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The story
A poster whose commuter allowance fraud was uncovered at work and who faced disciplinary action started a thread on 5ch’s Nanjo Jikkyo G (Everything Live) board.
It turned out the poster had been claiming the allowance for highway commuting while actually using surface roads the whole time. The punishment ended up being just a verbal warning plus a hit to their bonus review, but going forward all employees will be required to submit their ETC (toll pass) records. The thread filled up with reactions like “at least you didn’t get fired,” alongside a stream of corporate-slave grumbling about unused paid leave and forced overtime under the disability-hiring program.
What people said
At least you didn't get fired.
At my company, the truly bad stuff the higher-ups pull is the stuff that actually gets covered up 😌
Slept, woke up, and I've only recovered to about 65 HP 🤮
That's exactly why commuting costs are baked into social insurance premiums, yet so many people still complain about it.
I'd registered my commute as highway use and got paid for it, but it came out that I was almost always taking surface roads… There'd been no checks for years, so suddenly demanding ETC records out of nowhere clearly means someone snitched.
Sorry about that 😏
Can't be helped, time to move on.
I'll make sure to forward this log in as a reply too 😁
Sounds like the kind of thing that gets posted up in front of the cafeteria.
Nice, I'm jealous. Honestly, I don't see the problem with taking surface roads to commute somewhere technically far enough to justify the highway. Commuting costs should be based on the distance from home to office, not the actual route taken.
That's basically workplace harassment at this point.
Once you get labeled as someone who commits that kind of fraud, promotions slow down and you'll get shipped off to a subsidiary the first chance they get. If the verbal warning is the kind written into official regulations, it stays on your record permanently as a disciplinary mark — you'd be better off just changing jobs.
Watch anime on Netflix.
A true corporate slave clocks out but doesn't actually leave, hanging around acting like they want to chat with coworkers.
Hard pass — low pay, brutal labor, and insane power harassment and sexual harassment (speaking from experience).
Sounds like she's hitting on you.
Fudging commuting expenses is something pretty much everyone does, right?
More recently there was a home care worker who abandoned a severely disabled elderly man to go play pachinko. Sounds like there's a bunch of other offenses too.
Can't relate, I'm issued a company car. Though FYI, my company's a mess — the dashcam has GPS built in and literally anyone can view the footage.
Getting issued a car is way too generous… though having a camera at all is already unpleasant.
If you take a day off every time you're mentally cornered, you'd have to take one off every week.
I was forced to prep for my next business trip and had to stay home waiting for the paperwork to arrive. Of course, the paperwork never got issued by the deadline. Thanks to that, I won't be able to use up my paid leave before it expires. What a joke.
Wouldn't things actually run smoother without the new hire around? I spent every day cleaning up messes until I got demoted, and my performance review tanked because of it.
The ones who keep getting stuck cleaning up after everyone else — that's the real "weak link" here.
Background and Key Points
Japan’s commuter allowance (通勤手当) is a standard, largely tax-free benefit most companies pay on top of salary, calculated from a registered commuting route and method — train pass, mileage, or highway toll — rather than actual spending. Employees self-report the route when hired and rarely have it checked again, which is exactly the gap the original poster exploited by declaring a highway commute while driving surface roads for years. ETC (Electronic Toll Collection) is Japan’s automated highway toll system; every pass generates a digital log tied to a car’s ETC card, so once a company starts requiring those printouts, a route lie becomes nearly impossible to sustain — which is why the new company-wide ETC policy reads to posters as a direct, embarrassing consequence of one person’s case rather than a routine audit.
The thread doesn’t split over whether the fraud happened, but over how serious it actually is: several posters treat inflating commuting costs as a near-universal, victimless fudge everyone does, arguing pay should reflect straight-line distance rather than the literal route driven, while others frame it as exactly the kind of infraction that quietly wrecks a career.
What outside readers likely miss is the weight of a formal “verbal warning” in a Japanese seniority-driven firm: unlike a shrug-off in many Western workplaces, if it’s logged under internal regulations it becomes a permanent disciplinary mark, the kind that stalls promotion and can get someone quietly reassigned to a subsidiary — which is why a commenter suggests changing jobs is the more realistic fix than waiting it out.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Nanjo Jikkyo G) thread “[Sad News] This Corporate Slave Is Spewing His Guts 🤮.”
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