Coffee decisions

The organization that I am currently working at has always been kind enough to provide free coffee to all employees. Just wander up to the nearest vending machine, select your hearts desire and 20 seconds later a hot steaming cup of <insert your favorite here> is yours.

However, all this took a left hand turn into the purely irrational when they recently merged with another organization of a similar size. Over on the other side things had been different, employees had been expected to pay 20p per cup, so with the merger it was quite obvious something was about to change for a lot of folks. The final solution turned out to be a compromise, a blending of the best of both. So now, when I wander up to the vending machine, I have multiple choices, one being the option to pay for my drink, the other is to select “Free Vend” and not pay for my drink.

How exactly is this piece of insanity supposed to work, is the idea that employees from the previous “Free Vend” half pick that option, and the rest pay?

Strange as it may be, its a common pattern, for example when dealing with religion you often find similar insane mixtures, such as the Catholic church accepting evolution as factual, but also advocating that God did it. Can you ever truly have a compromise between the rational and the irrational? I guess you can, but don’t expect the rest of us not to laugh and mock such absurd compromises.

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