In Japan I think the phrase is called Window Gazing -- the employee / victim is provided an office with a nice view (presumably of things they could be doing in

In Japan I think the phrase is called Window Gazing -- the employee / victim is provided an office with a nice view (presumably of things they could be doing instead of draining resources from the company) and left to draw their own conclusion. In Australia many years ago -- early to mid 1990's -- we had a spate of large public organisations being privatised, with a predictably large number of HR casualties. There was typically a brief queueing system, as some token effort at redeployment was considered ... but in reality once you'd been side-moted to a Window Gazer role, you know precisely where you stood. The phrase used locally was 'being led into / sitting around in Flight Deck' -- that being the name of the frequent flyer awards club of one of our two major airlines at the time. (That airline's completely gone now -- make of that what you will.)