Go look up some YouTube Videos (Score:5, Interesting)
Overtime in Japan is very different from overtime in America.
In America, it is used to squeeze extra work out of people. At some level, it makes sense.
In Japan, it is completely pointless. There is often no work to be done. But it is a social faux pas to leave the office before your boss. So people surf social media, or watch tentacle porn to kill time, while their dinner is getting cold, and the spouse is putting kids to bed.
Meanwhile, the boss, who wants to go home to his own family, doesn't want to stay either. But he is afraid to lose face by letting his employees see him leave early. So he sits in his office and watches tentacle porn as well, wishing he was home.
I lived in Japan for a few years, and it is weird. The pressure to conform and "follow the rules", even when it is pointless and counterproductive, is something Americans can't even comprehend.
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The pressure to conform and "follow the rules", even when it is pointless and counterproductive, is something Americans can't even comprehend.
Buwhaha. That's priceless. It's the exact same in the states, it's just that "the rules" are different.
Re:Go look up some YouTube Videos (Score:5, Interesting)
Buwhaha. That's priceless. It's the exact same in the states, it's just that "the rules" are different.
No, it really isn't.
There is pressure to conform in America, by people that BENEFIT from the conformity. This is driven by good ole' American GREED. You may not benefit from following the rule, but someone does.
Japan is different. There is pressure to conform even when NO ONE benefits. Even when everyone knows that no one benefits. Even when everyone knows that everyone knows that no one benefits. Even when the people in charge hate the rules as much as the followers, they still feel pressure to conform to an unwritten rule that "everyone stays late for no reason", even when there is no actual rule and no one to enforce it, other than group disapproval from people that see the rule as pointless themselves.
Re:Go look up some YouTube Videos (Score:4, Interesting)
It's interesting how much people are pushing to change that, but how slowly the changing is happening. The government wants it to change, artists are pushing for it to change from TV shows like this to the most recent Godzilla movie. Everyone basically agrees that it should change, but actually changing is extremely difficult.
Re:Go look up some YouTube Videos (Score:5, Interesting)
It's interesting how much you can learn about a culture by what TV shows are popular. A TV show about a person trying to avoid overtime wouldn't go over nearly as well in the US or Europe, for example. I mean, it was a subplot to Office Space, but that was more about blowing off work altogether. ;)
In Iceland by contrast, I'd pick as an example from a while back, the "Næturvaktin" (Night Shift) / "Dagvaktin" (Day Shift) / "Fangavaktin" (Prison Shift) series' and their associated movie, Bjarnfreðarson. A sort of Icelandic version of The Office, the plots revolve around a power-hungry marxist gas station manager with delusions of grandeur, and his two underlings that are much better people than he is. The lead actor ended up being elected mayor of Reykjavík**. ;) And the movie outsold Avatar here.
** Wherein he made a habit of meeting foreign dignitaries and celebrities dressed as a jedi and had his official mayoral photo at one point him working at his desk while dressed as a member of Pussy Riot ;) He campaigned on a platform of open corruption - not that his administration wouldn't be corrupt, but they they wouldn't try to hide it like others do - and on breaking his campaign promises (e.g. everyone else will too, but they won't be upfront about it!). It was brilliant because whenever there was a campaign promise unfilled (for example, getting a polar bear for the local petting zoo), people just responded, "Yeah, but he said he was going to break his promises!"
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a power-hungry marxist gas station manager with delusions of grandeur
I want to see this.
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Japan has a 1% too (Score:2)
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That's priceless. It's the exact same in the states, it's just that "the rules" are different.
Trust me when I say it's not the same at all.
It's woven into their social structure like wiping your butt after taking a crap is over here. Everyone does it; no one dares not to, and if you don't then you're a pariah.
Re:Go look up some YouTube Videos (Score:5, Insightful)
I always felt I failed at effective professional time management, if I did not complete the work I set out for myself at the end of the work day and set up the next days work, on time. Come the tick of the clock and I was ready to leave and mostly did. I only worked late due to poor time management of others or miscalculation of a good project break moment, so as not to waste time the next day getting up to speed on a partially complete element.
