7-Eleven Announces Schedule Changes
The 7-Eleven corporation announced today that all 7-Eleven stores will switch from being open 24 hours a day back to the original namesake schedule of 7am until 11 pm early next year. This move addresses the staffing needs and changing customer demographics of more than 78,000 stores worldwide. In a more controversial move, the company said that six months after that schedule change the company will rebrand itself to “11-Seven” and change the schedule again to a more leisurely, lackadaisical, and later time of 11am to 7pm. Employees celebrated the announcement by giving away Slurpees to every customer until company management intervened. More than 25 million Slurpees were given away in one day, with many customers unfamiliar with Slurpee-induced health issues needing emergency medical treatment (e.g., early on-set diabetes, depression, post-consumption energy drain, and cold-stimulus headache or “brain freeze”). Several lawsuits are pending. With other large stores considering similar scheduling changes, pundits have asked if this is a new era of the “inconvenience” store.