In September 2026, a 19-year-old employee at a Japanese electric utility fell from a transmission tower and died. News outlets reported that a note he left behind described verbal abuse and coercion at work. The company has set up an independent third-party committee to look into what happened, the work environment, how he was supervised, the harassment allegations, and the company's duty of care. The investigation is still going, so neither the harassment nor any link to his death has been established as fact.[1][2]
A case like this knocks down two comfortable assumptions: that rural jobs must be relaxed, and that big companies must be safe.
Japan's health ministry ran a workplace harassment survey for fiscal 2023. In it, 19.3 percent of workers said they had been the target of power harassment at work in the past 3 years. Where it happened, the workplaces tended to share the same traits: little communication between bosses and staff, lots of overtime, no room for mistakes, too few people, and little contact with other departments or the outside world.[3] A systematic review of research points the same way. Workplace bullying goes along with authoritarian or hands-off leadership, unclear roles, conflicting roles, heavy demands, and little social support.[4]
So the real question is less "city or countryside?" and more "inside one small team, what is allowed, and who can say stop?"
Zoom out further and it gets blunter.
"Power harassment" is a new word. A strong person leaning on a weaker one is far older than any company.
1. Even in the 12th century BCE, people did more than just put up with it
In ancient Egypt, at Deir el-Medina, the craftsmen who built the royal tombs stopped working when their food rations came late.
The Turin Strike Papyrus records this from the reign of Ramesses III. The workers downed tools, walked to the temples, and demanded the grain they were owed. The Egyptian Museum in Turin calls it the first documented labor strike in history.[5]
The pattern already looks modern.
They did not go to the foreman one by one and beg. They stopped as a group. They took the problem to people above their boss. They made their own absence hurt: if we stop, you have a problem too.
Humans have been doing labor negotiations for 3000 years.
2. Even under slavery, people had more than one way to respond
Slavery is the most extreme version of this story.
An enslaved person could not hand in notice and go home. Law and violence blocked the exit itself.
Even so, the choice was never just "obey" or "start a huge revolt."
U.S. National Park Service materials record working slowly on purpose, pretending to be sick, breaking tools, keeping family and community together, learning to read, using the courts, and running away.[6][7]
The point is not to rank these by how brave they look.
When open defiance means severe punishment, looking obedient while buying time is a survival strategy. Building a circle of allies is a strategy. Getting away is a strategy.
Not fighting did not make anyone weak. Leaving the battlefield was one way to win.
3. Even serfs actually moved
Medieval serfs are usually described as tied to the land and barely allowed to go anywhere.
But a study published in 2025, based on manorial court records from medieval England, found a good number of serfs who really did relocate. About half of the recorded migrants stayed within 10 miles of the manor they came from, and about two thirds moved to the countryside, not to a town. Lords tried to crack down, but in practice they could do little to stop it.[8]
That is the interesting part.
Running away does not have to mean a grand escape to a far country.
The next village will do. A different employer will do. A different department will do. A different client will do.
You do not need to reach the ends of the earth to cut one controlling relationship.
4. Ranking survival strategies: the top ones mostly reduce how much you depend on one person
This is not an official ranking from historians or psychologists. It is our own summary drawn from ancient history, slavery studies, labor research, and negotiation theory. We sorted strategies by four questions: Can one person survive with it? Can it be repeated? Does it avoid relying on the other side's goodwill? Does it lower the risk of payback?
| Tier | Strategy | In history | Today |
|---|---|---|---|
| S | Make sure you can leave | escape, moving away, joining another community | savings, room to change jobs or transfer, skills you can take anywhere |
| A | Connect with people beside you | group protest, communities, escape networks | coworkers, unions, several witnesses, contacts outside the company |
| A | Go to a higher authority | petitions to kings, officials, courts | senior managers, HR, compliance, government agencies, courts |
| B | Buy time without a head-on clash | outward obedience, slowing work, avoidance | less contact, keeping records, doing the bare minimum, preparing a transfer |
| C | Put up with it for now | waiting for an opening | stay only until you have savings or the next job lined up |
| D | Fight it out alone | one person defying a stronger one | going one-on-one against the abuser again and again |
| D | Violent uprising | rebellion | it can change a society, but as a way for one person to survive it is extremely dangerous, and it is not a way to handle a modern workplace |
Notice that the top spot is not "win the argument."
The top spot is not letting someone else hold your life in their hands.
5. "Exit" and "voice" are still the basic idea in today's research
In 1970, Albert Hirschman sorted the ways people react to a decline in an organization into two main kinds: exit and voice.
Exit means leaving. Voice means trying to change things from inside.[9]
At work, changing jobs is exit. Going over your boss's head, telling HR, or negotiating through a union is voice.
But the two are not separate.
If you cannot leave, your voice gets weak. When you think "if I quit, I can't pay my bills" or "nobody else would hire me," saying no gets very expensive.
On the other hand, when someone who can move on at any time says "I won't accept that," it is not a bluff.
A U.S. study found that the stronger the legal force of non-compete clauses, the more job mobility and income fell, partly because workers' outside options got weaker.[10] A 2026 study of gig workers also found that just having access to a competing platform changed a lot in how much labor workers supplied to a single company.[11]
An option has bargaining power even before you use it.