The minutes before knock off, usually reserved for time management tidying, checking diary, minutes, meetings for the next day, and required information for those meetings. I always considered working back late to be very poor time management.
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So you had a job that was either trivial to time plan (data entry?) or you just choose an easy goal. Am I supposed to be impressed by that?
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The pressure to conform and "follow the rules", even when it is pointless and counterproductive, is something Americans can't even comprehend.
No, it's something Americans do without even realising.
Americans follow these rules even when knowing it is pointless and counterproductive:
- follow the party line in these issues - abortion, gun control, immigration, tariffs
- forcing companies to meet diversity quota instead of merit-based
- send their soldiers to fight pointless wars overseas
- keep voting politicians they knew were lying
- voting for policies that benefits the rich at their own expenses
- sending hordes of their own citizen into jail even th
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No, it's something Americans do without even realising.
Oh, we realize it alright. It's just that there's not much a person can do about it. This nation is far from being free. If you want to survive, you have to pick a team to back you up. And here, the parties have made sure that there are only the two*. Study some gaming theory to see how screwed both the democrats and Republicans would be if a third (fourth, etc.) party ever gained even a significant minority in Congress.
*Independents and other options don't really count, as they don't have real party leade
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Heck, you don't even need game theory - just look at the early history of the U.S. when new parties several times rose to power and either replaced or were absorbed by the prexisting ones.
What you do need game theory for is to understand why the two party system is an inevitable result of our single vote, winner take all election system - it's the only mathematically stable solution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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why the two party system is an inevitable result of our single vote, winner take all election system
Not in most of the rest of the world. Three or four parties are not uncommon. As are coalition governments.
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And how many of those countries have a winner-take-all / first-past-the-post elections? Usually countries that maintain multiple parties have party voting - you vote for the party, and then the party gets a number of seats proportional to the fraction of the vote they got. Or ranked voting, or some other system designed to make sure the election results at least somewhat reflect the desires of the population.
In a winner-takes-all system 30% of the population can support party A, 30% party B, and all the s
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Overtime in Japan is very different from overtime in America.
In America, it is used to squeeze extra work out of people. At some level, it makes sense.
In Japan, it is completely pointless. There is often no work to be done
Is that supposed to be stressful? There have been some times when I had to be in the office, but had to wait for someone else to complete their task. It could be a little annoying, but hardly stressful. but I'd either catch up on some paperwork, or hang out on the internet.
Funny from a nation that took a huge and difficult effort to defeat in WW2,
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There have been some times when I had to be in the office, but had to wait for someone else to complete their task.
Reminds me of my days at Boeing. Our engineering group was behind schedule because a vendor han't delivered their software for our review. Our Christmas break was coming up (Boeing gives the week between Xmas and New Years off as a holiday). But management said that we had to come in and 'work'. The engineering v/p would be walking through the facility to check up on attendance. So we came in. You can't tell management anything there, so you just bow and back out of their office respectfully when a decree i
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Everyone was there, but visibly 'screwing to pooch' so to speak. Reading newspapers, playing cards or otherwise goofing off when the execs walked through. After the holiday, we got a congratulatory memo, thanking us for our 'extra effort' on the project.
We used to call that the "Work it might, but look good we must" effect. I remember some project tests that were simply going to fail, but the sponsor said there must be a test that day. So we tested, and we failed. But for some odd reason, they were happy.
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>Is that supposed to be stressful? There have been some times when I had to be in the office, but had to wait for someone else to complete their task.
Now do that for several hours at the end of every day, six days a week, for years on end. Maybe you can kill time pleasantly enough at work, but that time is still wasted time that you can't spend taking care of all the other things in your life that need attention. Which means when you go home late every night, you still need to take care of all that oth
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>Is that supposed to be stressful? There have been some times when I had to be in the office, but had to wait for someone else to complete their task.
