Continuing Chronicles of a (Semi) Unemployed Man

Unlike last time, I won't write up a day to day description of the past week. Mostly because there is even less to tell and I would sound even more pathetic.

I continue to be in employment limbo. I continue to teach part time lessons at the local temple, and Shoko's friend, and make about probably $100-$130 a week. I continue occasional social get togethers with friends. I continue to have a lot of things I should be working on (Grad school, new job,and wedding plans) and I continue to look for any possible excuse to procrastinate (like writing this long defense of a previous movie review. What a waste of intellectual energy that was.) And I continue to get chewed out by Shoko for how little I've accomplished.

There has been frustratingly very little official news from our company NOVA. (You'll notice I'm dropping my long standing habit of not referring to my employer by name. I just don't care anymore). The last thing I was told when the company shut down its doors was to just keep my eye on the official web site for more information, but the little information grudgingly released on their site has been almost useless. Mostly we get our info from sites like letsjapan.org which carry English translations of day old Japanese newspaper articles.

Friday I got a text message from Leanne asking if I knew anything about a meeting in Nakatsu. This was the first I had heard about it, so I called around and asked other people and no one really seemed to know anything.

Saturday I made a few more phone calls, and finally found out that there was an important meeting that day at 2:00 in Oita City. Information about unemployment insurance, recovering our loss wages, and our future with the new owners of the company would be given. We would also have a short interview, so we should wear a suit and tie and dress sharp.

I called all my co-workers to pass the information along. We rushed to the train station and all arrived in various states of disarray, unshaven, underdressed, someone even had to run out of a lesson to make it on time. I myself was wearing a mismatched suit because half my wardrobe was at the cleaners.

None of us were happy with the lack of timely information (to put it mildly) but I was probably the most vocal. I griped most of the way down there.

"I heard this meeting had been posted on facebook," someone said.

"Fuck facebook," I replied. "Nobody ever told me I needed to be checking facebook. If they have important information for they need us to get they can put it on their website or make sure we get a phone-call."

I then continued with my rant something like this. "You know, the thing is I didn't even mind when they went bankrupted and we didn't get our pay. I mean I minded, but I didn't take it personally. I knew they weren't going bankrupt on purpose. But since then I've just been losing more and more faith everyday.
"I mean, we were all reading the internet. We weren't ignorant, we knew the company was going bankrupt and there was a good chance we wouldn't see our paychecks. But we kept going to work anyway, because we had an obligation to the students and the staff. And then they closed down without giving us a single day's notice, or even time to get our things out of the staffroom, everyone we know is being evicted from their apartments because they haven't paid the rent (despite taking it out of their paychecks), they've stopped making payments on our insurance because the court told them they don't have to, and we can't even apply for unemployment insurance because they've been waiting to officially declare bankruptcy.
"The least, the LEAST they could do is give us timely information about where these meetings are going to be. How much trouble would it have been to post it on our website?"
Et cetera, and so we occupied the time ranting away all the way down to Oita city.

At the end of the hour long train ride, I felt like I had worked myself up into a pretty agitated state, and was ready to ask some pointed questions and make some accusations during the meeting. (I already had a pretty good mental image of me standing up and soapboxing to the applause of my fellow co-workers.) However when we got there we found out that the "meeting" consisted of us sitting down and watching a live TV link to the big informational meeting in Tokyo. Which meant there was also no one in person there at Oita city for me to take my anger out on. (Isn't that always the way it is with big companies? The person you're actually angry at you never get to talk to, and the person you take your anger out on is some little peon that stands at the complaint desk or answers the phone).

The video conference was some of the most boring 4 hours of my life. There were several teachers and several Japanese staff from different branches assembled, and there wasn't even enough room for everyone to sit down. Everyone was more or less in the same furious mood that I was, and most people had just found out about this at the last minute like I did.

During a break, I took out some of my anger by yelling at the high school students outside collecting for charity. (No, I kid. Actually I did ask them very nicely if they could keep it down a bit because we were having trouble hearing. I was as polite as I knew how to be in Japanese, and I gave them a donation as I spoke. And the fact that I was able to complain to somebody about something did make me feel surprisingly better).

After the video conference there was no big meeting where I could grandstand and make a speech, but I did track down a company representative and complain about the lack of contact. She apologized of course, and said she had thought we knew, and then began the usual shifting of blame and uncertainty over who was supposed to have called whom. In the end I think I probably only succeeded in getting my Japanese manager in trouble, which wasn't my intention because I consider the Japanese staff friends (and I'm pretty sure it wasn't her fault. Friends from other branches in other parts of Japan all had the same trouble with finding out about these meetings).

The new sponsor company has promised to re-hire all the old teachers, even though they're re-opening less than 10% of the old schools. (30 schools out of 700). Also we've been promised we can stay in our city, even if they don't re-open the branch there. They'll pay us to just stay at home.

It sounds too good to be true. And especially after all the empty promises that were floating around right before the company collapsed ("Don't worry, everything's all right, we'll get your pay to you tomorrow") everyone is once bitten twice shy. Plus in order to join the new company we have to sign a letter of resignation from the old one (thus ending our one month pay termination benefits) and of course lose unemployment insurance. Everyone was asking questions about what the catch was, and no one was able to give a decent answer.

In the small town of Nakatsu we are probably not one of the branches that will be re-opened, but I went ahead and signed the papers anyway. I figured if I could get even just one months pay out of it, it would be worth giving up the other benefits. Now we'll see what happens next.

Link of the Day
Iraqi Government to UN: "Don't Extend Mandate for Bush's Occupation"