Japanese store worker, 22, dies after being told by employer to reenter earthquake-hit building to return sales proceeds
https://mothership.sg/2026/08/japanese-store-dies-aeon-mall-explosion-after-company-president-sales-earthquake/Open linkView original on lemmy.zip
39 replies
”Looking back, the sales proceeds were not worth a human life”We just got our first charges in South Australia under our new Industrial Manslaughter laws.
Lachlan Carslake's life was apparently worth less than the cost of a $50 full face shield to Geoff and Winnie Philips.
Remember: Your employer, no matter how chummy and friendly is a piece of shit that will throw your life away for a few dollars. ALL EMPLOYERS WILL DO THIS, NO EXCEPTIONS.
It absolutely is not all employers lol, my last one, before I became an independent contractor working for them for extra flexibility, is more or less responsible for me still being alive.
Was in a very, very bad place and wasn't being a good employee whatsoever as a result, many companies would've fired me and it would've been completely justified financially and legally. They offered to help me out instead. If I'd been fired, I would've honestly considered offing myself.
company: pulls a new employee out of the box and blows off the packing peanuts
"oh yeah, here's $1M or whatever, price of doing business."
I'm amazed that that required hindsight
Why was the benefit of hindsight needed for that particular revelation
OMG that is an actual quote no waaaaay
I assumed this was a joke. It's an actual quote in the article. Holy cow.
“We are sorry for your loss. Please accept this 20% voucher (usable on purchases above 30k yen)”
Japan is still a heavily honor-based culture, yes?
So this can be the company's shameful new tagline for a while.
I feel so sorry for their family. Imagine losing your child because their employer didn't want to risk losing a single day's sales
It's easy to say all this in retrospect. Two families lost their children because of this, no amount of retrospective analysis and apologies can make them come back.
If the company truly cared for the human lives they needlessly destroyed, they'd have never sent them back into harm's way.
I am unsure why you want capitalism in this fascist nation.
This is exactly how capitalism works.
Capitalism in action. Thousands die every day for the profits of a few. This one is just more obvious than some of the rest
I mean to be fair it's not the company director; it's the store manager. Presumably the company's C-suite wouldn't want this to happen as it'd expose them to liability.Edit: See below.
Oh yeah you're right. Then yeah nevermind.
"Yeah looking back on it all maybe we shouldn't have murdered that worker to get a sale" is a crazy take.
So the employer murdered someone...
Oh nooo it's Japan, murder doesn't exist there. Just look at the stats 🙄
According to the article, two people died but it's very ambiguous who the second person was.
According to the article, 10 people died and 5 more were injured in the explosion.
"store worker dies"
Weird how people just die with no cause like that
The cause was an explosion.
Do a root cause analysis
Probably had to do something with the earthquake.
...but it might have also been a hilarious coincidence!
Like the earthquake caused a container of Mentos to fall into an open vat of Diet Coke?
Awful. Just fucking awful.
And they wonder why young people don't want to work over there anymore
Why would they even follow that order?
Japanese work culture is brutal. I'm sure that young person considered the option of what may have looked like a small risk compared to a garunteed loss of work.
Basically indoctrination then.
Why would I think there would be any danger after the earthquake ended unless the building was obviously damaged in some way?
The explosion was long enough after the earthquake to be a surprise. There were more people in and around the mall.
Sounds like the building wasn't considered unsafe. A number of other people were also killed or injured in the explosion, so I assume people had started to be allowed back in.
"Looking back the sales proceeds were not worth a human life... At the time though, it was totally worth risking it though..."
Profit motif.
So the other person who died was the person who ordered them to go back in?
Nothing will be learnt