Now do that for several hours at the end of every day, six days a week, for years on end. Maybe you can kill time pleasantly enough at work, but that time is still wasted time that you can't spend taking care of all the other things in your life that need attention. Which means when you go home late every night, you still need to take care of all that other stuff before you can really relax and do things you enjoy, or leave it undone, with the downward spiral that puts your life in.
THAT is stressful.
I guess I'm just not a very stressy person.
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Or you're just really bad at imagining how you would actually react to having very little personal time for years on end, with no real hope of there ever being an end to the situation.
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Or you're just really bad at imagining how you would actually react to having very little personal time for years on end, with no real hope of there ever being an end to the situation.
Oh hell man - you must not have followed my self reported history here on slashdot. I've reaped reams of hatred because I was willing to put in a lot of extra time, and lots of late nights and early mornings, sometimes to the point where I had my wife bring in a change of clothing because I was continually at work for a few days.
And I did all this while raising a family, and wasn't a neglectful father either. Now I did sort of have an "end", as I retired at 55. But they liked me enough to hire me back o
Re:Go look up some YouTube Videos (Score:5, Interesting)
I lived in Japan for a few years, and it is weird. The pressure to conform and "follow the rules", even when it is pointless and counterproductive, is something Americans can't even comprehend.
True. I had a buddy that taught English in Japan for several years, and socially he was considered almost radioactive because he laughed at the pressure to work overtime. He just wouldn't do it.
It actually benefited him (sort of) because his "contrariness" was shocking and so, so counter to the prevailing norms. He would get invited to parties because was like a unicorn- weird and magical and he might as well have been from another planet.
He would never, ever make inroads socially of course, but he still got invited to everything because he was "the barbarian who wouldn't stay late at the office".
People would see him at a party and talk with him just so they could go back to work the next day and tell everyone else that they'd had met him, as if they'd met a movie star or something. His students would brag about how their teacher was "the one who wouldn't stay late", like a badge of honor. Like being taught by Einstein or a movie star. lol
So yeah, the social pressure there to work overtime is immense, and most Americans really don't understand it.
Yes and no (Score:2)
And it's not unusual for folks in Sales to do long hours for real. If you've never worked in a car lot pounding the pavement for sales you'd be forgiven for not understanding just how hard it is. You don't get a lot of downtime because landing a big sale requires const
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Tentacle porn is more or less a non-existent category of stuff. The original one was Legend of the Overfiend from 1987, based on a horror manga, and you'd watch 4 hours of Overfiend for basically the 30 second tentacles scene. The other often cited one with a tentacle scene is La Blue Girl, which I never saw, but that was made by the same dude that made Overfiend.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pm... [tvtropes.org]
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Also point being, Japanese "hentai" is a lot more well known among western nerds than it is among Japanese nerds. For example, I was comparing sales charts on the nytimes vs Japan, and slutty mangas such as Monster Girls and Highschool DxD often hit #1 on nytimes weekly best-sellers charts yet don't even get into the top 50 weekly manga in Japan. It's actually the western obsession with this stuff that causes fairly obscure smut from Japan to become well known to global audiences on the internet while most
Re:Go look up some YouTube Videos (Score:4, Insightful)
They're often homeless, living out of internet cafes and the like
Note that if you see someone living in an internet cafe, that is a person that just makes bad decisions. Because internet cafes are not cost effective or comfortable places to spend the night. There are cheaper, more comfortable solutions, even in Tokyo.
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Are you sure? Last time I went to Tokyo (granted it's over 3 years ago), you can stay 8 hours at a cybercafe for under 2000yen at night (day time price is more expensive). For that price, you get access to a shower room, all the drinks you want, sometimes even snacks, PC, wifi and places to charge your stuff. Whereas a dorm room in hostel / capsule hotel runs 2500-3500 yen per night, and don't have most of these amenities.
Sure, you don't get a proper bed, but if I have a limited budget, the cybercafe seems
Re: Go look up some YouTube Videos (Score:2)
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Internet cafes are popular because although a little more expensive than capsule hotels they offer a lot more. A computer, books, food and drinks, as well as showers and other facilities often found in a hotel. Plus you get more space than a capsule hotel, although less privacy.
