Moshi Moshi, We Have Your Employee. He Quit

It’s 10:00 in the morning. Makoto-san should have been in the office an hour ago, but he is late.

He is never late.

For five years, every Monday morning, he’d clock in sharp at 9:00 a.m. and clock out at 8:00 p.m., after completing his almost ritualistic two hours of zangyō—overtime—for the day.

Five days a week, 48 weeks a year, this was the norm. It’s what everyone did.

But today was different.

The shrill ringing of the phone echoed through the office. Manager Toma hesitated for a moment before picking it up.

“Moshi moshi. We have your employee, Makoto-san.”

A pause.

“He quit.”

What just happened?

The Growing Clan of Taishoku Daikō 

Makoto-san has not been kidnapped.

There is no ransom demand.

In fact, Makoto-san paid the stranger who made the call.

The idea of taishoku daikō (退職代行)—resignation agencies in Japan—sounds almost like an oxymoron. Quitting is usually the point when you stop doing things for the company. And in Japan, you can even outsource it.

These are not mysterious men in black waiting outside office buildings. They have websites. Fees. Customer inquiries. Some are private companies, while others are linked to labor unions or law firms. Their job can be as simple as telling an employer that an employee has decided to resign.

One of them is Momuri.

Mō muri.

Roughly: “I can’t do this anymore.”

Someone clearly understood their customers.

After Golden Week in May 2024, Momuri reportedly received 174 requests in a single day. One hundred and seventy-four people returned after the long holiday and decided that somebody else should make that phone call for them.

Makoto-san is not being held anywhere.

He simply chose not to tell his manager himself.

Almost ghosting. Except someone was kind enough to call.

Manager Toma at least gets a phone call.

If Makoto-san had chosen a rather different service, Toma might still be staring at the empty desk.

The Clan That Prefers the Night

Japan has another word: yonigeya (夜逃げ屋).

“Night movers.”

These businesses are much more clandestine. A client may need to leave an abusive partner, escape a stalker, get away from a job, or simply disappear from a life they no longer feel able to remain in. A typical operation can involve planning the escape, moving possessions and taking the client somewhere their pursuer does not know about. One well-known operator, Yonigeya TSC, appears in the documentary Johatsu – Into Thin Air.

Sometimes the move happens exactly as the name suggests.

At night.

While the person who must not know is somewhere else.

One account describes a client slipping out while his partner was taking a bath, getting into a waiting car and disappearing into the night.

Something far more dramatic than Manager Toma receiving a phone call.

Fortunately for Toma, Makoto-san chose the daytime clan.

He knows Makoto-san has quit. He just doesn’t know why Makoto-san couldn’t tell him himself.

I wonder how Toma-san feels…

Why Not Just Say, “I Quit”?

Is it really that difficult?

According to Japan’s Civil Code, in case of an employment contract without a fixed term, an employee can give notice of resignation, and the employment generally ends two weeks later.

No ceremonial bow. No farewell party. No reminiscing. 

Just a written notice.

Yet a 2024 Mynavi survey of 800 people who had changed jobs during the previous year found that 16.6% had used a resignation agency. Among these, 40.7% said their employer had tried, or they believed would try, to stop them from resigning. Another 32.4% said they were not in an environment where they felt able to say they wanted to quit.

You can’t say that you want to quit. What would push anyone that far?

Why don’t we go back to Makoto-san’s desk.

Remember his two hours of zangyō? 

Overtime—something nobody in Makoto-san’s office called mandatory, but almost everyone seemed to do.

In Japan, overtime has a vocabulary of its own.

There is sābisu zangyō (サービス残業), literally “service overtime”—work done beyond normal hours without being paid for it.

There is mochikaeri zangyō (持ち帰り残業), when the work follows you home.

And then there is tsukiai zangyō (付き合い残業).

It is the overtime that happens because everyone else is still there. The boss has not left. Your colleagues have not left. Perhaps your own work is finished, but you can’t just stand up, say goodnight, and walk out of office. 

Researchers at the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training describe exactly this difficulty in leaving while supervisors or colleagues remain at work.

So perhaps it is 6:00 p.m.

Makoto-san has finished.

He looks towards Manager Toma’s office.

Toma is still there.

The person at the next desk is still typing.

Makoto-san looks back at his screen.

There must be something else he can do.

At 8:00 p.m., he finally clocks out.

Sābisu Doesn’t Always Mean Service

The word sābisu is another curious term.

In Japan, it can mean something given as an extra. A restaurant might give you a little something “service.” A shop might throw something in without charging.

Sābisu zangyō follows roughly the same logic. Except the free extra is your time.

The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare doesn’t quite agree with it: unpaid overtime is still unpaid work and violates labour law. But it remains more common than what one may think.

Makoto-san’s two hours in our story do not necessarily have to be sābisu zangyō. Perhaps he was paid properly for every minute.

Perhaps he even liked staying late.

We don’t know. He isn’t real.

But the language around Japanese overtime is real. Someone went through a lot of trouble inventing different words for staying at work after work was supposed to have ended.

Meanwhile, Back at Toma’s Office

A few days later, Manager Toma may receive another message.

“Makoto-san is safe. He still has the company laptop, access card and office keys. Please tell us where he should send them.”

It sounds like the sort of message that should come with a photograph of Makoto-san holding that morning’s newspaper.

Instead, Manager Toma gets a tracking number. 

A few days later, a cardboard box arrives.

Laptop.

Access card.

Keys.

Anything Makoto-san left behind at the office can make the opposite journey. His personal belongings can be packed up and mailed back to him.

Manager Toma may see Makoto-san’s laptop again before he sees Makoto-san.

Makoto-san’s final salary is a lot less dramatic. The resignation agency does not collect it in a suitcase and hand it over in an underground car park. It can ask the company to transfer the money to his usual bank account, but the salary still comes from his employer. 

There are limits to what an ordinary resignation agency can do. Passing messages between Makoto-san and Manager Toma is one thing. Negotiating a dispute over unpaid wages, severance or other legal matters is where labor unions and lawyers may enter the picture.

Hopefully, Makoto-san doesn’t need another clan.

And Yet People Keep Calling

Resignation is hardly unusual. 

People change jobs. Companies hire replacements. Someone leaves; someone else arrives; somebody from HR eventually removes a name from a spreadsheet. 

And the cycle goes on.

Yet Momuri received 174 requests in one day after Golden Week in 2024.

174 people asking somebody else to tell their employer they were resigning.

Somewhere in those 174 workplaces, phones began ringing.

Perhaps a manager picked up.

Perhaps an empty desk was nearby.

Perhaps the employee had been there the previous Friday, smiling, saying otsukaresama desu on the way out, with everybody assuming they would see each other again after the holiday.

Then Golden Week ended.

The phone rang.

And somebody the manager had never met said the employee would not be coming back.