Reader Stevenson was doing some grocery shopping in the heat of the afternoon, one summer’s day. Feeling parched, he located a Coca-Cola machine which appeared to him as a merciful desert oasis, or maybe it was just a mirage. Eager to quench his thirst, he hastily fed a dollar bill into the machine. He reached into the machine with the expectation of cool tasty relief, but what he retrieved from the bowels of the mechanical hell-beast was a bottle of Coke that was so f’ng hot he could barely maintain his grip. Shocked and confused, he looked around and caught a glimpse of the machine’s digital readout that mockingly read “ICE COLD COCA COLA 115F.” Stevenson’s letter, inside…
Dear Consumerist:
I want to share with you a little sordid tale about hot summer days, grocery shopping and a little bottled-demon that I’ve come to loathe and fear.
Monday afternoon I decided it was about time to do some grocery shopping. This went extra smoothly which, in retrospect, should have warned me that my life was about to be forever flipped upside down. As I exited the grocery store I realized that, jeez, it was hot out. Quite hot. It was nice and chill in the grocery store, but not so much outside. To top it off, I have multiple sclerosis, and heat and I do not mix. I needed something to cool me down if I was going to make the walk home.
I walk back into the lobby and, thankfully, spot a vending machine. Granted, the only options were Coca-Cola, but, really, it could have been ice-cold vegetable oil and it would have helped. While not as hydrating as, say, water, an “ice-cold” Coca-Cola would certainly have helped. After a long struggle with the dollar-slot my fate was sealed.
When a machine tells you that it has “ice-cold” Coca-Cola, well, you’re inclined to believe it. Machines, at least in my experience, aren’t quite as likely to lie as people. This machine, however, was as far beyond the human concept of deceit as we are from ape. What it disgorged was, in no imaginable way, what I wanted.
Granted, the bottle I received was indeed Coca-Cola. That much, and only that, was true. The “Ice-Cold” part? The picture of the delicious, ice-covered Coca-Cola bottle, rising triumphantly over a scarlet background? That was a lie. An enormous, steaming lie.
I was literally unable to hold the bottle due to the heat blazing out of it. My Coca-Cola bottle was the very opposite of “ice-cold,” it was “fire-hot!” I could not even hold the bottle.
Wrapping it in bags, I went to alert the customer desk in the store. I knew that the nothing would come of this (it wasn’t THEIR machine, really) but I did want to alert them. Apparently, according to the nice lady who took a brief moment away from her cell phone to talk to me, this boiling Duke of Hell had been operating like this for a bit. How long is a bit? I’ll never know, as she promptly resumed her cell phone use.
On my way out I stopped to gaze at the machine. I pressed my face close up to it. Despite being an air-conditioned area, you could FEEL waves of heat coming from its flaming, hateful heart.
Then came the moment that sealed the deal, the moment where I said, “Oh, I should write to the Consumerist.”
The digital display? “ICE COLD COCA COLA. 115 F. ICE COLD COLD COLA. 115 F.”
A summer day, a young man, and a vending machine with plans of its own. Here. In the Twilight Zone.
Thanks for listening!
You have to remember that hot and cold are relative terms. If you were, say, standing on the surface of the sun, this 115F degree soda would be quite the thirst quencher.
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I have to blame the OP here. It’s not like the company tried to screw him over here. The machine failed, and Coke hadn’t discovered it yet. As soon as the delivery guy came to stock it, I’m sure he realized it and either repaired it or placed it out of service. And the OP was given advance warning – the machine had a thermometer on it that read 115F.
No, machines don’t lie, but they DO break. But in this instance, the machine even TOLD the OP that it was broken.
The OP reminds me of Milton on Office Space, complaining about his confiscated red stapler.
@Troy F.: Yes, the most amazing part of this story to me is that the damn digital readout actually works and goes halfway to boiling. I always assumed they were bogus. Impressive!
I blame this consumer for being thirsty. How dare he!
I don’t know why this is news. A machine doesn’t know the differance between hot/cold, white/black, or wet/dry. It reads out what it is programmed to do. The only thing you can do about it is try to get a refund from who ever runs the machine and pray they believe you, after all, they might say you are trying to run a scam and not give you a dime.
