Goodbye Cans, Hello Dispenser

(Imagine this post with a low-priority designation :-)

I was
across campus recently having lunch and I saw it: a fountain drink
dispenser!

The time has come! Goodbye canned drinks!

And while I
waited and waited for my grilled burger (those poor understaffed grill
guys were bustin'-A), not a single person grabbed an orange cup to get
themselves some ice and soda. I noticed that cans matching the dispenser
choices (Coke, Diet Coke, etc) were no longer available. So I had my
first canned Vanilla Coke in a long-long time.

Everyone else just
grabbed cans for their lunch-time drink, too. Now perhaps it's because the
fountain is new and folks just aren't used to them yet, but given that the
fountain drinks only cover some of the wondrous canned selection we have
now, I imagine most folks will just find new canned drinks and eschew the
dispenser. Plus, I've got to admit I'm not the most dexterous person in the
world, and balancing my work, my lunch, and a orange cup all at once is just
a mix for sticky-floor disaster.

Fountain drink dispensers of course
don't mix up the same goodness of the badness in the can. They are
cantankerous and prone to bad calibration (oh, the temptation to adjust
the mix) and messy problems. So I think we're preparing to blow more
money to install and maintain a bad idea that, pivoted one way, looks
brilliant and has a high profile We're Doing Something to Save Microsoft
Money! Where will that person be when things go wrong?

So just how
far are we towards that $1,000,000,000 goal we have this year? Knock off 5% of the staff.
Keep the cans.