"You're fired!"

Japan has pretty decent labor laws and generally it’s pretty hard to fire people unless there are obvious reasons such as skipping work or blatantly breaking work rules etc. However, one pretty devious route is open for companies that want to get rid of a certain person. This secret weapon is called “relocating”.

The reasons has to be somewhat anchored in reality, but it can be pretty farfetched in some cases.

Say you’re in the management and there’s a person that rubs you the wrong way and you want to get rid of him, but he/she is not breaking any rules, just being incompetent or rubbing you the wrong way. You want him/her to quit, but the person is not budging or showing any inclination to leave, despite withheld bonuses, bad reviews and whatnot, you still have one lethal weapon left in your arsenal, the Relocation bomb.

With this little weapon you can confront the person in question with a choice of handing in his/hers resignation or be relocated to the crappiest region that the company can think of to ponder the error of his/hers ways. Believe me when I say that doing sales in Morioka is not that attractive if you have your life in the Tokyo area...

Oh, yeah, this type of activity is currently ongoing in the company against someone...