I hate: Drink Machines
I hate: Drink Machines
hate drink machines.
You know the ones – in fast food restaurants. A $1.80 cup of soda only costs about 5 cents. Fast Food conglomerates know that it costs more in time and order line disruption to have a counter serf fetch it than to have you do it yourself. So they’ve opened up their soda bar like a self-serve gas station. You pay your money for a cup, and you can guzzle down all you want – you’ll die before they talk a loss.
What I don’t like about this is that the average consumer (I use that as a curse for corpses who don’t realize they are dead yet) are suddenly faced with the monumental tasks of identifying what drink they like. Like, how hard can this be? The selections are right there on the machine, not even words but icons (yes, just like the one on your t-shirt). But people step up to the plate and they pause three feet short, suddenly inert before this monolithic decision. You aren’t picking health care, you’re picking a drink. Even if you pick wrong, even if piss comes out of the nozzle, you can pour it into the ice trough, wash your cup out with water (or lemonade, ferchristsakes) and pick something else.
It shouldn’t bother me, but things I hate are generally things others do to me. And in this case, these slowwits have gotten to the nozzle rack a step before me. And there they stand. And there they quibble.
And if there is anything worse than this, its the leadheads who, after fussing over the amount of ice and drink selection, top it off by standing there, taking a long slow sip while you loiter in arid drinklessness. Listen, you aren’t ladling cooling water out of a well after a hike across the Alps – you’re getting a cokacoka at McBurgers. Fill your cup and move along!
And if there is something I hate, really really hate, it’s those new machines, the 3D printers of the carbonized condiment world, the massive drink machines with a dozen touch-screen choices on the front menu panel, all leading to another dozen, and so on, a menu deeper than the phone maze of your bank. Image a monkey sitting at the controls of an F16, scratching its hairy head with one limp paw, fingering the missile-launch button with the other. All while I stand on the ladder outside the canopy, knocking on the glass, yell how others would like a drink to go with their rapidly cooling meal, thanks.
Drink machines. I hate ’em.