Harassment by boss top reason for job leavers to turn to Tokyo quitting agency: survey

TOKYO — Harassment by superiors was the top reason for job leavers in Japan to turn to a job-quitting agency to resign on their behalf, a survey by the agency has found.

80% of users are in 20s, 30s

The job-quitting service “Momuri,” which means “enough already” in Japanese, is run by Tokyo-based Albatross Co., headed by CEO Shinji Tanimoto. The company surveyed 15,934 people who used the service between March 2022 and July 2024, and received responses from 15,744 of them.

Respondents were split about evenly between men and women, with some 60% in their 20s and another 20% in their 30s. Overall, their ages ranged from 15 to 71.

With multiple selections possible, reasons given for using the service included, “Some form of harassment by a superior,” chosen by 33.9% of respondents, followed by, “A superior stops me from quitting,” at 30.2%. Specific comments included, “My boss shouts at me during meetings,” “They’re intruding upon my personal life,” and, “I reached my limit and went to a job-quitting agency after trying to quit and being held back by my boss several times.”

The service industry drew the biggest group of service users, at 12.5% of the total, followed by manufacturing at 12.1%, health care at 9.1% and sales at 8.5%.

Within the health care field, many consultations came from nurses, reportedly over issues such as grueling night shifts and long working hours. One nurse reportedly recalled, “I felt physically and mentally at my limit, but couldn’t resign due to a shortage of staff at my workplace. By using a substitute service, I was finally able to quit.”

Twenty-two companies saw their employees use the service 20 or more times over the survey’s two-year, four-month span. All of these were companies with 1,000 or more full-time workers. Nine companies were job placement firms, including one whose workers used the service 64 times. A convenience store chain was the employer in another 41 applications.

A Momuri official analyzing the results commented, “The temporary staffing business is prone to problems due to the large number of people whom workers come in contact with, as their employer and the company where they work are different. In order to prevent a backlash from client companies, I’d also guess that cases where managers are coercing workers into staying are rampant.”

With legal supervision, Momuri’s services cost 22,000 yen ($155) for full-time and contract workers and 12,000 yen (approx. $84.50) for part-timers.

(Japanese original by Yuta Kumamoto, Digital News Group)