いじめ (Bully)
"You should be nicer to him,' a schoolmate had once said to me of some awfully ill-favored boy. 'He has no friends.' This, I realized with a pang of pity that I can still remember, was only true as long as everybody agreed to it."
Christopher Hitchens
And now for some ABC After School Special type shit. Today's topic: bullying. Reported cases of bullying has been on the decline in recent years, but I wager that's just because there's a large group of people who are being bullied that aren't coming forward because nothing is being done about it. Just this past summer a 13 year old in Otsu committed suicide by jumping off the 14th floor of a building. His classmates reportedly made him practice committing suicide on a regular basis, but the school, school board, and even the police refuse to link his death to bullying.
But bullying isn't just something that's relegated to children. It's also prevalent in the workplace among grown ass adults who should really know better. Part of the reason why I believe Japanese people are reluctant to take sick days or vacation is because they're worried about what their co-workers might do or think. An English teacher I know took vacation during the summer time, when there aren't even any classes for a month, so she could go home and visit her family in the US. The principal approved the leave. However, when it came time to renew the teacher's contract, the principal didn't wan't to and cited the teacher taking vacation as the reason why. In essence this person was fired for taking vacation. Another person I know quit her job because she took a vacation and her co-workers treated her like shit when she came back. Why? Because her being gone made everyone else have to temporarily pick up her slack, and that, apparently, was grounds for bullying her.
I fear that bullying may be going on in my own department. There is a dude who joined my team recently who is awkward as hell and kind of looks like your typical creeper in Akihabara. He's been bounced around from department to department for various reasons, ranging from alleged sexual harassment and overall creepiness to just being a bad worker. I heard that his former teammates ganged up on him in front of the vending machines and roasted him with insults. My group thankfully haven't decided to take it to that level with him, but there are people who openly hate on him. One girl always asks why he's around and tells him to go home and stop bothering her. Another dude has repeatedly told him that he sucks. The new foreign dude routinely dismisses him whenever he tries to explain things. Considering how he's been treated over the past year, I'm surprised he hasn't snapped and killed everybody or up and quit.
