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The head of Japanese advertising group Dentsu has resigned following the suicide of an employee who had worked hundreds of hours of overtime.
Tadashi Ishii said he will step down in January.
Matsuri Takahashi, 24, jumped to her death in December last year and in a note left for her mother, she asked: "Why do things have to be so hard?".
She had started working at Dentsu in April 2015 and was soon doing an additional 100 hours a month.
Very sad and it's crazy to think working that many hours.
It's a fun business, but it can be a brutal one in the wrong shops. I think way too many people think of advertising as a business where you swill cocktails and swap wisecracks during the day, nail a comely account executive on the conference room during lunch, and finally get to work around six that night, coming up with the Big Idea around midnight over kung pao chicken before the 9 am presentation. Not so.
Instead, a lot of the time, especially in sweatshops such as Dentsu, it's hard, meat grinder work. I remember visiting a former colleague in one of those places. She had become completely burned out, as had most of the others who worked there. Apropos was the poster on the wall of the creative department that read, "If you don't come in on Saturday, don't even think about coming in on Monday." Except the word Monday was crossed out and "Sunday" was scribbled in its place. Yeah, it was a joke, but more like gallows humor than anything.
The pressure can be incessant and the yardsticks by which you're measured are highly subjective. You can do exceptional work for clients that bump the needle beyond the client's wildest dreams, only to get drummed out because the CEO plays golf with some other agency head. In my nearly 30 years in the business, I've seen suicides, substance abuse issues, and broken marriages by the boxcar. All because people never gain a sense of proportion about what they're doing.
At the same time, it can be a great business to be in. Some of the smartest businesspeople I've ever met have been in advertising, chiefly because you have to think quickly and strategically to succeed, becoming versed in wildly divergent industries in a very short period of time. But you better be prepared to work very hard and keep your head about you, or you can get lost very quickly.
My sister is a chief engineer for a multi-national company. A couple years ago, she and others of her team members went to Japan to train the teams over with some new technologies. At a family dinner after she came back from that trip, she told us that the workers in the company branch over there worked all day 12 hours without bathroom breaks or lunch. They just kept on working. She began to ask around about what she was observing because the rules say those workers were suppose to have breaks and lunch.
One of the managers finally told her. The working all the way through without taking breaks or lunch was strictly voluntary. Unfortunately, nobody wanted to be seen as the lazy worker that actually took a break or lunch. It was a social pressure.
My sister and her American colleagues left there bewildered by what they observed.
Assuming he's resigning because of her suicide, and there's no way of knowing his true motivation, he's taking responsibility for something he shouldn't. A person who kills themselves chooses to do it. It's on them, whatever their reasons. They can attempt to guilt trip the boss, husband, wife, brother, sister, mother, father, ex spouse, kids, whoever, but ultimately they take that final drastic step and end it all. She had options, but when someone is depressed and feeling despair, they don't see another way out. Changing corporate policy is certainly long overdue at Dentsu, but it's not his fault she committed suicide.
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