How a Starbucks Barista Saved This Man from Certain Humiliation

You don’t need to know what the hell a Fizzio™ is to understand that being the world’s largest coffee retailer isn’t as easy as selling some Norah Jones collector CDs or emblazoning your coffee-bean bags with fair-trade rainbows. Global coffee behemoth Starbucks is no stranger to negative publicity, whether it derives from ill-advised attempts to explore race relations or from scandalous allegations of purposefully misspelling customer’s names.

That being said, the seemingly paragon-esque actions of one Starbucks barista in the land of Nippon might just change the way you think about the iconic java jockeys. Then again, it might not.

Japanese Twitter user @tetsuroooo took to the social media platform to voice his delight at the way a recent trip to Starbucks went down. “Starbucks has been very nice to me recently,” reads the post—which has since been retweeted almost 83,000 times. Alongside the slightly enigmatic comment is a picture of a seemingly run-of-the-mill Frappuccino cup with a short note in place of the customer’s name.

According to RocketNews24, the cup in questions reads: “Chaku aite masuyo” or “Your fly is open.”

But even though @tetsuroooo took the message well, we got to thinking—and what we are thinking about is double-edged favors and thanks-but-no-thanks gifts.

People of the Internet, we ask you this: Is it really a kindness to tell someone their fly is open if you do so by emblazoning the statement on their Starbucks cup?

Whatever happened to a whisper, Starbucks? Or a lifted eyebrow and a glance in the right direction? At least they didn’t misspell @tetsuroooo’s name.