On September 14, the fuzoku shop Olive Garden announced on its blog that it would not honor patrons hailing from TEPCO — in fact, it joked that the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima had sapped some of their virility in any case.
The reason for the ban goes back to an incident that occurred two days prior. “At around 10:30, a customer ordered the 70-minute course for 13,000 yen,” the shop manager tells the tabloid. “Upon exiting, he asked that no name be listed on the receipt. However, this shop doesn’t allow that kind of thing. After a second request for a name was made, he said, ‘TEPCO.'”
Receipts without a shop name are often arranged for customers wishing to make a claim for entertainment expenses and not reveal the nature of the services rendered to their company’s accounting department.
A professional accountant says that the legality of the matter is up to interpretation. “Strictly speaking, this is tax evasion and the company should be subject to additional taxes,” the source says. “If receipts from the same shop are submitted numerous times, the tax office will confirm with the shop if the charges are legitimate — but it is something of a gray zone.”
In spite of that — and that fact that office workers on business trips will frequently request that a name not appear — the manager of Olive Garden became angered as he scrawled the 東京電力 characters on the paper.
“It doesn’t matter if he was a real TEPCO employee or not,” says the manager. “In the future, it is best that TEPCO employees not indulge in sexual services and entertainment as a company expense. Until the nuclear power situation at Fukushima has been resolved completely, TEPCO employees don’t have the right to expense such things.”
Yukan Fuji, of course, wonders if the customer was indeed a member of TEPCO. The daily says that it doesn’t make sense for TEPCO to have a presence in Sapporo at this time of year. The promotion desk at Hokkaido Electric Power indicated that it was not aware of any meetings between TEPCO and its firm.
TEPCO’s headquarters admitted that it was aware of the ban in Susukino, but could not offer any comment on that specific matter as details were not available.
“We deal with receipts in a strict manner,” explains a representative of TEPCO. “Therefore, such an occurrence is not possible.”
