I learned something about myself while waiting at the window for my McDonald’s Big Breakfast™ this morning. (It’s an occasional indulgence, and yes, I know, I am contributing to the collapse of the american medical system and putting money in the pockets of a company that is basically evil and generally helping to bring about the death of all that is holy and right. But it’s sooo tasty.)

So I’m sitting there, about 45 seconds after I first pulled up to the order stand, and the lady walks up with my bag in her hand. This expediency in itself is remarkable, but this franchise was just remodeled, doing away with the playground and most of the dining room. It’s basically one big kitchen now.

But anyway, as she is putting the bag in my hand, I see a cup fall out of the little cup-dispenser thing, plop, right onto the counter without even a wobble. Like it had jumped. This is weird enough for me at this point, as I’ve been up all night playing Morrowind and drinking coffee, and I’m wondering if I’m having my first-ever hallucination. Then the cup starts moving. It slides itself over underneath the soda fountain, and then some concoction of water and corn syrup begins to dispense itself into said cup. I’m staring at this whole process while the lady is holding the bag out to me—wondering, I’m sure, if this guy in the purple Altima is a little bit special. She soon seems to realize what it is I’m staring at, grins, and actually chuckles a bit. I grin also, albeit a bit sheepishly, take my bag and go.

It occurs to me only later how truly problematic the whole thing was. That little gadget was probably designed just as much to shave a few employee hours off the payroll as it was to save a few seconds at the drive through. I’d also be willing to bet there’s nobody within a two hour drive who would know what to do with the thing when it inevitably breaks.

None of this entered my mind while I was there at the drive through. All I thought, at that moment, was “Oh. How cool is that.” This is what I have learned: technophilia trumps all of that social responsibility claptrap. If I had been born a few decades earlier, and been a nuclear physicist, and been attached to the Manhattan Project, I would not have been able to come up with any poignant words from hindu scripture. I would have been too busy thinking “Oooh. Coool.“