[dimitar]

According to his next post:

What I didn’t say is that it was the last day of my summer internship. The next summer they invited me back again. Everyone understood it was a mistake, but by officially firing me, someone had been punished … :)

[basicallydan]

Well, that clears it up - and it's quite a clever way to tick the arbitrary "someone took the fall" box.

[apples2apples]

Itoh should have been fired.

[nathanb]

Why? How did Itoh demonstrate that the company would be better without him than with him?

[apples2apples]

He was the one who was more responsible for the incident than the intern.

[HCIdivision17]

As acdha above notes, he was. But the author incredulously blurted out that he himself had hit the button when he was told his supervisor had been fired over the event (maybe ten minutes later).

The reality was that his boss took the fall for him, which is awesome and terrible. Much of the discussion in this thread has been a tempest in a teapot due to missing context.

His supervisor took the fall to protect him, he was fired on paper, but it was his last day anyway, and he did actually get to work at the embassy again, as it really was a simple innocent mistake.

Though certainly one with serious, long-lasting consequences.

Edit: http://globis.jp/774-2

[nathanb]

OK, probably I'm just dumb and have poor reading comprehension (and will get downvoted again for asking a simple question), but can you explain why Itoh was responsible?

It seems that the translators could have saved their work more regularly -- perhaps they hold some of the blame. Obviously the poster could have thought a bit before hitting the button -- he holds all the blame for the resetting of all the terminals. How is Itoh "more responsible"?

[apples2apples]

My reasoning is that Mr. Itoh put an intern in charge of a system that could cause major damage. It's like giving the intern keys to your AWS console and shitting your pants when he terminates all you EBS root disks that you didn't back up.

Mr. Beck wasn't culpable because he didn't understand the full effects of his actions or the tension of the current situation. Ioth should not have let Beck in the door that morning and he should not have given that much power to the intern.

[Scuttles]

Makes sense (and is convenient). The people at the embassy had to have someone to blame, and report back to their superiors that they had dealt with the situation appropriately.