Ello everyone!
Long story short, I work at a school with western and Japanese employees. Actually, this is my second long running job here and the second one this situation occurs in. Western teachers leave on time…Ish, but later if something really needs to get done. Japanese teachers stay much, much later every day, but tend (From what I can see) to not actually be doing anything productive. In my first year my Japanese co-teacher was eager to leave on time, so we both did as often as possible and it felt okay to do that. My current co-teacher stays late every single day, and the it’s made me stop leaving on time. Now I feel weird…or bad, if I leave at the actual time I’m supposed to and leave 20/30 minutes late every day. And it bothers me! I want to stop doing it. There’s nothing to say I have to stay and I absolutely will stay late if there’s something pressing that needs to be done.
It just made me wonder, has anyone ever been questioned about leaving on time, since it’s kind of “optional”/an unwritten rule?
12 comments
Get your tasks done by 5pm and get out of there. What’s the point of sitting on your ass until 8pm doing nothing, as you said?
You’re getting paid for the 20/30 minutes late you’re staying every day right? I assume the ten hours of OT per month adds up to a nice bit of chump change.
If you stay late you are “頑張ってる”. LOL
I finish my work on time and do some of my coworkers work so they won’t say anything about me going home early.
Even if questioned, just use any excuse to get out, like you gotta go pick up someone at the station, study Japanese or smth, or that you are just busy.
If there’s nothing very important to be done, just go home and don’t look back!
Oh sakini shit sure Masu ne
Nope. I finish all my work ahead of schedule 90% of the time. I leave exactly when the clock strikes the end of my shift. My coworkers noticed and even said I can leave early sometimes because I reduced their workload so much but I still stay until the end of my shift regardless.
Really depends on the industry you are in.
Looks like you’re in education – but is this an Eikaiwa, private school etc?
If it’s just busy work or you’re just staying longer because of social pressure, then I’d say leave on time.
If you’re looking to brown-nose, chasing that 100% certain promotion or actually get properly paid for the overtime – I’d say it’s possibly worthwhile.
Unpaid overtime is pretty much a giant scam, in my view.
You do your job diligently while on the job, but once that clock strikes quitting time, go home.
If you finish early ask your co-teacher if you can help with anything. There are some things like correcting tests/notebooks that you probably can do faster. If they are doing something you can help with, offer. But if they decline and you are done, then go home.
My last job someone questioned why I didn’t do overtime. I had to use an electron microscope to take images of some silicon wafers and the senior engineer wanted the images that day but the electron microscope was in use until about 7:30 PM. He hinted that he wanted me to do overtime and stay until 7:30 PM when the SEM was free again so I could get him the images. I was like fckthat later bro, u get em tomorrow 10am.
My experience has taught me 3 things about OT in Japanese education:
1. All teachers have to do it once in a while, but if someone does it every night, it means management at that school has failed the team.
2. Sometimes management hasn’t failed the team, but some teachers do OT every night anyway because they basically want to live at school. Those teachers *will* play tricks to keep you there late with them if you aren’t firm in setting boundaries.
3. I put in quite a lot of unpaid OT over a few years in part because I had a ton to do, and in part because I felt guilty leaving before the majority of other teachers. All that OT contributed sweet FA toward getting me promoted to any kind of position with any clout or greater responsibilities.
So I quit staying late unless it was of direct benefit to me getting my work done or some truly unavoidable circumstances. Nobody commented. I’m not totally sure anyone even noticed.
**Never stay late if you don’t need to.** All that ever amounts to is you facilitating a culture of bad work/life balance. If there is too much work to get done consistently in the working day, the school admin needs to get their shit together and streamline everyone’s duties. You staying late won’t pressure them to get their shit together – quite the opposite in fact. You’ll be enabling a bad situation.
Yeah you run into the issue of looking busy because somebody else has work Japanese culture. If somebody is working on something because of the group mentality that they have then no one goes home until everybody goes home and so what happens. This is one of the Japanese staff. Most likely hasn’t finished their work for the day and until they finish the Japanese staff will stay.
My company there was this pressure as well but I kind of just go home anyways
Not sure about the circumstances around your job, but if it’s a public school, teachers can get OT as government employees. Of course there’s a strong possibility they aren’t clocking the entirety of their OT. Still, there’s that incentive besides keeping the PTA and their superiors off of their backs for not “working hard enough” which was an actual scolding the principal gave one of my teachers despite how much true effort they put in every day.
If you are under a contract with the school or some other outside method of connection and not a government employee, I say don’t bother staying..