"Why I Quit the Company"

“Why I Quit the Company�

Work is good, provided you do not forget to live.

--- Bantu proverb Published on October 26, 2017

Ali Mansouri Writer, Researcher, Consultant Page 1 of 11

Google + This is the title of an article by the Japanese writer and journalist Tomoyuki Iwashita published in The New Internationalist Magazine. The article was then republished in Select Readings by and Linda Lee, Oxford University Press.

The article tells of an employee in a well-known company in Japan, who decided to leave his prestigious and secure job after only a year. Most of the people around him thought he was crazy.

The writer tries to explain in the article why he quit the company.

He started work for the company immediately after his graduation from the university. It is a big, well-known trading company with about 6,000 all over the world. The company provides excellent facilities for its employees, including a very comfortable room in the company dormitory for single employees. The room is like a fancy hotel, with a 24-hour hot bath service and all meals are provided. The married employees are provided with comfortable family apartments. The company building contains cafeterias, shops, a bank, a post office, a doctor’ office, a barber’s…There is no need for employees to leave the building.

This isolation is part of the brainwashing process. The company intends to train their employees to be devoted businessmen. The working day is officially eight hours, but the employees do not usually leave the office on time. The writer used to work from nine in the morning until eight or nine at night, and often until midnight. Very few employees claim all the overtime pay due to them. Keeping an employee costs the company 50 million yen ($400,000) a year, or so the company claims. Employees are supposed to put the company’s profits before their mental and physical health.

Overtiredness and overwork leave you little energy to analyze or criticize your situation. There are shops full of “health drinks,” cocktails of caffeine and other drugs, which will keep you going even when you are exhausted. Karoshi (death from overwork) is increasingly common and is always being discussed in the newspapers. The writer himself collapsed from working too hard. His boss told him: “You should control health; it’s your own fault if you get sick.”

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This is a very brief summary of the article. What I find fascinating about it is the lucid description of the brainwashing and mental suffering of employees and teachers in some big modern-day companies and most higher education institutions, especially in the Middle East where work ethics are at a minimum and where human rights are non-existent in almost all countries.

There are thousands and thousands of reasons why employees leave their jobs in companies and other sorts of organizations. The following are some of the reasons: Arbitrary Decisions For any company, a college, a university or another higher education institution, we expect there is a system for everything including the process of decision-making. Decisions are to be taken collectively by a Board of Directors, a Board of Trustees, a college council, a university council, or another sort of a collective body. This is democracy at work in business and education.

Unfortunately, in many companies and institutions, decisions are taken by one senior manager who may be unqualified and incompetent. The decisions are arbitrary and are mostly for selfish reasons and against the general interests of the company or the university. This is the absolute dictatorship at work. The Board of Directors or the Board of Trustees do not care about the dayto-day operations and decisions. They meet once or twice a year and are often kept on the corridor about these decisions or are given fabricated documents to justify such decisions. They do not have time to verify or investigate. They are very busy businessmen! Some time ago I worked a private university in an oil-rich country in the Middle East. I was really shocked at the ability of a VC to take arbitrary and wrong decisions against his colleagues and against the general interests of the students and the university without being held accountable for anything.

He used to chair the University Council Meetings and discuss the agenda at length. Then he used to go to his office and take arbitrary and stupid decisions alone without consulting the University Council members using fabricated documents his Assistant VC had prepared in advance for or after the meetings. This used to create a toxic atmosphere in the University. Many high-quality academics and members of staff would not stand such nonsense and left their jobs.

Personal Relationships Page 3 of 11

They say, “friendship and business do not mix” meaning that we need to be fair and objective in our work relationships with all our employees. We should avoid having a list of ‘favorites” in the company or the institution. Regrettably, friendship and business do mix a great deal nowadays in many companies and higher education institutions creating a very negative work environment and very bitter feelings among the other employees. You see a VC or an Assistant VC who puts his personal relationships above all laws, regulations and work ethics. This is one of the most disturbing and negative factors in any workplace, especially when the “culture of fear” has reached an abnormal level in the company or the university.

