World Survey suggests about half of Japanese companies has an “old guy who does nothing”

tom_mai78101

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Well, nothing’s not going to just get done by itself.

As the old saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and when joining a new company people generally don’t want to be that weak link. On the other hand, after working at a place for an extended amount of time, some people find that sweet spot of doing just enough not to get fired, much to the chagrin of their harder working colleagues.

To learn more about how widespread this phenomenon was, consulting firm Shikigaku conducted a survey of 300 employees who each worked at companies with over 300 staff members and asked if they had an “old guy who doesn’t work.”

In this case they use the Japanese word “ojisan” which is generally a relative term that implies a certain age gap from the person speaking. Shikigaku polled workers between the ages of 20 and 39 which is a pretty wide breadth that might place the “old guys” in question anywhere from their 40s and up.

Back to the topic at hand, when asked “Is there an old guy who doesn’t work at your company?” 49.2 percent responded that there was.

Of these positive responses, the next logical question was: If they weren’t working, what were they doing?

Three prominent answers emerged and “taking many breaks for smoking and snacking” was the most common, acknowledged by 49.7 percent of responses. “Staring off into space” came in second with 47.7 percent, followed closely by 47.3 percent who reported “idle chatting” by their do-nothing co-workers. “Browsing the Internet” was a distant fourth with 35.3 percent.


Original survey article:

 

jonas

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I don't think this is a Japanese phenomenon.
 
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