Japan's HR Team Cracked the Employee Email Problem. The Solution Was Underwear.

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In Japanese workplaces, the general affairs department (総務課, somu-ka) handles the unglamorous logistics that keep an office running—facility announcements, policy reminders, equipment notices. Their emails matter. Nobody reads them.

Frustrated by chronically low open rates, one general affairs team decided to run an experiment: does the subject line actually change anything? To find out, they sent an all-hands email with the subject "Underwear was found mixed in with the laundry (image attached)." The result: a 98% open rate—a new company record. The catch: it was entirely made up. No laundry incident. No underwear. Just data.

The original poster, who works at this company, shared the story online. The internet reacted accordingly.

Comments

Got a message from the general affairs team: “Underwear was found mixed in with the laundry (image attached)"—which definitely got my attention. Turned out it was a trap. Apparently they’d been struggling with low email open rates, so they ran a test to see whether the subject line makes a difference. The underwear email set a new record: 98% open rate. Everyone in this company is a complete degenerate.

総務課から「洗濯物の中に下着が混入してました(画像有)」と連絡が来て驚いたが、これは罠だった。普段メールの既読率が悪いことに悩んでいた総務課が、件名によって既読率が変わるか検証したらしい。ちなみに「下着が混入してました」は過去最高の既読率98%を記録。みんな変態すぎる。

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That’s basically just clickbait lol

インプレ稼ぎとなんらかわらねえw

I lost it at how brilliantly unhinged that idea was lol

奇策で笑っちゃいました！笑

If this had been a phishing email, the company would’ve been absolutely cooked…

これがフィッシングメールだったら大変なことになってましたね…

Yeah, completely cooked. Lol.

完全にアウトですね。。笑

It’s the classic “Heads up, this is a little spicy—” phenomenon. Say that and suddenly everyone’s paying attention.

ちょっとエッチな話ですが、と始めるとみんな読んじゃう現象ですね

And now we have real-world data proving everyone falls for it. Lol.

みんなそれに弱いのがリアルの世界でも分かりました。笑

I would open that with 200% confidence.

２００％開く自信ある

If my company tried this, link clicks would go through the roof lol. I’ve actually fallen for one of those internal phishing test emails before…😮‍💨 I had this whole thing where I was like, “I would never fall for that.” The shame when I clicked the link was real.💦

うちの会社もこれやったらリンク踏む奴が爆増しそうで笑う俺も前に会社からの罠メールに引っかかってリンク踏んだ事があってね……😮‍💨自分はこんなの絶対に引っかかること無いって自負があったからショックだったし恥ずかしかった〜💦

Mankind is foolish 🩲

人類は愚か🩲

That subject line reads exactly like a hilariously cursed spam email.

タイトルがクソ面白い迷惑メールやん

Maybe it’s not perversion—maybe people just got anxious that the underwear might be theirs? With a 98% open rate, that’s basically everyone, men and women alike.

変態じゃなくて万が一にも自分のじゃないかと不安になるんじゃないの？既読率98%なら男女問わずみんな既読してるわけだし。

Something similar came up during our phishing awareness training. No underwear involved, but still.

ウイルスメールの回避テストで似た様な事があった(下着では無いけど

It’s the exact same technique as starting a message with “Okay so this is a little risqué, but—”

これはエッチな話なんですが…で書き出すのと同じテクニック

Honestly, “An otter was found mixed in with the laundry” would probably also get 100% opens ｗｗ

カワウソが混入していました。とかでもみんな開くと思うｗｗ

Genius. I’m trying this at my company: “Feces were found in the elevator.”

その手があったか！うちの会社でも「エレベーターの中にうんこがありました」で試してみるよ

Wire it up that way and you’d have people running malware attachments in seconds too. 👿

そういう風に仕込むとマルウェア付きメールの添付も秒で実行しそう👿

If a phishing drill ever used this approach, the entire company would fail it instantly (

これ絶対ウィルス訓練メールとかでやられたら全滅だろ(

This reminds me of a phishing training exercise where they used the subject “Survey for Users of the Financial Accounting System.” Every employee who’d been suffering through that software took the bait without hesitation.

かつてフィッシングメールの訓練で｢財務会計システム利用者アンケート｣が流れ、日頃の鬱憤が溜まった社員一同爆釣れだったのを思い出した。

The “user survey” angle is genuinely effective: (1) disguised as a vendor, an external email address doesn’t raise flags; (2) a survey link on a different domain from the sender also doesn’t look suspicious; (3) target software that most people find frustrating and engagement goes up automatically. Whoever designed that drill was actually brilliant.

この｢利用者アンケート｣はかなり有効な手段で 1. 委託を受けた業者を装えば社外のメアドでも怪しまれない 2. アンケート回答用のURLがメール送信元と違うドメインでも怪しまれない 3. 大概の会社で大概の人が不便を感じるシステムを対象にすることで回答率が上がる考えた人、頭いいと思った。

Their engagement strategy is too good. Someone should move them from general affairs to PR.

インプレ稼ぎ戦略が上手すぎるので総務から広報にシフトチェンジいただいた方が

Who are the 2% that didn’t open it no matter what? They’re the real freaks.

何があっても見ない2%のど変態は何者なのだろう

I genuinely want to know what the 2% know that the rest of us don’t.

その2％の賢者の癖が知りたい

Honestly I respect those 2% who still didn’t open it.

それでもまだ読まない2%すき

Maybe they saw the sender and thought, “This looks like an accidental send, or maybe the account was hacked—if I click that I’ll get a virus.” The 2% might actually be the ones with the highest IT literacy lol.

送信元を見て「これは誤送信、ないしは乗っ取りか？開いたらウィルスじゃね？」とワザと削除したのかも？却ってITリテラシーの高い2%だったかもしれませんよ笑

Spam emails have subject lines just like that, so I’d just delete it without opening.

迷惑メールにも似たようなのあるから読まずすてる

Once you do this, everyone gets desensitized—did no one think the open rates might drop even lower than before? Haven’t they heard of the boy who cried wolf?

こういう事やるとさ、みんな慣れるから以前よりも既読率下がると考え無いのかな？狼少年の寓話を知らんのか。

I can already see it: everyone builds up a tolerance, and now the emails that actually matter start getting ignored. 🤣

だんだん耐性がついて本当に緊急だったり、見てほしいメールも逆にスルーされる未来が私には見えました🤣

My take

Genuinely wondering if this should count as headline inspiration for this site.

#Funny #Culture

Source & translation note

Comments loosely translated for tone. Reactions collected from Togetter and X threads.

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