A 64-year-old Japanese employee of the waterworks bureau in the western
city of Kobe was fined and reprimanded for leaving his desk just three minutes
before the start of his designated lunch break on 26 occasions over a
seven-month period.
Senior officials at the
bureau then called a televised news conference, where they described the man’s
conduct as “deeply regrettable” and bowed in apology.
“The lunch break is from noon to 1pm. He left
his desk before the break and violated a public service law requiring officials
to “concentrate on their jobs”, according to the bureau.
Social media users leaped to the Kobe official’s defense, with one
Twitter user pointing out that, on average, he had left his desk early just
once a week.
Others wondered if the rule is
applied to people who leave their desks to smoke or go to the toilet.
Another said: “What about
all the politicians who sleep in parliament? They ought to be fired, then.”
The official’s illicit lunch
expeditions were uncovered after a senior colleague looked out of his office
window and spotted him walking to a nearby restaurant that sells takeaway food
at lunchtime.
Senior management calculated
how much time he had spent away from his desk and docked him half a day’s pay.
The employee, who has not
been named, reportedly said that he had left the office early to buy lunch
because he needed a “change of pace”.
Last month, the Japanese lower
house passed a law intended to address Japan’s punishingly long working
hours. The bill caps overtime at 100 hours a month in response to a rise in the
number of employees dying from karoshi, or death from
overwork.
The government was forced to act following a public outcry over the
death of a 24-year-old employee of the advertising giant Dentsu, who
killed herself in 2015 after being forced to work more than 100 hours overtime
a month, including at weekends.
In 2016 the government said
one in five employees were at risk of death from overwork.
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