Wait no one is questioning the fact the company only had one brand new plate, or that the one plate costs the rough equivalent of 10,000 dollars? Who buys a freaken 10G plate and just lends it to the company staff to use? Lol
I’m pretty sure that it’s supposed to be an ornamental plate (possibly an antique at that price), that she knocked over. It’s a bit of a stretch to assume that it’s actual dishware, especially since she was in what looks like a conference room.
Lots of people have given an answer like this. I had not expected that many people would have failed to "get" this--this is a classic, famous Japanese scam that has appeared in many, many manga. The way it works is, you have some piece of ceramic--plate, vase, whatever--which could plausibly be an antique worth a bunch. But it isn't, it's a cheap mass-produced knockoff worth 100 yen. You put it somewhere it's easy to knock over, or you maneuver yourself in front of someone in a hurry and have them "knock it out of your hands", et cetera. Then you shake them down for money and/or services, falsely claiming it's massively valuable. It seems to be the oldest con in the Japanese book.
In this case I don't think the president set it up. But probably upon seeing the broken plate she had this moment of inspiration, like, "I can do the plate scam! Whoa, for real, she's the type to fall for it too!" and went for it.
