Here's a scenario for you: It's a busy dinner shift and you are serving a tray of drinks to a large party of people. On one hand is a tray on which there are eight precariously balanced glasses of assorted beverages. Your other hand is passing out these beverages to the table. In addition to the dexterity this requires there is the added challenge of shoehorning yourself between these people to place the drinks on the table without spilling them since they will inevitably stare dumbly at you like farm animals and offer no assistance. As soon as the first drink touches the table one of these creatures will bleat out something about a straw.
"Can I have a straw?"
There is no reason they shouldn't be able to grasp the idea that it is a physical impossibility for you to simultaneously hand out a mess of drinks and straws. Check it out- it doesn't even occur to them. The logistics of how things get in their mouth is of no concern to them. It's up to you to make it happen. Now. Drinking out of a glass is just too slow. That shit needs to get in their mouth and they need a goddamn tool for that.
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| Holy crap, the Chinese have invented the Perfect Waiter! |
How did we used to drink before straws? Conventional wisdom dictates that straws are useful because they reduce the contact between your teeth and the compounds in soft drinks that want to turn your teeth into mini marshmallows. But that kind of begs the question that if phosphoric acid and high fructose corn syrup are so destructive for your teeth that they shouldn't even touch them then maybe you should not be ingesting soft drinks at all, much less demanding a device to help you guzzle them down even faster.
What I'm curious about is if you were able to perform that miracle, i.e., if you had a vestigial third hand that grew out of your chest and this weird little appendage snaked its way out of your shirt and handed them the straw with the drink would they be impressed or horrified? Or would they even notice?
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| "Who had the sweet tea?" |
