7-Eleven’s self-serve coffee machine seriously insults customers’ intelligence

How complicated can a cup of self-serve coffee be? Well, it depends who’s making it. Sometimes little kids and tech-phobic older folks might benefit from a little extra guidance, but your average coffee drinker isn’t too likely to get themselves into too much trouble when using a conbini coffee machine.

So it’s understandable that some people were, quite frankly, shocked and insulted by the plethora of “helpful” stickers plastered all over this 7-Eleven coffee machine. Who knew brewing a cup of machine-made joe required so many complicated steps?

Twitter user ryo_sasaki uploaded a snap of the offending coffee dispensing machine to Twitter in an attempt to vent his ire over what he felt was an unreasonable degree of hand-holding:

As well as helpfully putting the English labels for “Regular” and “Large” into katakana TWICE, “Ice coffee” is also helpfully explained with the Japanese word “AISU”, while “Hot coffee” becomes “HOTTO”. To be fair, while English is used this way a lot in Japan, especially in stores, we’re thinking that this was done to help out older patrons who aren’t so au fait with the English language, and need the Japan-ised versions. Things get a bit ridiculous, however, with the helpful stickers along the sides reading “For regular, push regular”, and “For large, push large”.

But wait – it gets worse! The machine is so concerned that you might accidentally push the wrong button, it warns you against it with a sticker reading, “please double-check before pressing so you don’t make a mistake” as well as two more warnings declaring, “We won’t be responsible if you accidentally order the wrong thing.”

Hmm, all this gets us thinking that perhaps the sticker-happy staff weren’t actually trying to coddle customers – this ridiculous machine might be a result of Japan’s growing “kureemu” (customer complaint) culture. Perhaps one too many short-sighted coffee addicts decided to give the store staff grief when they accidentally pushed the button for a regular coffee instead of a large one.

There’s a final sticker which reads: “Even if you accidentally order the right thing, please pay for it at the counter,” which suggests that the staff have also had problems with people accidentally ordering the wrong coffee and then leaving it on the side in disgust. Hmm, there’s definitely a story behind this bossy machine, and we’re betting it involves a lot of harried conbini workers having to deal with customers all up in their faces.

Those who reacted to the tweet generally didn’t stop to take the background behind the stickers into account, though…

“I understand. I love sticking things everywhere, too.”

“It’s really offensive to the eyes”

“7-Eleven employees are being really annoying with this!”

“This would put me off buying coffee”

“It would be quicker if the staff would just prepare the coffee for the customers”

“Where’s the convenience in this conbini?”

“Whatever, I’ll go to FamilyMart instead!”

“The staff should do it for you, like they do at Lawson.”

“Why is the R on the left and the L on the right???”

“This is gonna make it harder to get an alibi for my kureemu.”

Yikes! So, what do you think? Are these stickers overkill, or a necessity in today’s world?

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