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The story
A thread about new employees botching phone calls has been buzzing on 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board. Posters shared story after story of new hires mixing up the company name — like answering “Hello, this is XX Battery Factory” — or getting flustered over the right way to speak while putting a caller on hold. The thread split into two camps: those who saw these blunders as a matter of the new hire’s own aptitude, and those who blamed company culture for putting rookies on phone duty from day one without proper training. The discussion gradually expanded into broader workplace issues — unpaid overtime, how new-hire training should be run, and how harassment complaints get handled.
What people said
"Hello, this is XX Battery Factory."
Blame the recruiter — the usual take on these threads
"Hello, this is the Shinjuku Training Center." (a cheeky joke swapping in 調教/"training," a word with kinky BDSM connotations, for the real company name)
Me ("Wai"): "You don't need to add -san when talking to outsiders about someone from inside the company."
New hire: "Okay."
⋯
New hire: "WAAAI—! PHONE CALL FOR YOU—!"
(Wai is 2ch/5ch slang the poster uses to refer to himself, like a nickname standing in for "I/me.")
"You're allowed to be polite while someone's on hold, you know!!" 😡
Sounds like they don't give any real training, so it's understandable if people quit. And when you use a resignation-proxy service (退職代行), you don't even need a solid reason anyway.
Though we can't really judge fairly without hearing the company's side too.
Don't they even have a new-hire training program? 🥺
That type genuinely existed…
Acting like a corporate slave never gets you rewarded anyway, so in a way that's the smart move.
Retail and food service go without saying, but there seem to be plenty of jobs that ban it over information-leak concerns too.
I'm in sales, and whenever I'm driving between appointments I always have YouTube playing in the background — so maybe I'm actually one of the lucky ones.
A properly run company bans it to prevent leaks and misconduct.
Not to be rude, but that sounds like a pretty shoddy workplace.
You're the idiot.
Do you seriously think someone on their first day is capable of handling it properly?
Me: "Yes, understood. Mr./Ms. A, phone call for you."
A: "Who's calling?"
Me: "Uh… um…"
A: "Ugh… never mind."
A client who doesn't even give their name is the real problem here.
People always bring this up, but honestly I think it's fine.
Making the new hire ask "and who may I say is calling?" wastes more time.
Just tell them "next time, please ask who's calling and from where"
and leave it at that.
At my company we do the exercises after the start-of-shift bell rings.
How many hours does that add up to in a year?
At any normal, decent company, all of that counts as paid, on-the-clock time.
Now that people have learned the worst possible lesson — that crying "harassment" shuts management up even when you're the one who's behind — the place is churning out garbage employees and it's basically over.
Exactly this.
The real enemy is people like Re: #98 — incompetent yet constantly filing garbage complaints that tear the organization apart.
At my company, when a complaint came in that I'd been "too intense," I got a talking-to as well — but it was actually the person who filed it who ended up getting transferred.
I really hate it when a powerful idiot is around, because it's always the competent people who end up quitting.
I get that harassment countermeasures matter, but these days there are way too many scumbags waving "I was harassed!" around like some righteous banner.
Classic case of giving power to idiots and watching everything collapse.
It's embarrassing, so if it were me, I'd never do that.
Whoever says that needs to follow it three times as strictly as they demand of others, or they lose all credibility and morale just collapses.
so maybe the workplace will end up incredibly easygoing.
Sounds more like they'll just become the type who slacks off and dumps all the work on their subordinates.
A boss who blames everyone else like some Gen-Z type is the worst, though?
Barely gives instructions or guidance, but the moment something goes wrong it's the subordinate's fault — that kind of thing kills an organization.
This is exactly why wages never go up — because companies pander to people like this.
Worker's rights have gotten so strong that hiring an employee has become a liability.
Background and Discussion Points
This thread isn’t based on any particular statistics or resignation-reason data — it’s simply 5ch users sharing their own new-hire-era experiences. Although framed around “Gen Z,” the theme of new hires fumbling phone calls is one that’s been talked about across generations for a long time, not something unique to this cohort. Within the thread, opinions were split fairly evenly between “it’s the company’s fault for not training them” and “even a new hire should use common sense,” so it doesn’t end up as one-sided Gen Z bashing. Another notable feature is that toward the end, the discussion broadens from new-hire training into workplace management issues in general — unpaid overtime, how harassment complaints get handled — a wider scope of debate than the “reasons for quitting” framing in the title alone would suggest.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (“Nandemo Jikkyo G”) thread “[Sad News] Gen Z’s Reasons for Quitting Have Reached Their Limit.”
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