Working Like a Dog

For those of you who didn’t know, I’ve picked up a business English class in addition to my 9-5 junior high school job. The class is once a week in the evening for a couple of hours. It’s held at a subsidiary company to TOYOTA Motors, and all the students are employees there.

There are some pretty nice students and we have a good time. However since the third week of classes, one or two of my students have been regularly absent from, or late (by one hour) for class. It turns out they couldn’t come because they had to work, which is acceptable.

As a teacher, it really doesn’t bother me at all, actually it makes my job easier sometimes with a smaller class. However, as I got to know them better, I found out that after many of the classes, that finish at 8:45pm they were going back to work.

But that’s just the tail of the beast. Last Wednesday, 2 students were forced to stay until 4 in the morning to finish an important job! Let me say that again.... FOUR in the MORNING! Now, while there are certain situations that may call for that kind of craziness in any country and in any business, its actually the norm at this company.

Another student, for a period of 2 weeks, regularly finished work after midnight, and occasionally slept at the office. (This student later told me in an English lesson about fears, that her biggest fear is her boss, because she’s afraid of being given more work from her boss.)

I thought, well at least you’re getting paid some serious overtime for this... I was wrong! The government recently (10-15 years ago) cracked down on the amount of excessive overtime work in corporations (because of a high number of suicides, and stress induced heart attacks) placing limits of 35 hours of overtime per month on all workers. So... what happens when you work 9 hours of OT a day for more than 4 days? You don’t get paid. You just work for the company for free... as this poor student of mine has been doing for at least 3 months now! It’s Absurd! But the sick reasoning behind it is not something that can be explained in something as short as this BLOG.

I offered to help sneak this student out of the country in my suitcase the next time I return.