In Qatar, I was talkign with a 19-year-old F-15 mechanic. I asked him what he has learned in the desert. He told me “I’ve learned to drink warm bottled water. It goes down eaiser and it hydrates you faster because your body absorbs it faster.”
Of course, in Qatar, there were pallets of bottled water at every street corner, heating up under the sun. So you really had no choice but to drink warm water, unless you worked in an office.
Happens all the time. I’ve encountered countless busted soda machines that dispense scalding-hot cans of soda.
Spending $1.00 for a can of Coke is stupid. Those vending machines have a very high profit margin.
Wow and ow! I’d think there would be a thermal switch that turns off the machine at a lower temperature – if not for human safety, at least to prevent further damage to the machine. I’m a believer that Aspartame is a neurotoxin in the best of circumstances, and gets really unhealthy at body temperature.
Some Gulf War 1 Vets word of mouth reports of drinking a quantity over time of diet carbonated beverages that were in the desert sun for at least a while during shipping and storage caused adverse and lasting health affects. I’m extra glad you didn’t press the button for Diet Coke.
It didn’t say what kind of ice.
Benzoic Acid melts at 115 degrees …
Coke does look after its machines pretty well. It’ll be replaced or fixed when coke becomes aware of the problem. Coke didn’t try to screw over anyone. Be a friend and call up the customer service number on the machine and tell them about it. Coke will send you a coupon in the mail for a free 12-pack of coke or 2 liter bottle if you ask for a refund.
LMAO! My sides hurt from laughing so hard. As I read the nog, visions of the opening to the Fox show Hell’s Kitchen came to mind as well as the theme song “Fire”.
Oh Snap, hot coke
Slow news day?
He should just be glad that he isn’t a starbucks manager getting 35ºF Hot Coffee thrown at him
Also, people expect most “simple” machines to just work. A soda machine, a glorified fridge falls under “simple”. I have never seen a soda machine that wasn’t properly refrigerating its soda. Stuck tracks, misreading bottle count, or broken bill reader, sure, fridge, no. And I too would have figured the temperature readout to be faked, or hard coded to what the designers expect the machine to be at.
Having said that, whats the fucking point of a temperature reader if the machine won’t shutdown at a non-cold trip point? If a power converter the size of a pinky finger nail can have thermal protection, wtf doesn’t a soda machine with plenty of space for extra circuitry?
I laughed. =]
and what is up with all these commenters fucking boo-hooing about this? Write your own damn blog if you’re so displeased.
…AND I NEVER DRANK COKE AGAIN!!
@theblackdog:
I agree that the real issue was the woman who couldn’t get off the cell phone to help.
One thing to keep in mind is that machines placed in front of shops are the responsibility of those shops. They get a cut of the money made from sales from those machines. That’s why they agree to allow them to be placed in such locations. So, it was the stores responsibility to deal with it.
This story is awesome.
They obviously meant to ship this machine to the planet Mercury.
Diet soda dispensed from a machine like that is actively hazardous. I can’t recall the exact temperature aspartame starts to break down at, but it’s right around that temperature. Aspartame can produce some toxic byproducts when broken down by heat, some of them sufficiently toxic to warrant hospitalization.
@satoru:
[O/T]
Re: hot drinks in vending machines in Japan: You can also get a can o’ cold beer. And some machines dispense cans of soup for consumption later. To heat it up, press a button on the bottom of the can and within a minute or so you can toss down hot soup! (I dunno how it works…)
When I was a kid, way back in the ’50s, coke came in 6 1/2 oz bottles, and there was a rack next to the machine for the empties to go because they actually took them back and washed and reused the bottles back then; no grinding up the glass and making whole new bottles!
Well, that’s not the point. The point is, we were like 8 yrs old, and would I would cruise past the Gulf gas station looking for coke bottles with a little left in them.
Warm, no fizz, and someone elses spit no doubt also. Yumm!
Oh no, a malfunctioning vending machine, surely this is a horrific sign of the decay of our society. This man should sue and Coca Cola CEOS should go to jail.
Consumerist, stop posting stupid shit!
that sucks man, well written emal though, cute