You may never see the soda fountain the same again

Unlike my ex wife

I think the extra annoyance is counteracted by the gains in customizability IMO

Where else are you going to be able to get Peach Sprite or Vanilla Fanta?

Or diet everything.
Peach or strawberry Sprite is my go to
Almost any gas station has those syrup pumps, and here in Utah, we have a soda shop (like Swig) on almost every corner.
- It’s because of mormons! I’ve seen it on the YouTube!
  
  That's actually more true than not. These soda shops are essentially an alternative to coffee shops for those who believe drinking coffee and tea are bad. It's the same caffeine fix, but without being coffee or tea.
- I thought tea was illegal in Utah.
  
  You're thinking of magnets
  
  No, and soda isn't tea anyway. Not sure what you're getting at.
  
  check the username…
  
  Ah, lol. 🤦
  
  Tea being illegal in Utah.
- Almost any gas station has those syrup pumps
  Once upon a time for sure, shockingly getting more and more rare ime

The only reason why I like them is because I can cherry all the things. Cherry Coke, Cherry Sprite, Cherry root beer... You get the idea.

(I also like that cherry lime drink that several restaurants advertise under different names as their "exclusive" beverage. On the top of my head I know that Jack in the Box and Firehouse Subs both have it, with their own branding slapped on the name.)

Cherry Rootbeer tastes a lot like Dr Pepper to me... When we would run out at the store I worked at out of high school I'd just get Barq's and add a bit of cherry flavor from our defunct Icee ripoff machine.
Five Guys has it too. Freestyle is the name I know. It’s fantastic.
That's the reason I originally thought they were cool, however, in practice, they almost never allowed you to mix anything with anything, and it was purely a limit placed in the software. I couldn't cherry anything but coke and dr pepper on any of them I ever used. I couldn't add lemon to anything but the already raspberry flavored Fuze tea. I couldn't add vanilla to the root beer or have grape flavored sprite. Shit pisses me off, because it wasn't that they didn't have a certain flavor, the interface just didn't show the flavors available for every possible soda on the machine. Especially when I would see people elsewhere with them setup in the way you really want, where you could cherry everything. 😬

The self serve suck for high volume but personally I hate when people butt in while I'm getting a drink. Wendy's seems to do a pretty good job but they are Crew serve units(for drive through) upside is more than eight flavors.

I like them, but I'm always behind someone who looks like they've never used technology more advanced than a telegraph before

Yeah, we had two of these replace the old school style drink stations at the hospital I work at. They had to bring back one of the old machines because the new machines were causing so much congestion in the cafeteria. Pretty sure the hardware in these predate blackberrys, they take forever to recognize any input from the screen.

Plus if you are just trying to get water, it gets slightly contaminated from whatever beverage the last person got. Especially if it's blue powerade for some reason.

Especially if it’s blue powerade for
That's amusing, because it always seemed like blue powerade was the default nozzle for the 'water' option at the other style of machine, so it was getting that contamination there as well.
- Who doesn't like Caribbean blue drinking water?
why are you getting plain water from the soda machine when there HAVE to be semi-decent water fountains in a hospital? the powerade splashed water is on you at that point.
- Water fountains aren’t usually positioned as part of a cafeteria line. They are also slower and have weird angles, not always being convenient to fill up a cup from.
- My hospital doesn't really have very many water fountains. I think there may be one near the public restrooms on the main floors, but I think that's it. We have a water cooler in my clinic's break room, but no water fountains near the cafeteria.
  I work for a state run hospital in one of the poorer states in the nation. We don't have a lot of amenities.... And unfortunately not a lot of people drink water here.

The machines used to be relatively fast. But over time they've gotten slower and slower to the point it takes multiple seconds to respond to a touch.

Where I am, they had popped up all over the place at first but have mostly disappeared since then and the ones that remain barely have any flavour customizations anymore.
My guess would be that they came with predatory subscription fees or some shit like that that resulted in them costing more than they brought in and most businesses cancelled their subscription or downgraded to the basic version that just acts as a shitty version of the old style.
Either that or they are difficult to keep clean and result in a lot of flavour syrup going to waste when the less popular flavours expire. Or a combination of the two, maybe with HP-style machine-enforced expiry dates on the syrups that are tuned for profit rather than safety/quality.
- They're apparently massive pieces of shit and very unreliable. But that makes sense for a product with a Pininfarina product. (yes I know they do the outsides of products not the insides)

Aren't those the ones made to collect data from users with a camera?

So, NOT great at an orgy.