I was trying, for the first time, to operate the copy machine at 7 Eleven, and realized I needed to ask the clerk for help. If I understood correctly, be asked something about if I live in Taiwan. I said no and told him which country I lived in, but he wasn’t satisfied and asked again. I tried to say that I was staying at a hotel in Taipei, and he again was not satisfied, and started to draw a map of Taiwan (?!?!) on a scrap of paper, with a horizontal line dividing north and south, about a third of the way down from the top. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I said “sorry, thank you”, and walked 50 meters to the next 7 Eleven, where the clerk immediately activated the copy machine for me by doing something from the computer at her cash register.
Any idea what the first 7 Eleven clerk was talking about, with a map of Taiwan and some sort of residence related questions, just to make a copy? Has anyone experienced anything similar?
That’s how it should be: You go to the machine, start copying - if employee approval is needed, they’ll press a button and you should be good to go. Afterwards, you take your copies and the payment slip. Then you pay and leave.
I’m pretty sure the clerk did say, “This is Taiwan” while drawing the sketch. But what the heck is the horizontal dividing line, and what does it have to do with making a copy?
Now for full disclosure, I had just finished operating the same machine to make some PDF printouts that I had sent to ibon@ibon.com.tw. So maybe the clerk was trying to tell me to use the online service, but the online service is maybe limited to Taiwan residents…? Still doesn’t make much sense.
The annoying thing is that although I could use ibon for printing my PDFs, I also needed to make some copies of paper documents for which I didn’t have PDFs. Of course, I could take a photo of my paper documents with my phone and make a PDF myself, then upload it and print it – but that’s what the copy machine is for, right???
Certainly people can make copies of paper documents at convenience stores without having PDFs. I did this myself just a few days ago. In some ways it’s easier than with PDFs, because ibons will limit people to just three copies of a document at a time, IIRC.
I have no idea what caused the holdup at the first store you went to.
It’s now blatantly obvious that the clerk is passionate about explaining the operating area of the TPass for the Taipei City/Taipei County/Keelung/Taoyuan area to foreigners. He just seized the opportunity of you having to make photocopies to launch into a passionate discourse on the topic. If you had stayed longer, you might have also learned about the respective TPass options for Central and Southern Taiwan.