Chaotic Work Environment In many companies and institutions, you may not find an effective system to create a healthy work environment and if there is one, it is only on paper. You do not know what is going on in the workplace and who is in charge of what! The normal procedures of work are often put on hold and the employees’ rights are suspended due to the incompetence and erratic behavior of the senior managers some of them are corrupt to their toes. As per the normal working hours from 8 am to 4 pm, you are asked to stay in trivial meetings held by the VC or Assistant VC up to 6 pm or even 8 pm to discuss topics regarded as normal items in the daily routines. Every day you receive emails from the Managing Director of the company or from the VC or Assistant VC of the university. The emails are written in hasty or broken English telling you about students’ grades, annual leaves, employees’ working hours, absences or leaves or working in the summer session and you are still at the very beginning of the winter. Then after a week or so you get different emails from the HR Director, who is usually stupid and incompetent, or another senior manager in the administration giving you contradictory information or instructions and telling you that the Earth is still flat! This applies even to the academic calendar of the year. I still remember that the summer session in A’Sharqiyah University in Oman was supposed to last eight weeks during the Academic Year 2014-2015 and the exams were to take place after the Eid, the religious festival of Muslims after Ramadan. All of a sudden, the Summer Session was cut to seven weeks and the exams were to start before the Eid because the VC Abood Al-Sawafi and his Assistant VC Hamed Al-Hajri wanted to enjoy themselves and travel before the Eid – absolute nonsense and absolute chaos!

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Employees and teachers are required to work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. or even 9 p.m. non-stop without any mention of that in the work contract. They are not even allowed to leave the campus even if they do not have any lessons or lectures. They are also required to teach 25 hours per week and sometimes up to 30 teaching hours without any overtime or compensation. They are often threatened by some corrupt senior managers to keep silent about their overtime hours. They can keep going only by drinking too much tea and coffee that may greatly destroy their physical and mental health. When they feel unwell due to overwork, the stupid and incompetent VC or Assistant VC blames the HR for recruiting people with “poor health” and they are put on the next list for termination. Because they are incompetent and unqualified, the VC and Assistant VC take stupid and awkward measures creating a very chaotic work environment where work ethics are non-existent and employees are treated like hired slaves or puppets or even beggars! Because of such a chaotic work environment, everybody behaves like your boss and gives you instructions.

In A’Sharqiyah University even the cleaners give instructions to the teachers as the cleaners are assigned by the Assistant VC the task of printing out the exams for you! Imagine that! A cleaner is in charge of printing out exams for the teachers. What sort of chaos is this?!

Low Salaries Companies in the private sector use different salary scales. Some scales are excellent; others are very bad and unfair. Salaries cannot be taken as the sole determining factor for attracting or retaining employees in any country or organization as they are to be evaluated in the light of a wide range of factors: the value of the currency, the strength of the economy, the annual inflation, the location of the company or institution, the quality of life, etc. However, salaries are normally regarded as one of the most important factors for job satisfaction and for the retention of employees. It is only the most stupid CEO or VC or Assistant VC who does not understand this simple fact of life. Employees always look for jobs with higher salaries. Companies and institutions need to have sufficient data and information about the salaries of the jobs within their fields in order to be competitive in the job market. They also need to use a salary scale that is reasonable and fair for all employees. It is very unreasonable for a company or a university to give senior managers very high salaries whereas they are rather stingy with other employees some of whom are talented and highly unqualified. A VC at a university in a developing country may get a monthly salary of $30,000 and too many bonuses though he comes once a week or Page 5 of 11

even once a month to the university and has made a mess of everything because of his stupidity and incompetence. The salaries of all other employees, including the teachers who teach 25 hours per week, are very low and reach the bottom of the scale. It is no wonder why these teachers quit such a university.

