When most people hear that a teacher has lost their job, the first thing they wonder is what type of inappropriate behavior or steadfast rule did they break. In Japan, something as simple as having a part-time job can get you fired. On July 4, someone contacted the Okayama City Board of Education to report that they had seen a man in his 60s, who’s a teacher at one of the city’s junior high schools, working at a convenience store in Kurashiki, the next town over. The very next day, the principal of the school made a trip to the convenience store to confirm with his own eyes that the teacher was working there, and then he confronted him about the matter. To clarify, the man wasn’t ditching classes, as he was spotted on a Saturday, which is his regular day off. It wasn’t the type of work he was doing that was the problem, as being a convenience store clerk is seen as respectable. The problem was that the man was doing any sort of work besides his regular teaching job. It’s typical of Japanese employers to prohibit side jobs. Presumably, the logic is that the employer wants the worker to focus all their energy on their primary job, viewing a side job as something that would cut into the focus and recovery time necessary to keep them in peak working condition. In this case, the school worried that parents would think their little darlings weren’t receiving the full attention of the teacher and not getting a quality education. The teacher who was caught had been working part-time at the convenience store, outside of school hours, since November 2023. In total, he earned roughly ¥1.7 million ($12,000), not exactly living-the-high-life kind of money. As for the Okayama City Board of Education, they announced in a statement: “We deeply apologize for the great distress and worry that has been caused to the children, their guardian, and all the residents of the city.” Meanwhile, the teacher lost his job at the school and stopped working at the convenience store, going from two sources of income to none.
