People are defending him saying that the criticism stems simply from the fact that he's a man, when the reality is that he's acting as if he can decide for Saho, as if she owes him something for his two years of one-sided flirting. Plus, taking into account the cultural context (as a commenter described perfectly earlier), the fact that he is a man probably does play a role in this, and it's possible the situation would have played out differently if he were a woman. (Of course, given Saho's personality, it could very well have gone exactly the same, but at least there wouldn't be all this —unintentional— pressure from her environment).
I feel like you're reading the narrative backwards.
No one's saying he should get a pass on his pushiness "just because he's a man", we're saying that the cultural context explains his behaviour without intrinsically making him a bad person.
He doesn't "act like he can decide for Saho" at all, he just thinks his feelings are reciprocated because she's never been anything but positive towards him even after he's literally said outright that he wants to be her boyfriend. The fact that he's been allowed to flirt with her so explicitly for two years without getting rejected even once has simply convinced him that she is interested just hesitant about his sincerity, and consequently that what he needs to do is be as frank and direct as humanly possible. (Which is why he's so direct during the confession, he thinks that's what she wants him to do.)
Though yes, he's too touchy with her during the confession, but it's not because he's an asshole. He just misread her signals and thought they were closer than they really were.
Furthermore, no one was saying that his behaviour would've been more accepted if he was a woman in-universe, we were referring to the discussion section here on the forums. That if a woman had behaved like that to another woman, a lot of the people who are calling this man creepy would've been much more accepting of the exact same behaviour simply because it was yuri. (Which isn't a strange bias, this is a place to look for yuri after all.)
I feel that comparing the situation in this manga to the real-life situation of "pressure in the workplace for waitresses" is somewhat misguided. Everyone involved seems like good friends and I don't get the impression that the author intended for the possible pressure of being in their workplace environment to be relevant to the story or the characters' decisions.
As in, I don't think her indecisiveness in rejecting him had much really to do with feeling pressured by her workplace to not be rude to a customer. I think she was just really dense and truly didn't think he was serious with it despite the very obvious and direct approach.
I feel like this is a good summary of the arguments being made. No outright bad people in this manga.