Bad Employment Package Bad health insurance, sick leaves, unfair annual leave, family visa, etc. are among the items that attract or expel employees from companies and higher education institutions. The medical insurance policy needs to be reasonable and offer healthcare security to employees and their families. Unfortunately, many companies and universities offer very cheap healthcare insurance policies whereby most illnesses and diseases are not covered. In one company you find a woman employee who was given a “sick leave” to look after her sick dog; in another, you cannot get a leave to look after your sick child!

Stupid Rules and Regulations Rules and regulations are essential tools to keep work moving smoothly and without problems.

But they do not have to be shortsighted, awkward and stupid. They annoy good employees and drive them crazy. When good employees feel they are being watched for everything by “spies” planted everywhere by the senior management, they will look for another job. Teachers are constantly abused by stupid and silly directives from an unqualified and incompetent CEO or VC or Assistant VC. Most of these directives are disrespectful, degrading and threatening, and many of them are nothing more than an insult to human intelligence.

In many universities, the VC and assistant VC are dictators, not leaders, which is really incompatible with the very nature of higher education. This is due to the fact that a VC or Assistant VC may lack the basic understanding of the role of the higher education system in society and in economic and human development. They treat their employees like slaves or puppets, as we have repeatedly said, though some, especially expatriate employees and teachers, are prepared to play this role just to keep their names on the payroll. Stupid rules and regulations stifle the good employees and make the work environment unbearable. They find no alternative but to quit the company or university.

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Buildings Before People It is a common observation that companies and higher education institutions, especially in oilrich countries, compete among themselves on spending huge amounts of money to build what they call new “state-of-the-art� headquarters and campuses, but they spend very little on the people who will run these buildings! They pride themselves in having very modern buildings and, mistakenly, think that these headquarters and campuses give them a competitive advantage over their rivals. This is utter nonsense. All investors can do that and build whatever they want as long as they have the money, but they cannot attract the talented and highly intelligent people in this way. They can attract only the superficial and incompetent people who used to live in the desert or in the jungle.

There has been a heated debate about how to create a competitive advantage in companies and other organizations. Human capital has come to be regarded as a factor of paramount importance in achieving such an advantage. In fact, it is now regarded by many specialists and experts as more important than the traditional capital of buildings, money, and machines.

The education, experience, and abilities of an employee have an economic value for the organization and for the economy as a whole. Intellectual and human capitals are treated as renewable sources of productivity. Organizations try to cultivate these sources, hoping for added innovation or creativity. Sometimes, a business problem requires more than just new machines or more money. Human capital is portable. It is always owned by the employee, never the employer. Unlike structural capital equipment, human employees can leave the business and the organization. This is why most businesses and organizations take steps to support their most useful employees to encourage them to stay on the job.

More than half the people who leave their jobs do so because of their relationship with their boss.

Smart companies make certain that their managers know how to balance being professional with being human. Bosses who fail to act as human beings and really care about their employees and how they go through life challenges will always have high turnover rates. It is impossible to work for vulgar, uncivilized and inhumane bosses who do not care about anything other than their profits.

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Managing people in businesses and organizations should focus on the crucial role people play in the success of the organizations as the main source of competitive advantage. This applies to higher education as it applies to other sectors. Colleges and universities should not be allowed to be “converted” illegally by incompetent and corrupt senior managers to wholesale markets or hypermarkets with the main goal of making profits at the expense of the students, quality education, and society.

Lack of Freedom of Expression Employees, especially teachers, tend to stay in companies and institutions where there is a reasonable space for freedom of expression and academic freedom. When everything is tightly controlled by the bosses or senior management, people feel they are losing their self-dignity and their essence of existence as free human beings. In a company or a higher education institution, employees, teachers, and academics may be often requested to attend meetings chaired by a senior manager or a VC who puts forth stupid ideas and plans and does not want anybody to express anything critical about these ideas and plans. People feel “stifled’ in such an atmosphere of incompetence and hypocrisy, especially when the senior manager plays with his mobile phone all the time of the meeting, like a child! Because they are incompetent and unqualified, the VC and Assistant VC take stupid and awkward measures creating a very unhealthy work environment where work ethics are non-existent.

