Wrath of the Founder the Great
Those who got the place overseas started preparing for the move. The first group left to start the California office. This included one of the apostles as the head of international sales and several of his entourage, all men. Mr. Hirao was supposed to follow them soon after. Mr. Yoshida and I flew to Germany to apply for a visa. We even met with a realtor to look around houses and apartments in affluent areas. Expatriates received benefits and financial supports, and I swelled with the expectation that I could finally earn enough to save. But before that happened, there came the wrath of the Founder the Great.
Mr. Aoyama was with Mr. Yoshida’s team. He had a prematurely balding forehead before reaching his 30s, compensating it with a beard around his sneering mouth. Like Mr. Yoshida, Mr. Aoyama spent his youth in the US and wished to return to live there again, so he worked his way with the men to get himself invited to join the CA office.
Ringi (a document to receive approval on something from the management) only went to the Founder the Great when the case was critical or the amount of cost was significant. The cost of personnel relocation was nothing compared to fitness gym acquisition cost, but it had to be approved by the Founder the Great. The first batch of Ringi about sending the men to the CA office passed smoothly. Mr. Aoyama’s relocation came several months after the men, so his Ringi might have singled out among other business costs. The Founder the Great asked an apostle why the relocation cost was so high, though it couldn’t have been higher than the costs incurred for the other men. The Founder the Great, one of the Forbs’ richest men in the world, had become increasingly cost-conscious since the big purchase of a fitness gym a few years before, so the billionaire decided that anyone who chose to relocate to overseas offices should do so at their expense and stripped all the benefits and financial supports usually granted to expatriates.
The decision applied to all the men in the world. The first batch of men in CA was cut off from the HQ’s pension scheme in Japan, lost the rent support and the currency adjustment, which lowered their salary significantly and increased their financial risk in the future. As a result, some of the men decided to return even though they had been overseas only for a year. The rest and Mr. Aoyama took the compromised deal, hoping they could eventually move on locally.
Mr. Yoshida decided to stay in Japan, concluding the risk was not worth bearing for his family. Mr. Hirao agreed to go, but he negotiated his package.
I resented Mr. Aoyama for bringing everyone down with him, but more than anyone else, I despised the Founder the Great for his lack of concern for the well-being of his hard-working employees, his abuse of power, and taking advantage of our good motivation. I didn’t know what to do. If I stayed in Japan and changed job, it’ll be years before I get the same opportunity, if I ever get at all. On the other hand, like Mr. Aoyama, I could just take the chance and hope it’d lead somewhere else. My heart was mostly set for going, but I wanted to hear the second opinions. So I contacted Mr. Saito and Miss Sasaki.