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The story
A post about a boss who says “Act without being told — think for yourself!” but then scolds “Don’t do things on your own without permission!” the moment you actually act, struck a chord on 5ch.
The thread kicked off with someone pointing out “Isn’t that just contradictory?” and spiraled into a heated debate over how to interpret instructions at work and the generational gap behind it.
What people said
Isn't that messed up?
This. Any normal working adult can tell the difference.
What you should really tell them is "You don't need to come in tomorrow."
That's a case you'd lose 100% at the labor standards office.
Do exactly what you're told → get told to do more.
Do more than you're told → get told not to do things nobody asked for.
So what am I supposed to do?
That era is over…
I'd just hand them the soy sauce.
I'd go buy soy sauce together with them.
It's not over — that's exactly why bosses like the one in the thread title still exist.
You're just getting left behind.
The boss is saying OP's job is to pour the soy sauce into the little dish for them, not just hand it over.
Then just say so! And you know full well that the moment you pour it, they'll turn around and say "don't just pour soy sauce without asking."
So what? Accommodating your boss is just how a company works.
You're changing the subject lol
I'm 34, for the record.
I'm starting to feel bad for this store manager.
This is an exaggerated, fictional example, but it happens because the instructions were too vague. It's on the boss for slacking off and never explaining that "greeting customers" was part of the job.
This part-timer is definitely bad at their job, right?
What exactly did I get wrong here lol
The moment you start bringing up "the times have changed," you're blowing this single one-off exchange way out of proportion.
That's exactly what you're not getting. That logic used to fly back in the day. But it just doesn't work on kids today anymore. The education they grew up with is 180 degrees different from the Showa/Heisei era. So we have to update ourselves too.
There you go drifting back to the "times have changed" thing again — which is exactly why people have to accommodate you just to have a conversation.
Getting fired seems well deserved given the huge damages lol
Though the manager who wasn't there at opening AND didn't answer the phone probably got grilled hard by head office afterward too.
And now you switch to a strawman argument lol How cowardly can you get lol
Huh? So you want to get paid without ever gaining any work experience?
Let's lay this out first, shall we? You used a strawman argument, didn't you? YES or NO.
NO.
Because your labor is no different from when you were first hired, right? So why should your pay go up? That's my question. Answer it.
One more question. Companies pay the cost of providing training and experience — in other words, they're investing to increase your value. But you're denying that any value increase happens. So explain to me the logic behind why pay should still go up. And spare me the socialist logic, okay?
That's a lot of questions lol Maybe start by reconsidering your "attitude when asking questions." Is that really how someone asking a question should behave?
So you're admitting you can't even understand something that simple?
Maybe you should learn how to actually have a back-and-forth conversation lol
"Don't do things on your own" = don't make decisions alone that go beyond your authority.
In other words, it comes down to this:
"Think for yourself — but also figure out for yourself where the line is that needs checking first."
It's actually not contradictory at all, but the line is fuzzy, which is genuinely hard for people with developmental disorders (ADHD/ASD-type traits) to grasp.
Have you actually interacted with kids these days?
People probably tell you you're really good at articulating things, huh?
Background and Key Points
The friction in this thread sits on top of a specific piece of Japanese workplace vocabulary: hourensou (報連相, “report-contact-consult”), the etiquette drilled into new hires that they must check in with superiors at each step before acting on their own initiative. Bosses who tell staff to “think for yourself” are layering a Western-sounding proactivity ideal on top of a culture still built around hourensou and sontaku (忖度) — reading a superior’s unstated wishes rather than asking outright. That’s the tension the thread is circling without naming it directly.
The actual split isn’t over whether the boss’s phrasing is contradictory — nearly everyone agrees it sounds that way — but over whether it’s contradictory in substance. One camp (e.g. >>13, >>18) says a competent adult should just intuit where the line of authority is; the other (>>9, >>19, >>42) insists that line is invisible until you’ve already crossed it, making the instruction a trap rather than guidance. A second axis is generational: posters like >>78 argue younger employees raised on different norms genuinely can’t parse the same unspoken cues older workers took for granted, while others (>>85) read that as an excuse.
What outside readers will likely miss is the labor-law backdrop behind >>43’s aside about the labor standards office (労働基準監督署): Japan’s dismissal protections make firing an employee for insubordination or “no growth” extraordinarily difficult, which is why >>100’s demand to justify raises without firing anyone reads as more rhetorical than realistic. The thread also never clarifies whether the linked screenshots (>>49, >>72) are real incidents or the exaggerated hypotheticals >>58 says they are — worth treating skeptically either way.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nanademo Jikkyo G) thread “Boss: “You’re supposed to act without being told! Think for yourself and act!” Me: “Got it”“.
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