At the end of each academic year, a number of teachers and employees in many higher education institutions all over the world get “fired” or “hired”. This is a normal process to refresh the organization and place it on the right track to achieve its strategic goals. The society and the educational authorities expect the process to be consistent with higher standards of objectivity, fairness, and the genuine interests of the public and the organization itself. Regrettably, some stupid and corrupt managers in some companies, colleges, and universities exploit this process to settle scores with their colleagues and take revenge upon those who disagree with them for academic reasons or because they have taken a stand against their corruption and mismanagement plans. They also use the process of renewing contracts for selfish and personal gains. This is why we always call for high standards of behavior and objectivity in the

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supervision of higher education institutions by governments and educational authorities all over the world.

Absence / Lack of Transparency In many companies and higher education institutions, work and academic values and conventions have disappeared and have been replaced by the hypocrisy of the senior managers who have become “experts” in stifling transparency and fostering a disgusting culture of fear.

Transparency has been replaced by the “respect for confidentiality” and the “secrets” of the organization, though these so-called “secrets” are merely information and guidelines needed by the teachers and staff to do their job properly. The values of honesty, justice, and fairness have become words difficult to understand, let alone to practice, by the senior managers who tell you to your face, “we are the decision-makers and we will do what we like.” This is all done in the name of the university or the organization. Everything is secret and confidential and the senior management pays only lip-service to the concept of transparency. Most employees do their routine jobs blindly as they are told and many teachers think that their job is just to go to class and teach the textbook and submit the marks the students have got by hook or by crook.

Employees and teachers are too frightened to speak out. Transparency is not something they are after or something they need to worry about, especially when you have impolite and ruthless senior managers who, unashamedly, tell you, “Keep your opinion to yourself. We do not want you to think. We will think for you.” You would wonder how incompetent and stupid people like Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri could creep into the senior management positions. Of course, through hypocrisy and personal favors. You can easily see that if the leader does not really believe in transparency, he favors and encourages hypocrisy in the organization. This is his favorite game! He does not possess any leadership qualities and therefore cannot rule through transparency which he regards as a great danger to him. Those line managers who practice transparency are labeled “troublemakers” and should be made to leave the company or the university even if they are talented and badly needed. Incompetent senior managers like Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri are the first people to stab you on the back and get rid of you when you are transparent with your colleagues. The only “transparency” they believe in is spying on you by fitting cameras everywhere, even in the bathrooms!

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This is a very gloomy picture indeed but it is real and regrettable. The unhealthy environment created by the absence or lack of transparency has given way to backbiting, hypocrisy, and conspiracies among teachers and staff. However, there are still many teachers and academics who do respect their names, self-dignity and academic status and refuse to be slaves or work in a toxic environment incompatible with their qualifications and experiences. So they quit.

Unfair Judicial System I, for one, would not like to live in a country where I think there are corrupt Public Prosecution officers and judges in the judicial system. Some employees do not only leave their jobs; they leave the country altogether and forever! A powerful sheikh with a dagger on his belt or a powerful businessman can easily send you to jail by just calling and bribing a Public Prosecution officer for a “crime” fabricated by your boss against you. Many employees are smart enough to leave before it is too late — before they are unfairly put in jail or before they lose their sanity!

Conclusions Even with the excellent physical and health facilities available to him in the company, our writer was afraid he would lose his sanity. We should not expect something different from the teachers and employees whose working conditions are appalling and unbearable. Those who stay are mostly incompetent or have no self-confidence and think they cannot find jobs elsewhere. They put up with everything at the expense of their physical and mental health.

From the economic point of view, employees are viewed as very important assets to the organization and they should be treated in a very intelligent and productive way. They are human beings with special qualifications and skills. They are not replaceable in the simple way that some senior or top managers mistakenly believe out of ignorance, incompetence, stupidity or corruption.

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