For a while in the 90s Japanese companies had NODs for exactly the same reason Olsen gives: they didn&#x27;t want to admit that they were firing people. The form varied, but typical examples would be an assignment to guard a tree or wait in a specified room for someone to give you work. The idea was to enforce isolation, boredom and loss of status to the point where the unfortunate employees would voluntarily quit; a kind of 9-5 solitary imprisonment.<p>Its actually a really brutal method of downsizing without paying redundancy money. Be careful what you wish for.