GUIDE TO PROPER ETIQUETTE AT PUBLIC SODA FOUNTAINS

Jason Rohrblogger's Guide to Proper Etiquette at Public Soda Fountains

Let me begin with full disclosure: my name is Jason and I am a Diet Coke addict.

I need Diet Coke the way Romeo needs Juliet, the way Amy Winehouse needs heroin, the way Russians need Vodka. Lives hang in the balance.

It's not just the caffeine; it's the sweet chemical-taste of artificial sweeteners and industrial carcinogens attacking my perforated kidneys. The sound of CO₂ escaping is Mozart to my thirsty ears.

But I live in a crowded city bursting like a full bladder with fellow needy caf-fiends.

My point: when you approach a public soda fountain, even if you are alone at the time, please fill up your receptacle with ice, top off with the tasty beverage of your choice, and...

STEP AWAY FROM THE SODA FOUNTAIN.

Do not linger as if you are the only person in the universe this particular battery of liquid cannons was installed to slake. Chances are while you were mixing myriad flavors, tasting every 10⁹ combinations possible, I have come up behind you and I am patiently waiting to get a nozzle of precious life-giving diet nectar.

I do not have time for you to slurp eleven sips and top off. I do not have time for you to block the spigots while you select three wrong-size lids and drop two straws.

Don't fill fluid first, and decide later you want to add ice - resulting in an Exxon Valdez-style toxic Dew spill on the Mountain. The order is thus: ice, shoot, and scoot.

All of the peripheral activities: waiting for the foam to settle, sampling your secret combination of Gatorade and Dr. Pepper, lidding and strawing your creation, and cleaning up the gallon of dumped syrup on your hand can be accomplished AWAY from the business end of the machine.

Situational awareness: if your selected drink is at one end of the row, please move the bulk of your personage toward that end of the apparatus as you pour, so that if someone in the inconsidered line behind you can use a nearby teat at the same time, they are not prevented from receiving relief.

Once full, please step back and look around you. If a line has formed, grab your lid and straw and move along before applying them to your container. You can always come back later for your twenty free refills. I know I will.

Are you filling 24 small Pepsis for the troop of Girl Scouts you just brought to Hardee's? Use the carrier to hold the empty cups: ice, shoot, get your lids and straws and SCOOT! My foregone veins cannot wait for you to seal all two-dozen of your thimbles of juice. I have a 44-ounce hole in my Big Gulp-shaped gullet that I will fill with your blood if I don't get some Diet Coke first.

Hopefully this modest proposal will result in less fatalities at already dangerous places like the Circle K.

Because if I don't get some Diet Coke soon, you are going to need more than a cleanup on aisle three. You're going to need a good supply of body bags. I will drink your milkshake and there will be blood.

I'm just saying is all.

-Rohrblogger out.
(04/13/08)