Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: I didn’t get a job today because I live in too small of a village!!

I applied for a job in regional tourism promotion, met the listed qualifications and had an online interview, over two weeks ago. They said it would be two weeks to hear back. Didn’t hear back by last Friday, and emailed them asking what’s up. Response came a few hours ago…they really liked my vision for the position and the promotion campaign I mocked up (unprompted) attracting domestic tourists AND the upcoming influx of foreign tourists too,, etc, etc..BUT because the village I live in (less than 200 people, but technically part of a bigger city) is smaller than the town (町、but technically part of the biggest city in Touhoku, Sendai) where the office is, they cannot hire me. They referenced some rule about this unmentioned until now, and apologized for the delay in responding as they spent that time researching how many people live around me.

What the actual fuck!?!?!?

I’ve already sent a response that this rule is horribly discriminatory since no place in all of Touhoku could qualify as being bigger than Sendai according to the logic of the rule referenced. I asked them to reconsider!! Even if they do I wouldn’t work for anyone who doesn’t have the wherewithall to recognize a plainly stupid rule and find a common sense workaround for it.

But still…what the actual fuck!!!!?!?!??

This is so infuriating!! And I’m so fucking pissed, but somehow not surprised at this point!!!

So, to cheer me up, can anyone top this as a fucked up cop-out of an excuse for not getting hired in Japan?

Edit:I should add, I planned on moving to their town, told them so in the interview and availed myself of the mediation they offered in finding an apartment/house for non residents of the town, as part of the compensation package!!!

7 comments
  1. The reasons you describe make no sense – not just as in “they are dumb”, as in they make logically no sense. I think something got lost in translation here.

  2. I feel like this is probably unrelated, but once I helped my friend out at his kids elementary school. They wanted someone to go in for a “culture” activity or something like that. They had some rule that it could only be people who lived in the same ward or area, so I pretended I was living with my friend.

  3. Most of the jobs I have seen like this have the goal of moving a city person to their village while giving them a job and promote the way of life.

    I know personally three villages that did this, and all the candidates were people from the city, relocating to the country (as was stipulated). They would work for the city doing promotion for a fixed time then decide if they want to relocate there or leave and someone else *from the city* would come. Usually they even specify you have to come from like Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya etc.

    My guess is you just misunderstood the context of job. But who knows.

  4. Welcome to life, not just gaijin life. Rejection sucks. But if you’re rejected, do you really want to push it and complain? That never changes minds and never makes you comfortable. Find another campaign to try and join.

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