this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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Coming from this post:

https://lemmy.world/post/24352555

Ordering coffee in the USA triggers me

I went to dunkin’ the other day and asked for an iced latte with less ice because it’s winter and I wanted less ice. They gave me a cup that was halfway full of coffee. So I asked why and they told me they press a button on a machine, it fills it halfway full with coffee and then they add ice. So when you get a medium iced latte, you’re not actually getting a medium latte, you’re getting a small or a kids size nowadays of coffee, and then they just fill the rest of it with ice. If you ask for less ice, no screw you, you’re not getting the full amount of coffee that you paid for…

I have never heard of this in any other country. What the hell?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

There's two ways to look at it.

One is capitalist: you pay for the coffee that's in the big cup, not the size of the cup. So it's impossible to ask for less ice and yet get more coffee. It simply isn't realistic in a capitalist system to try and game the system in that way. You could try others, but that one is going to fail unless the drink is a loss leader, or is already over priced to begin with.

The other side is a general take where you did get what you asked for. You asked for less ice, in an iced coffee, in a standard sized cup.

Even if everything was free across the board, if you want more coffee and less ice, you'd need to ask for that.

But, any way you cut it, you aren't getting "too much ice". What you're wanting is more of the coffee drink in the same size cup. Nothing wrong with that! But you have to also realize that part of making an iced coffee is guesstimating how much melt there's going to be, and factor that into how "strong" the coffee itself is. If your cups are built around a 50/50 volume, with the expectation that the coffee is going to melt 10% of that as it contacts that amount of ice; when you change the amount of ice, you change the amount of water that melts out in the initial pour.

That changes the drink, and requires more than only changing the volume of ice and coffee, you have to change the brew as well. Otherwise, you won't be getting the same drink you had before.

Think about it. If you usually have your 1 cup of coffee, with 1 tablespoon of milk, will it taste the same if you reduce the coffee by 1 tablespoon and add another tablespoon of milk? Obviously not, though it might be a marginal change.

Reducing the ice by half by itself is already going to change the end result. Increasing the coffee volume too changes it even more. While it's entirely possible to make the same taste happen, it takes doing it per cup, which has a lot of extra work compared to a standardized setup.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

That's a good take. Reminds me of this XKCD, pointing out how much invisible work goes into everyday things around us:

Despite it being imaginary, I already have SUCH a strong opinion on the cord-switch firing incident.