The most common gripe I hear from white-collar employees at Japanese companies is about the fluid meaning of "quitting time." The feeling is that even if a worker has finished their tasks for the day, it is considered bad form to leave the office before their colleagues or supervisors do. There are, of course, no established rules that dictate such conduct, and I hesitate to call it a custom but even after three decades of debate over the question of unnecessary overtime and lost productivity in the Japanese workplace, there is still great hesitancy on the part of employees to go home "on time."