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Internet cafes are popular because although a little more expensive than capsule hotels they offer a lot more. A computer, books, food and drinks, as well as showers and other facilities
What are you talking about? What capsule hotel have you heard of that doesn't offer showers?
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No, I mean that the internet cafes offer shows, something you might not necessarily expect but which is essential for use as a pseudo-hotel.
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Showers are a standard feature at hostels or capsule hotels.
Re: Go look up some YouTube Videos (Score:2)
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even a moderate like Liz Warren gets the Democratic presidential nomination,
Yeah, she's only the 4th most liberal [businessinsider.com] out of the 20 democratic candidates. Granted she's not as liberal as Sanders, but she's by no means a "moderate" democrat. That doesn't make her a moderate unless you're now saying the watermark for the democratic party should be Sanders. If you take him out of the running then she's VERY liberal compared to most of her opponents.
Always two sides to a coin.. (Score:1)
There's another perspective on this as well. Not working is boring. There are only so many movies, parties, tv shows and video games you can entertain yourself with before you feel like you need to accomplish something. As a society we need balance. Work to keep things interesting, but not to the point where you disregard your family, personal interests or have a heart attack. Some countries lean too far in one or another direction and lack balance.
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Just about everything you said is spot-on, and some people will crap their pants because they don't want to hear it. They still believe in the "work hard and you will rise to the top!" fallacy. (It may be true in rare cases, but mostly it's just a bullshit idea spread to keep the worker bees toiling away.)
I say, "Fuck overtime." That's not the purpose of my life. As I've said before, my goal is to work as little as I can while making as much as I can.
If someone is working on a cancer cure and wants to put i
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In addition, a lot of overtime is just not productive time. Or it leads to unproductive time the next day. Like you I am trying to work as little as I can. But what I find while doing that is that the quality of my work is vastly higher than it was, and my productivity is the same or even better.
Good planning and careful, thoughtful work with a well-rested brain can be much more productive than unplanned, rushed work when you're already fatigued. I spend almost no time undoing stuff and redoing things at th
Re:Go look up some YouTube Videos (Score:5, Insightful)
I am pretty sure that people who actually are slaves, or were slaves at one time, have other things to do instead of being offended by some random person on the internet and unless you have actually been select by them to speak for them, maybe you should avoid making an impression of being some kind of a delegate.
Re:Go look up some YouTube Videos (Score:4, Interesting)
Fun activity:
Look into ancient countries that actually made flagrant use of slavery; You might find that your preconceptions are not represented.
Here, I'll get you started. [semanticscholar.org]
Modern wage slavery is actually *LESS* upwardly mobile than the flagrant slavery of the Roman empire, for example.
But by all means, continue your sterile monologues.
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The Romans used the idea of a meritocracy to motivate the slaves not to rebel or fight the system. And to be fair it was actually possible to climb that ladder by working hard, although for the people at the bottom that often meant doing extremely risky and unpleasant jobs like being a solider. Of course, your starting "merit" largely depended on who your father was.
Less extreme forms of it exist today, especially in capitalist societies that like to pretend they are meritocracies.
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Modern wage slavery is actually *LESS* upwardly mobile than the flagrant slavery of the Roman empire, for example.
What nonsense. Financial independence is simply a matter of saving, unless you're in the bottom quintile (and even then it's often possible, but really hard). Most people choose different priorities.
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Did you know that I make over $100,000 a year but am included in those "Americans that struggle with hunger"? Yup - the number is such bullshit that someone that is actually FAT and RICH can be included.
How, you may ask? Well, it's simple. The questions in their survey (which called my one year) a terrible. "Have you ever wanted to eat but been unable to?" Well, yes. I was hungry at work because I forgot my lunch. "Have you ever gone more than 12 hours without eating when you wanted to eat?" Oh, yea
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I wouldn't mind if 1) I get rich and/or happy enough to my liking in the process (and I'm quite modest in that regard) and 2) enough other people get rich and/or happy due to me doing the work. Especially people I prefer to get rich and/or happy as well.
