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The story
A case reported by Nikkei about a young employee — a graduate of a top-tier national university’s graduate school — being fired has become a hot topic on 5ch. According to the article, the employee pounded on his desk with a plastic bottle and burst into tears during a meeting with his boss, and used his company-issued smartphone to secretly photograph coworkers and send them insulting messages. On the thread, opinions clashed between those suspecting a developmental disorder behind the behavior and those framing it as a social-skills problem that credentials alone can’t measure; some even defended his stubborn insistence on “how things should be,” and the discussion spiraled into debates about generational gaps and so-called “credential laundering” (gakureki ronda — using a prestigious grad school to dress up an otherwise unremarkable academic record).
Highly educated young employee insists on “how things should be” before doing the job, says “the company is wrong” after getting fired
Yureta Tenbin (a handle meaning “Wavering Scales”)
October 2, 2026, 10:00
Source: x.com / Original post here
What people said
Maybe it's due to the labor shortage, but they rush to develop new hires so hard that people burn out and quit early.
One of my fellow new hires quit after just six months because of it.
Also, the power harassment and sexual harassment from bubble-generation bosses (those 40+) is seriously awful.
"You don't even know that?"
"You're useless."
"I'm only telling you once."
Those guys aren't even human.
They should hurry up and get laid off and go work in some other labor-starved industry.
Copypasta? Bait? Well, speaking up myself — about six years ago the breakdown was:
Bubble generation: 50s and up
Baby-boomer Jr. generation: 40s and up
Yutori (relaxed-education) generation: 20s and up
Even with a grad degree, if you're Yutori generation, maybe it's no surprise you can't keep up.
"You don't even know that?"
"You're useless."
"I'm only telling you once."
You're gonna let that hurt you?
You're pretty weak as a living creature, huh.
The bubble generation is 55 and older.
Below that is the ice-age generation (hit by the 90s job-market crash).
45 and under is Yutori.
But then again, maybe HR got fooled too.
Excerpt from the subscriber-only article:
>> The employee secretly photographed coworkers with his company-issued smartphone, and wrote up insults to send to third parties.
>> He pounded on the desk with a plastic bottle and burst into tears during a meeting with his boss, and when warned in the workplace he'd shout and protest, which left those around him frightened.
>> "He's literally running at full throttle, and shows no sign of stopping."
>> The email where his boss pleaded with HR about the situation had a huge pile of work-unrelated messages from the employee attached to it.
Sounds like a mental illness.
Even if you graduate from a good university and land a good job, there's no guarantee your brain won't break..
This (Re: #21) is just one small part of a whole bunch of stuff that happened.
Uh… what?
What's Nikkei's goal in turning such a bizarre one-off case into an article?
Just going by that part, his insistence on "how things should be" — asking "why does our company even do business this way?" — doesn't seem all that wrong to me.
Well, I'm sure there was a ton of other stuff going on besides that, though.
I bet the problem was there was no "here's how it should be, so let's change it that way" — just endless nitpicking (down to the millimeter) about the current state.
Sometimes "let's just move forward for now" matters in a workplace too.
Depending on how you use them, people like this can actually be capable.
"Fools and scissors are useful if you know how to use them" (an old Japanese saying)…
but honestly, it'd be quicker to just hire someone else lol
Scissors that end up shredding everyone around them
are too dangerous to use.
More like his natural intelligence (jigashira) is pretty bad.
His natural intelligence is almost certainly way better than yours —
it's just that the direction he's pointing that intelligence in is completely off.
I don't think there's really such a thing as "credential laundering" for science/engineering at a former Imperial University —
the grad school entrance exam is actually harder than the undergrad one.
depends how far the rule violations went, I guess —
but realistically, if they transfer him to sales and that doesn't work either, they just end up keeping him on in general affairs forever.
Don't just dump him on the admin department like that.
I've had someone like that dumped on me before.
It wasn't just that he didn't work — like, he'd forget his PC password and get locked out, so I'd have to handle wiping and resetting the whole PC.
He couldn't even fill out his timesheet properly, and he dragged everyone around him down in every possible way.
Really? About 30 years ago, a third of the University of Tokyo's graduate engineering program came from outside schools.
It was way easier than the undergrad entrance exam, and nobody from the same university who wanted to advance ever failed it.
Might've been because so few people wanted to go on to grad school, a holdover from the bubble era, though.
I thought it was common knowledge that going on to grad school is basically assumed for science and engineering majors — why are you lying like that lol.
Advancing to grad school is just the default for science and engineering.
I was in a former-Imperial-University science program about 30 years ago, and the grad school entrance exam had close to a 2x competition ratio.
Out of 7 people I knew, 3 passed.
Among the 4 who didn't, some gave up from the start and didn't even take the exam, though.
I mean, I'd be a little annoyed if someone thought they understood the whole world just from a part-time job,
but yeah, you do need to realize there are way more clueless idiots out there than you'd expect.
We've got new hires coming in who probably never had a part-time job, and they can't even say a proper greeting lol.
It's ridiculous having to teach a 22-year-old that from scratch —
it's something you learn as a high school freshman.
It might just be a story about this one guy being messed up, or conversely, it might be a story about how Japanese companies still can't make proper use of highly educated talent — only knowing how to use people the same way regardless of whether they're high school or university grads.
At a major materials manufacturer, the people around him are probably on the same level too, so I'd guess it's less "the company can't use him" and more that this guy is just an outlier.
At a major materials company, the science-track staff are mostly grad-school grads from former Imperial Universities or other top schools, so credential-wise it's probably about the same or even the people around him are a notch higher.
Judging by the string of messed-up behavior listed in the article, I'd guess it's some kind of personality disorder.
but that's because the executives doing the hiring over there
are themselves the socially maladjusted type.
That's exactly why they've become companies that rule the world lol
Elon Musk too lol
Even if you're totally [censored], you can still be king as long as you deliver results.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
In Japan, the legal doctrine against abuse of the right to dismiss (kaiko-ken ran’yō) sets a high bar for firing someone over poor performance or misconduct, meaning that even when problem behavior like what’s described in the article continues, those on the ground often can’t act on it right away. Comments on the thread like “there’s no way they can actually fire him” or “they’ll just have to keep him on in general affairs forever” reflect this underlying structure. On the other hand, posts linking the behavior — secretly photographing coworkers, spreading insults, bursting into tears and pounding the desk — to a developmental disorder stood out, but it’s worth noting that neither the Nikkei article nor the 5ch posts offer any actual diagnosis; it remains pure speculation. Also, the debate over whether this counts as “credential laundering,” centered on how difficult the grad school entrance exam is, doesn’t really hold together, since posters are drawing on different eras and universities with different underlying assumptions.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and summaries of the 5ch (News Express+) thread “Highly Educated Young Female Employee, Graduate of a Top-Tier National University Graduate School, Highly Educated Young Employee Insists on “How Things Should Be” Before Working, Says “The Company Is Wrong” After Being Fired.”
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