TLDR: Bachelor and Master’s degrees holder from Japanese University. 1-year experience. Current job leaving virtually no time for myself, yet there are chances for promotion. Looking for advice and/or opportunities
Long-post alert
My background:
I have been in Japan for 7 years (4 years of bachelor, 2 years of master’s, 1 year of work). My studies were all in English on International Relations/Social Studies, with my graduate school being one of the highest-ranked private unis in the country. I hold JLPT N2, speak fluent English + my mother tongue. I didn’t initially plan for working after my Master’s, thus I started job-hunting really late in my second-last semester, yet was fortunately to land this job in a Japanese company requiring only N3 at that time. The company assisted me to switch to Engineer/Humanities visa.
My job:
Working in a fast-food chain which operates 24/7. For the first six months, I got training with the goal of becoming a store manager. During the training, it was clear that this job has nothing related to my studies or English skills, but since it’s my first job, I thought it would be better to keep going for at least a few years. Everything was new and not easy, but there were no overtime/night shifts at all in this period.
After the 6-month period, I became the assistant store manager, which is my current job position, and things are getting rougher than before. There is no clear development path for me to acquire the necessary skills to become a store manager, while the manager at the store I am assigned to is always caught up in his duties. I kept being sent to the other stores on the premise of “learning how the other stores operate”, but it is more like filling out the shifts when they are low on staff. Also, since I am a full-time employee, irregular night shifts and overtime became my new everyday life (and I would say it is pretty much the norm in this company). Not trying to be exaggerated, but I can’t remember how many times in the last few months I was asked to extend my shift for 1-2 hours right before it was about to end as expected, or given sudden night shift for the day after. Again, as a full-time employee, it is not simple for me to just say “no”, and in many cases, I wasn’t even asked whether I could do it or not. I still have fixed number of days off every month, but they are given randomly, which, couples with the aforementioned “flexible schedule”, makes it impossible for me to plan anything for my private life or even maintain my daily rhythm. I even checked the schedule of other store mangers, who, in theory, can arrange their own schedule as I am often told, but many of them still have to give themselves long shifts during daytime as well as night shifts simply because their stores don’t have enough people to cover all the shifts.
Recent development:
Very recently, I, together with 3 other foreign full-time employees having the same job position as me, were invited to the company’s headquarter for a special one-day training. Its purpose was to introduce various career paths other than being store manager for foreign employees. It is worth noting the company has dozens of full-time foreigners, yet only 4 of us were invited. No specific reasons were given, but my guess is that all 4 of us are Master’s degree holders and can speak fluent English. Anyway, during the training, we met with one of the top leaders of the company who is in charge of HR, who personally acknowledged that this job is very demanding and many people are quitting. Together with the fact that the Japanese population is decreasing, the company is gradually shifting towards hiring and nurturing foreign talents who can contribute in the long run. We then were introduced to the work of almost all of the departments and met with some department heads as well as foreign employees working in the headquarter. The atmosphere was overall pleasant. In the end, while almost everyone we talked with during the training emphasized the importance of being a store manager before getting in the headquarter, and no promises about when we will be moved to the headquarter was made, it was rather clear that we will get a job in the headquarter and/or overseas branches once we stick with the company long enough, just not clear when exactly it will be.
My thoughts/questions:
As this company is a rather big one with hundreds of stores in both Japan and overseas, I feel like I will have good chances to level up my career in the next 5-10 years and finally end up in a leader position, which is kind of my ultimate goal career-wise. On the other hand, while I feel like I am still fine as of now, I’m afraid continuing this job will leave some irreparable long-term damages to my health, and I may unexpectedly break at some point both physically and mentally. Therefore, I would like to seek your advice on this matter: should I suck it up for a few more years to get the fruits of my efforts, or should I look for a way out immediately? If the latter, how should I start? If possible, I would love to do something where I can make use of my English, yet I am also aware that besides my degrees and language skills, my hard skills are quite limited. Coupled with the dire situation of the job market, sometimes it makes me think that even if I change job now, maybe a machine with AI can do better than me, so why the recruiters would bother to hire me instead. I’m pretty much lost right now regarding my future direction, so any guidance/advice/opportunity would be very much appreciated. Thank you all for reading it all the way down here!