Plus, if more people get rich and/or happy there will be less people doing stupid things because they are too poor and/or unhappy.to see an other way.
What I won't like is a leech on my back a.k.a. one 'person' profiting from my work and getting rich and happ
Overtime... Just say no, please? (Score:3, Funny)
It's something everybody can do, without having to be told by a "leader". In fact you gotta tell it to the leader.
Re: Overtime... Just say no, please? (Score:1)
My wife would kill me if I worked too late and didn't get home in time to to strip and buff the floor.
Re:Overtime... Just say no, please? (Score:5, Insightful)
The complete insanity is that only clueless morons think that overtime increases productivity of a worker (except for very short periods, like a week or so). Above 40 h/week for manual labor and above 30h/week for mental work, productivity stalls and eventually _decreases_. This has been known for about a century or so.
Now, many employers use overtime as a means of degrading and disciplining their workers. Basically power-fantasies and sadism. But the insanity is that many workers are clueless about what is going in and actually believe overtime makes them more valuable. Not so. Not so at all.
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Basically power-fantasies and sadism.
Yeah, middle management is a fiefdom, but upstairs it's about the money.
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I think the point is that most managers would prefer hiring less workers to do the job, even if it translates into worse overall performance per hour. Hell, even if it translates into negative performance after a certain point on average, as long as they're not required to pay overtime they're usually more than happy. When it comes to actually paying
If it's free who cares (Score:2)
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It is still excessively stupid: Your worker's overall productivity may drop, harming your business. As this drop is by a decrease in work quality, it will also affect things like the restaurant industry. You workers will be sick more and the better ones are much more likely to leave, harming your business.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Overtime... Just say no, please? (Score:4, Interesting)
My old boss liked to get everyone out at 17:00 so he could lock up. It actually discouraged people from doing overtime just to get stuff finished because it meant he would have to hang around too. So people were realistic about timescales and didn't get too upset if things slipped. Deadlines were set realistically and crunch times were avoided.
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Unpaid overtime in the US is illegal. If you aren't getting paid for it and you are a wage worker than you need to gather evidence and report it to the authorities. If you are salaried and find yourself in constant overtime then you need to switch jobs. Salary pay is when you job performance is not measured in time but in results. You should ideally be working less than 40 hours a week to achieve those goals. If you work more then get better at negotiating.
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There are three ways to look at overtime:
The US one, where you do overtime, because your boss tells you to. If you don't, you will get fired or do not get a promotion. Can often be unpaid.
The Japanese one, where you do overtime, because society tells you to. If you don't, you will loose face or not get a propmotion. Compare losing face to burning a flag in the US. It s unpaid.
The European one, where you do overtime, because your boss asks you to. If you don't, not much will happen. It is paid. Can be done by getting time of at other moments.
I'm gonna have to stop you here. The European style of overtime is "because we've got work that needs to be delivered or cant be done in hours" and you will get rewarded for it (sometimes monetary, sometime you get time off in lieu). Companies that expect American style, "because boss tells you to" end up wondering why all the good employees are leaving. That being said, Europe is a very diverse place, the UK work ethic differs from the French, who differ from the Germans, the Scandinavians are right out th
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What actually happens in practice also depends on the industry, line of business and the specific comapny and its culture of course. Mom & pop is way different from corporate, IT vs finance, sales vs HR and so on.
I work at a well known software company here (not as a developer though) and have been asked to stay over maybe only once. In many cases however it's understood implicitly that nobody's leaving until a task is completed. On the other hand nobody cares if you get out after lunch on Friday or run
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tl;dr - "YUROP IS GREAT!"
Captcha is "nonsense." How fitting.
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You missed a 2nd one for US workers, particularly IT.
Contract workers...you get paid for EVERY hour you work.
Unfortunately the Feds decades back, fixed things so that you don't usually get 1.5 or 2x time, but you still can get at least straight time for any hours you work, unless you can negotiate better terms.
