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The story
A manga depicting a supermarket manager flying into a rage at a female part-time employee became a hot topic on a 5ch thread. Questions poured in about how realistic the story actually was — from the ¥98 price tag on kyoho grapes (a premium Japanese grape variety) to whether anyone would really show up to buy pears in the middle of a typhoon. Meanwhile, running counter to what the manga apparently intended, plenty of comments ended up defending the manager as being in the right.
What people said
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I thought it was some old hag.
It's just a manga fishing for sympathy over "I used my quick thinking and the manager yelled at me anyway! Isn't that messed up!?"
Actually, that itself is kind of suspicious.
using bait online that people can argue with and dunk on is the marketing trend these days.
Even talentless manga artists figure they've got a shot with this method, so everyone's piling on.
98 yen for kyoho grapes is a massive loss,
and there's even a typhoon built in as an excuse…
That's exactly why it's 98 yen.
How much is OP getting paid?
Even if this is stealth marketing, nobody's buying anything because of it, so who cares.
"Fired for a Mere Part-Timer Overstepping Her Bounds — Hope This Supermarket's Fine Without Us Running the Place"
Could've at least gone with apples.
https://funakamome.com/i/w50BRN1.jpg
This is a really well-made manga — it pulls off self-introduction and scene-setting in a single panel.
Even as a sale price, 98 yen for kyoho grapes is a massive loss.
Can't help it, it's drawn straight from fantasy.
From the manager's perspective, a part-timer under his direct supervision is harder to explain away than an uncontrollable "baito tero" incident (viral misbehavior stunts pulled by part-timers).
Background and Key Points
Kyoho grapes are one of Japan’s signature premium fruit varieties — a large, sweet, purple table grape grown mainly in Yamanashi and Nagano — and they are priced accordingly: even on sale, a bunch rarely drops below ¥500, which is why commenters flagged the manga’s ¥98 price tag as implausible rather than dramatic. Japanese supermarkets also routinely run storm-prep sales, since customers do stock up ahead of typhoons, but stocking pears specifically during one struck posters as an odd narrative detail, possibly tied to a flyer promotion gone wrong. The debate also touches on “baito tero” (アルバイトテロ), a well-known Japanese phenomenon where a part-timer’s ill-judged post or stunt goes viral and damages a store’s reputation — a risk managers are trained to avoid, which is part of why commenters felt unilateral pricing decisions by a part-timer, however well-intentioned, were the real problem.
The thread didn’t split over whether the manager overreacted — commenters broadly agreed he didn’t — but over whether the manga’s premise itself holds up: the price, the weather-shopping logic, and the suspiciously convenient timing (a big pear shipment arriving right after) read to posters as engineered rather than observed.
What outside readers may miss is the genre this manga belongs to: Japanese social media is full of short, sympathy-baiting manga posted by amateur or semi-pro artists explicitly designed to provoke arguments and shares, a tactic several posters recognized and called out as marketing rather than storytelling — which is why so few actually defended the part-timer.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Image] Supermarket Manager Totally Loses It at Female Part-Timer wwwwwww.”
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