Honesty, sincerity, and a bit of creativity can go a long way in solving mistakes.

Walking into a 7-Eleven store in Japan is like entering an amusement park; you’re not sure what awaits you, but it’s definitely going to be something good. After all, the convenience store once surprised customers with awesome 3-D maneuver gear from giant-slaying anime Attack on Titan.

But when Japanese Twitter user @low_sugar strolled over to the food section of one 7-Eleven shop, he didn’t expect to see a picture of a cute anime girl reduced to tears.

▼ What in the world…? (Translation below)

“We slipped up and made the mistake of ordering 87 meat sauce pasta lunches. That’s why our store’s aggressively promoting them. Please…! Please help us out…!”

To the left of the message was an illustration of what could only be the 7-Eleven employee responsible for the overstocking, who begged, “Please help us out! The meat sauce is delicious….”

While meat sauce pasta lunches are always readily available at most convenient stores, they don’t exactly sell very fast. The presence of other delicious goodies like omurice, bento, breads, onigiri rice balls, and even sushi means that customers are spoiled for choice, which makes clearing 87 units of pasta in a single day all the more daunting.

Although some Japanese netizens were convinced by the plea, some thought it was a marketing ploy:

“It’s cute. It makes me want to buy them.”
“The illustration’s too cute and too good to be true.”
“If the real employee cried, I would definitely buy them.”
“So being artistic is necessary for people seeking part-time work now, huh?”

One commenter who worked in rival convenience store FamilyMart assured others that such errors in stock replenishment do occur. His colleague made the same oversight in ordering the multi-layered baumkuchen cake snack but managed to sell the excess inventory by writing a heartfelt apology to customers.

▼ Perhaps the best way to fix the problem is to kneel and ‘fess up.
(Tanslation below)

“Please help me, customer. I placed an order of six baumkuchen but it turned out to be 60. Please buy some of them. The baumkuchen’s layers peel off so beautifully that it feels good to do so. I hope those who love tearing them off one by one will buy it.”

While selling excess pieces of baumkuchen is arguably easier than large dishes of meat sauce pasta, both still require the goodwill of customers. And as we’ve seen, the best way to get people to help you out of desperate convenience-store-related situations is to simply ask them.

Source: Twitter/@low_sugar via Hachima Kiko
Featured image: Twitter/@low_sugar