Coffee Vending Machines - The Saving Grace
Coffee vending machines are the saving grace of the tired and stressed.
From hospital waiting rooms to rest stops their gentle glow offers relief and transcendence into a properly caffeinated state.
Many look down on them; however, they fill a unique and important niche in the contemporary urban ecology.
The role coffee vending machines fill is not glamorous and offers little thanks.
You won't find your name scrawled sloppily on the side of the cup.
The foam will not feature a carefully crafted image of a leaf in its swirls.
You won't find an espresso cup in sight, and you certainly won't take a date there.
However, coffee vending machines offer what no other commercial enterprise can -- a warm, comforting, liquid hand extended without judgment to the tired and downtrodden.
Coffee vending machines generally offer a variety of beverages.
These range from a good, honest, black cup of Joe to more elaborate mochas and lattes.
The more complicated concoctions may not have been carefully crafted and foamed by a cute Batista, but what the assembly lacks in hipster appeal it more than makes up for in precision.
Coffee vending machines accomplish an impressive number of tasks when you think about it-- you would be hard pressed to fit the complicated contraptions of your average corner spot into a space that size, and that doesn't even take into account the variety of machinery that must replicate the human actions needed to produce a decent mocha from a simple espresso machine.
Coffee vending machines do their job: they deliver you a cup of coffee however you like it.
They deliver it instantly, at any time of day or night.
They do not miscount your change or add just a little too much sugar.
They allow you to simply and effectively communicate exactly what you want, and do not fail to deliver.
How many of you can say that of an underpaid coffee-shop employee at five in the morning?
A coffee vending machine can perform this task just as well, if not better as a human. Best of all, they offer what a person can't – the absence of social pretense.
Instead of wide eyed looks or forced conversation about the weather you can simply stand and contemplate for a moment the perfect foam peaks and inky blackness of your preferred beverage displayed in it's true platonic form.
The coffee machine does not judge you on your appearance, figure, or style.
Rather than adding an additional hassle to your day, a coffee vending machine simply gives you your coffee.
People generally think about self-driving cars or robots that take on humanoid shapes when they think of the future.
For some reason we like to imagine the future will be filled with machines that not only attempt to replicate our humanity but fail.
We may find that thought comforting, but it is far from the truth.
The world of the Jetsons is not limited to some far-off dystopian future.
The future is now, and along with it are coffee vending machines.