In Japan, you can pay a startup $144 to quit your job on your behalf

• Japanese startup Exit will quit your job and confront your boss for you for $144.
• Employers "try to make you ashamed and guilty that you quit your job in less than three years," the cofounder told Al Jazeera.

Breakups are hard. They are even harder when you need to break up with your boss.

That's the exact sentiment one company is capitalizing on: For 20,000 Japanese yen, or $144, a Japanese startup called Exit will quit your job for you.

Exit's story began in 2017 when cofounder Toshiyuki Niino was trying to quit a job he was unhappy at, Al Jazeera reported.

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"When you try to quit, they give you a guilt trip," he told the news outlet.

"They try to make you ashamed and guilty that you quit your job in less than three years, and I had a very difficult time," he added.

Niino teamed up with his childhood friend Yuichiro Okazaki and created a company that now sees about 10,000 inquiries each year, per Al Jazeera.

Most of Niino's clients are men in their 20s. "The two major reasons I see are they are scared of their boss so they cannot say that they want to quit, and also the guilty feeling they have for wanting to quit," he told Al Jazeera.

Japanese culture — with deep-rooted practices for lifetime employment and the concept of "karoshi," or working oneself to death — sees success as a long-term commitment, the cofounder told the outlet.

"It seems like if you quit or you don't complete it, it's like a sin," he said. "It's like you made some sort of bad mistake."

In 2019, the average length of service in Japan across all industries was 12.4 years, according to Japan's health, labor, and welfare ministry. In comparison, the OECD average employment tenure was about 10 years in 2019.

Exit did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.