A drug store in Japan went viral a few days ago when employees tried to charge someone 10,000 yen ($68) for what they deemed illegal parking. Turns out the employees were never told their parking lot was a shared lot.
To share or not to share?
The issue occurred at the Matsubara Interchange Cosmos Drug Store in Osaka. X poster @drybear800 caused a ruckus when he posted a screenshot of a flyer that’d been left on his windshield in the Cosmos parking lot.
“Got this because I parked here and went to the ramen shop. It’s clearly marked as a shared parking lot!!!!”
The note read in part, “Our parking lot is reserved for customers. Per the warnings, violators are charged a 10,000 fine. After confirming, please proceed to the store counter.”
The tweet did 170,000 likes and over 17,000 shares as people debated the craziness of being charged 10,000 yen for going to eat some ramen.
“The money’s probably not even going on the books,” one commenter said, “but in the manager’s pocket.”
“My thoughts exactly,” the user replied.
One person posted a satellite photo of the parking lot with a diagram showing how the store believes the parking lot is divided between Cosmos and the neighboring ramen store. “The ramen lot’s crowded at lunchtime, so until now, I’ve always parked there,” OP grumbled.
If the lots are supposed to be separate, that’s not at all clear from the physical location. The stores share a signboard, and driving to the Cosmos parking lot requires driving through the ramen shop’s parking lot. While there’s a fence separating the two lots, there’s also a large, car-sized passage between them.
Cosmos throws employees under the bus
In response to the damage being done to the company’s reputation, Cosmos issued a press release apologizing for the incident. The company admitted that its lot and the ramen shop’s lot are intended to be shared lots.
“This occurred because the company manager and the district area manager did not communicate that this is a shared parking lot. This resulted from our deficiencies in employee education, and we are deeply regretful.”
The company said it will be retraining its employees across all of its stores on its rules around parking and will make sure these rules are clearly written in employee training materials.
It’s not clear that Cosmos’ notice is even legal. A legal expert interviewed by FNN said that a store can’t just collect a fine from customers by putting up a sign. However, it’s possible they could have sought damages for unauthorized parking if they’d taken the customer to court.
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