6. Pigeons don't fly off because they are weak-willed
Here comes the pigeon, out of nowhere.
Walk toward a pigeon in a park and it first just walks away. Come closer and it flies.
Cats do something similar.
Animal behavior researchers study "optimal escape," meaning when an animal should start running from a predator. The classic idea is that an animal does not sprint the moment it sees danger. It weighs what it gains by staying, the risk of being caught, and the cost of fleeing, then starts running at a certain distance.[12]
That is because fleeing costs something.
It means leaving the food behind. It uses up energy. It means giving up a safe spot.
So "quit the moment something feels off" is not the only right answer.
For a person, it looks more like this.
Something feels wrong. You don't need to quit right away. But you look at job listings. You keep your savings up. You keep a record. You look for another team to move to. You stay in touch with people outside the company.
And when the danger rises, you fly.
The strongest person is not the one who is always running. It is the one who can take off when it is needed.
7. How fast a person can run depends on their "portfolio," not their legs
People can build up their ability to get away, bit by bit.
Cash in the bank. Low monthly costs. Skills that work at other companies. A track record you can explain. Being able to move. Friends and contacts outside work. Side income. More than one customer who pays for your work. Knowing what jobs pay out there.
Add it all up and it lowers one thing: how badly your life falls apart the moment you say no to one person.
That is why "employee versus entrepreneur" is not the real divide.
An employee with savings, skills that travel, an active job market, and low fixed costs can be quite free.
An entrepreneur who gets 90 percent of sales from one client, owes a lot, has a long lease, and has staff to pay is heavily dependent on that one client.
The real divide is
not employee versus entrepreneur
but
all your eggs in one basket versus options spread around.
8. Even with the S-tier strategy, you still get worn down
It would be sloppy to say "just build an exit and it's easy."
A meta-analysis of workplace bullying and mental health found that being bullied goes along with depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms, and long-term studies also linked it to mental health problems later on.[13]
And dealing with it adds a whole new job on top of the original harm.
Write down what happened. Think about who to tell. Worry about being punished for speaking up. Put together an explanation. Wait for HR to answer. Find out if you can transfer. Look at job ads. Go to interviews. Pick a date to leave.
The victim is suddenly put in charge of a project: handling the incident.
A 2025 scoping review of how people resolve workplace bullying found things like asking the organization for help, social support, separating the bullied person from the bully, and getting professional advice. In that review, leaving the organization and separating from the bully stood out as responses with clearly good outcomes. But the number of studies and their designs have limits, and it does not mean everyone should just quit.[14]
A 2025 meta-analysis also found a positive link between being bullied at work and thinking about changing jobs.[15]
In short, getting out through the emergency exit does not mean the fire did no harm.
9. What is best for you and what the organization owes are separate questions
For an individual, building a way out is a strong move.
But if that turns into "if you don't like it, just quit," responsibility ends up pointing the wrong way.
An ideal organization would work like this.
It would not wait until the victim has gathered 100 pieces of evidence. It would not make a new hire face the abuser alone. It would not simply transfer the person who spoke up and call it done. It would let the people around them step in early. It would spot problems through several channels. It would make the people with the most power the easiest to check.
Your own ability to leave is armor. An organization's prevention and correction are the fire sprinklers.
Having armor does not give anyone permission to set fires.
10. 3000 years of survival strategy in five lines
Squash history down hard, and the weaker side has used much the same moves again and again.
- Build a way out.
- Don't stay alone.
- Reach a power above or outside the person in charge on site.
- Until then, don't force a head-on war you can't win.
And one more to add at the end.
- Even if you play it right, sometimes you still get worn down.
That is part of reality too.
When a pigeon flies away from a person, it does not hold a debrief about how badly it handled the risk today.
Keeping your distance from danger is very old biology.
What humans can add is savings, skills, mobility, relationships, institutions, evidence, and more than one source of income.
A strong person is not someone who beats every nasty person they meet.
A strong person is someone whose whole life is hard for one nasty person to hold hostage.
References (15)
- TV Asahi News, 2026-09-18 news.tv-asahi.co.jp
- Shikoku Electric Power Transmission & Distribution, 2026-09-18 yonden.co.jp
- Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, FY2023 Workplace Harassment Survey mhlw.go.jp
- Feijó FR et al. (2019). Risk Factors for Workplace Bullying: A Systematic Review pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Museo Egizio, Turin Strike Papyrus collezionepapiri.museoegizio.it
- U.S. National Park Service, Resisting Slavery home.nps.gov
- U.S. National Park Service, Enslaved People's Agency home.nps.gov
- Raven M. (2025). Servile migration and seigniorial reaction in England cambridge.org
- Hirschman AO. (1970). Exit, Voice, and Loyalty books.google.com
- Johnson MS, Lavetti K, Lipsitz M. NBER Working Paper 31929 nber.org
- Caldwell S, Oehlsen E. (2026). NBER Working Paper 35626 nber.org
- Cooper WE Jr, Frederick WG. (2007). Optimal flight initiation distance sciencedirect.com
- Verkuil B et al. (2015). Workplace Bullying and Mental Health journals.plos.org
- Gagnon K et al. (2025). Workplace bullying resolution scoping review pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Sun S et al. (2025). Workplace bullying and turnover intentions pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