IN the
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That's where teh idea of a "third space" comes in. It's not home and not work. Could be a bar, a gym, etc.
My dad had an enlightened CO in the 70s (Score:3, Interesting)
His immediate supervisor in the US Army was demanding huge amounts of overtime from everyone in the office. The base commander heard about this, stepped in, and pointed out to my dad's boss that if that much overtime was required, than obviously my dad's boss was doing something wrong.
The ridiculous overtime stopped and my dad's immediate supervisor was reassigned.
Not everyone is insane.
Office Space as a reality show? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bill Lumbergh: Hello Peter what's happening.I'm gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomorrow. So if you could be here at around....9 that'd be great
"Overtime" (pay) doesn't apply to most salaried workers in the US. "Comp time" and "Flex time" are pretty much useless, because actually using either of them seems to annoy managers.
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Exempt status is meant to be applied to high-end jobs
We went through this at a company I use to work for. When they tried to weasel out of paying overtime based upon the FSLA 'professional' employee exemption, someone pointed out the definition of professional. One who is self directed and who's work cannot be quantified in terms of its time to accomplish. So, you don't want to pay overtime? Then get out of my face and stop telling me how to do my job and when you want it done.
Consider in the games industry
Sadly, the software business carved out an exemption specific to themselves. You ca
My life in the 90s Japan (Score:5, Interesting)
I was hired straight out of University to go work for Mitsubishi Electric in Japan. Hereâ(TM)s a big shout out to the Melco Alumni out there! You know who you are! Anyway, one of the reasons Mitsubishi did this was to internationalize their workforce and try to introduce some foreign concepts. One of these was going home at 5pm. We were paid overtime every month, I think it was 20 hours or so, but we were told not to do it. So it was essentially free money. As it happened for 2 nights in the work week I was always heading off to Umeda, Osaka to take language classes at the YWCA so I was out of there by 5 anyway.
Did it help? I donâ(TM)t think so. The team would still stick around until late. The company campus was about 10K people and they had plenty of cafes and food places open for dinner on site so you could stay there easy. Add to the fact that any single guys were living in a dorm anyway and it wasnâ(TM)t so bad to hang out with the guys at work. Indeed, the bosses would often come in on the weekend to smoke and chat with each other rather than stay at hone in a cramped apartment.
Staying late was so common that when the big earthquake struck the Kansai region in 1995 at something like 4 in the morning there were a couple of guys in the lab when it happened!
The other thing we had to do was show the Japanese staff how to take vacation. You earned it and it accrued and some people had months of time racked up and never used. The problem was that sick days were also âoevacationâ so one year I took all my vacation and then got sick at the end of the year. They made me work Saturdays to make up for the time I took off. You wouldnâ(TM)t believe the look on the adminâ(TM)s face when I returned after I took the days off.
My boss actually told me that the smart way to take time off without having to take time off was to come in to the office, sign in and then go to the company hospital. Yes, they had a full hospital with X-ray machines and everything. Then the company doctor would send me home but Iâ(TM)d be credited with the day and it wouldnâ(TM)t be a holiday. Oh well, you live and learn.
It was great fun looking back. Wearing the uniform, doing the radio exercises, breaking g in the workplace smoke. I got fluent at Japanese I a way that surpassed language. According to a taxi driver I once had, I sigh like a Japanese person. I think itâ(TM)s from the years of working as a salaryman in 90â(TM)s Japan.
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Very interesting story. :-)
And you know what, I had a very similar experience!
I worked for Toshiba in their medical division, Nasu Koujou, in Tochigi-ken.
It was also my first job right after university and the best about it is that I'm able to think back, as I moved on.
Since then Toshiba sold the division to Canon.
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Telling them to ease off (Score:3)
I need to get permission before working overtime.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Where I work, we need to get permission from a superior before working overtime. It's expensive for the company (overtime without extra pay is illegal), there are strict limits on how much overtime you can legally do (potentially making you unavailable for when you're _really_ needed), and it's not good for the employees.
