Securing a quality labor force in any workplace is difficult, but it’s especially tricky in the restaurant business. The demanding nature of the job and younger, sometimes less dedicated, employees often means a high turnover rate. However, one small chain of yakitori (grilled chicken) restaurants felt they had the solution.

When an employee was doing a truly great job, their manager would approach and ask them “How about we make you into two people?” That might sound like an excellent proposition for any busy worker, but as is often the case with magical offers, the reality is often illegal.

According to Nishi Nippon Shimbun, for about the past year the management at two locations of the restaurant had approached Chinese students working part-time with offers of “duplication”. In total, four people showed a stellar enough work ethic for the process.

The method is highly scientific and, rather than requiring some kind of cloning chamber or taking DNA samples, involved the restaurant putting that employee on the payroll again but with a different name…and that’s about it. They get a new employee who’s just as good as the other one because they are, in fact, the selfsame person. As the president of the company reportedly confessed to police: “The students increase their income, the store gets a good labor force. It’s win-win.”

Except, that’s illegal.

It’s also less of a win for the foreign students who would go on to work a 45-hour week without any of the benefits that go along with such hours. The law in Japan states that foreign students may work no more 28 hours per week – a rule put in place to ensure that those with student visas are, in fact, spending their time in Japan studying rather than slinging chicken and beer.

So for all you businesses out there looking to maximize your human resources, don’t cut corners with shoddy paperwork. Do what RocketNews24 did and go the full route by actually genetically cloning your star employees.

You didn’t really think one Mr. Sato could have actually survived all that crap we’ve been feeding him over the years, did you? We have a pile of used ones out back…

Source: Nishi Nippon Shimbun (Japanese)
Original article by Mr. Sato
[ Read in Japanese ]