[imagesource: Kenji Kawamoto]

You are guaranteed to see a passed-out salaryman on a typical night in a Japanese city.

Some hard-working people manage to get home after their company drinking parties, with cries of “Otsukarasamadeshita!” (“You’ve worked hard!”), but others don’t make it to their door and instead find a comfy spot on the asphalt.

You can see this phenomenon captured by the likes of Shibuya Meltdown on Instagram – it’s a thing.

While this is relatively acceptable in the streets of Tokyo and Osaka, where businessmen wake up with all their things to just head off to work again, sometimes it doesn’t work out so seamlessly.

One man in Osaka’s prefectural Amagasaki city woke up with a lot more to contend with than just a hangover after a particularly gruelling Tuesday night bender.

The man lost a USB flash stick with the personal data of Amagasaki’s 465 177 residents, including their dates of birth, addresses, bank account numbers, and tax details, per VICE.

CNN reports that the flash drive also contained information on households receiving public assistance such as childcare payments.

The man’s company had been hired by the city’s government to find out who in the city was eligible for tax exemptions:

It added that though the employee had been authorized to access the data, he had not been given permission to transfer it onto a separate electronic device.

The statement also criticized the employee for failing to erase the data from the flash drive after completing his work at the city office, and for carrying it personally instead of using a more secure transportation method.

Of course, there were official bows of apology:

“We deeply apologize to the citizens of Amagasaki, the city of Amagasaki, and all concerned for the inconvenience caused by the loss of important information entrusted to us,” the company said in a statement to local press.

After all that, the flash drive was found on Friday near an apartment building that the man vaguely remembers passing during his night out.

The USB was encrypted and authorities said no data leak has been confirmed yet.

Phew.

[sources:vice&cnn]