Turns out, it isn't really needed. We've doubled our revenue every couple of years for the company's existence, while remaining a happy and unstressed bunch.
at an old job... (Score:4, Interesting)
Overtime was possible but you needed permission from the project manager to do it. There was an unwritten cultural rule of 'hanging back' at first on a project so that overtime was 'needed' to close it out by the deadline. This was great because it paid more but worse overall. I would have far preferred to be paid more in the first place (so the overall pay roughly evened out) and have the culture of going home when the work is done (or when you are starting to make mistakes), which was the culture of the place I was at before that.
Hire foreigners (Score:2)
Japan has serious demographic problems. They should be pushing hard for immigration. As an added bonus, this can help normalize Japanese work behavior to bring it closer to other liberal democracies by bringing in people who have no qualms about having a life outside work.
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Japan has serious demographic problems. They should be pushing hard for immigration. As an added bonus, this can help normalize Japanese work behavior to bring it closer to other liberal democracies by bringing in people who have no qualms about having a life outside work.
So that they can then be lectured in their own country for having 'Japanese privilege' by colleges? No thanks.
Re: Hire foreigners (Score:2)
You say "work ethic" like it's a good thing. You have a slave mentality.
It points out Japan's fatal problem (Score:1, Troll)
It's not just Japan (Score:1)
I worked for several years at a large computer company in the USA. My team was dependent on other teams to produce news software builds each week. The builds kept getting delivered later and later in the week. One Friday we waited all afternoon for the new build. It finally arrived around 5 pm as I and others were preparing to leave for the weekend. My team leader ordered everyone to stay, install the new build, and start automated tests. This would take several hours to do, and since those of us orde
Worked in Tokyo (Score:4, Insightful)
I was sent to Tokyo for a month by my employer for a specific project. We were expected by my employer to work 10h days, 6 days a week since it was so expansive to be there.
The Japanese employees were there before us and still in when we left. The only one that could talk English explained that it was so expensive to rent in Tokyo that they all live pretty far, so they do not go home during the week. The company pays for travel expenses so it prefers if you go home only on Friday. Most had families a couple hours flight from Tokyo and only saw them on weekends. The net result was that they were at their desks for ever. The company also provided sleeping silos.
But they did not work all day. Actually they taught we were crazy going at it full speed for 10 hours.
The other phenomenon, Friday night was crazy! I have seen VP and CEO late at night pucking alcool behind bushes from crazy drinking. Seems that a lot embrace the âoework hard party hardâ motto. But comes Saturday morning, all is clean, you would not know it. Not everyone, but enough to notice.
Another thing I noticed is the lack of initiative in middle management. They would call their supervisor for any little detail, to be discussed to great lengths. Then he would call his boss, and so on. It happened on a Sunday once. We needed some tool and they called in 3 levels on management to let us use it. They all had to fly in for a meeting were we explained the need, with full procedure, expected results, mitigation plan, ...
I loved going there, but one month was enough. Long hours and complete dedication to the employer were a bit much for me. But then they do not fire the whole floor if their EBIT goes down 1%, or they make ÂÂonlyÂÂ 1.5 billion in profit, but err expected to have 1.6...
Incomprehensible culture difference (Score:2)
In the US the plot should be: "Can the employee retire at the predicted age and will he starve or not?"
USA #1, all the way, hey? (Score:2)
According to the ILO, “Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours per year than British workers, and 499 more hours per year than French workers.”
The U.S. is the Most Overworked Developed Nation in the World [20somethingfinance.com]
Your company is broken (Score:5, Interesting)
The place I just finished a 2-year contract at had a "core value", and it was basically this:
"If your people are routinely working overtime, then your company is broken."
And they paid attention to it- overtime was rare and people got comped if circumstances called for a sudden push or out-of-band hours were needed. Everything still got done on time.
So yeah: If your people are routinely working overtime, then your company is broken. Do whatever it takes to fix it.
6pm Happy hour? (Score:2)