Seriously? No. Seriously. Who came up with these god-awful inventions? They're the worst. I can't stand them. I will admit that I was enchanted for the first five seconds after seeing one for the first time, ironically in the same place that I encountered the ones this weekend, but that childlike wonder was smashed shortly and I realized how absolutely atrocious they are.
So why do I hate these monstrosities? They're fun, right? It's like playing a little game to get your soda! Absolutely correct. They are fun. They are entertaining.
THAT IS PROBLEM #1: Every last idiot gets up to the machine and suddenly they're in this magical little world of wonder where they can mix and match drinks, add extra flavoring, and otherwise just stand there and consume time and halt progress. What are you doing? Pick a flavor and move on, idiot. You're not customizing your RPG character! Drink machines are already a bottleneck for idiots. It's bad enough when the options are just regular drink flavors and all you have to do is push your cup against a lever to get the soda. Now you have to wait for people to scroll through their options and find what they want. This brings me to...
PROBLEM #2: These stupid things necessarily limit themselves to serving 1 person at a time. It's bad enough that you have to go through like 3 decision trees to get to the point in the menu when you can make it dispense soda, but on top of that each machine can only serve one person at a time. This isn't the case with a good old-fashioned soda fountain. If the person currently using the machine isn't inconsiderate or wearing a sign that says, "Wide Load," you should be able to, AT THE VERY LEAST, get your ice while they're getting soda. Optimally, you should both be able to get soda simultaneously and still have room for 1 more person to start getting ice, provided that you don't want the same flavor as the first person. That's a potential for 3 people to be using the same drink machine at the same time. Even with that ridiculous potential for efficiency, most places typically have 2 drink fountains. That's upwards of 6 people that could be using the drink stations at the same time. No such thing could EVER occur with these things. AT BEST, you can expect 1 and a maximum of 2 people to be getting soda simultaneously and that's only if the restaurant actually went all out and bought two of these. They're 1/3 as efficient, assuming that a person knows what they want (which is a generous assumption [see problem #1]) and encounters no obstacles picking their flavor and dispensing it, and approximately 60% more expensive than a regular coke machine, according to Wikipedia. I have seen like no effort whatsoever to make these things serve more than one person so I see no reason to pretend that this isn't one of the biggest problems with these.
PROBLEM #3: They're self-contained. "Why's that a problem, Ben?! That makes them better!" No it doesn't. Have you seen the workings of a regular soda fountain? What you interact with is basically a small interface; it's the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The rest of the machine is much more extensive. There are a bunch of hoses running from the soda machine to a big rack of syrup that feeds into it and also to a giant CO2 tank that it uses to carbonate the water. Bear with me. All of these other parts being located elsewhere is a great thing. It allows for the machine to pull from much larger supplies of syrup. I'm sure you've noticed that these Freestyle machines are always out of the most popular flavors. On a regular machine, it's not that big of a deal. Usually, there are multiple spouts for the most popular flavors because they're fed by multiple giant syrup reservoirs and you've probably never even encountered a regular soda machine that's run out of CO2. That's because it's fed by a tank that's literally 6 feet tall. The freestyle machine uses tiny syrup containers and tiny CO2 canisters in order to remain self-contained. If one of these runs out of syrup, that's alright; you can still get another drink. If it runs out of CO2, it's done. All of the carbonated drinks are greyed out and you can only get HiC or Powerade. If you're lucky and there are two machines, you get to wait in line for 20 minutes while every last imbecile bumbles their way through the drink selections like they're filling out their eHarmony profile or something else that idiots consider equally as important. If you're unlucky and there is only one machine, you're not getting a drink because it's highly unlikely that there's an employee in the store who knows how to change the CO2. On top of that, these things hold like barely any ice so there also always out of that too. And like we've established, this all happens frequently since these things are self-contained. But wait, there's more!!
PROBLEM #4: There's only one spout. It doesn't matter what flavor you get, it's going to taste bad. Why? It just ran through the same spout as every single other drink that anyone ever selected on that machine. Why did this sound like a good idea? Was this machine pitched by people who have to clean up the old machines to people who have to clean up the old machines? You don't take your chip and dip it in salsa and then queso. You don't use your salad fork to eat your entree without licking is off. I don't really know what else to say about this problem because of how obvious it is that it's a problem so I'm going to move on to the last (for now) and probably the biggest problem that I have with these machines...
PROBLEM #5: It's touchscreen. This is so blindingly obvious to me. I'm baffled... absolutely baffled that nobody considered this when they were designing it. You don't have your food yet but you're kind of thirsty so you go to get your drink. You use the touchscreen drink machine without thinking twice, take a few sips, and then get your food and eat it. Do you see the problem here? Oh, you don't see it? Well let me spell it out, friend:
EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO GOT A DRINK AT THAT RESTAURANT BEFORE YOU ALSO TOUCHED THAT SAME SCREEN WITH THEIR DISGUSTING HANDS. EVERY SINGLE LITTLE KID, WITH THE MUD AND FILTHY STICKINESS COATING THEIR BACTERIA-RIDDEN HANDS, TOUCHED THE SAME SCREEN THAT YOU DID.
They didn't wash their hands before using the machine. You didn't wash your hands before using the machine. They didn't wash their hands after using the machine. You didn't wash your hands after using the machine. WHATEVER ILLNESS ANYONE HAD THAT USED THE MACHINE BEFORE YOU, YOU HAVE JUST CONTRACTED. CONGRATULATIONS, COCA-COLA, YOUR MACHINES ARE SPREADING COMMUNICABLE DISEASES.Are you happy? ARE YOU HAPPY? What about you, everyone who pretends these monstrosities aren't really that bad? Are YOU happy? I hope so. I really do. Thank you so much for your stupid progress. We really needed it. We really needed machines that take longer to use (it's exponentially worse for idiots, children, and the technologically challenged), only serve 1 person at a time, run out of everything constantly, dispense bad-tasting mystery soda, and are infinitely more likely to spread diseases. Good job. You deserve the Nobel Prize in ruining good things. This reminds me of one of my favorite redneck sayings, "IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT."
-Ben
