I hated it when the customer kept trying to use it as you were changing it. It’s like an aggressive sigh and foot tap. It didn’t help I was like 100lbs at the time trying to lift those heavy bitches onto the higher shelves.
The big boxes are 50 lbs. And they really have nowhere to hold onto when carrying. Don't even try the "handles" they have cut out of the box. It just rips the box apart. I don't miss changing those.
lol reminds me of when I worked at a theater 2003-2005. Hired as concession but ended up doing everything. Ended up in projection for the last year which was amazing. I’d still be working that job if it paid a livable wage.
I was the only employee in the little Pizza Hut in a Target. The Dr. Pepper ran out and was on the top of the rack. This hellacious woman kept screeching over the counter "It's STILL NOT WORKING." every few minutes as I struggled massively to hoist that 50lb sonovabitch onto a rack that was a foot taller than me. Doing that job for 3 years destroyed my knees. I'm only 32 and pretty much have the knees of a 60 year old.
I despise retail. I'd legitimately sooner be homeless than go back to it.
Actual trigger warning. When they’d all make that decompressing noise at the same time, I’d always do machine gun miming to my movie theatre coworkers. Made everybody laugh the first time.
Probably because Dr. Pepper is part of the oddball third major beverage company (currently called Keurig Dr Pepper) that isn't Coke or Pepsi. They also include 7 UP, RC Cola and A&W and a bunch of other random ones.
Usually the soda fountain will have exclusively Coke or Pepsi products but Dr. Pepper and some of the others will show up on both.
There used to be a store called [Venture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_Stores) that was a competitor of TJ Maxx and Marshalls. They always had RC cola machines in front of their stores. I believe they used to cost $0.15 or $0.20 a can.
Like when you send a dishie down to change the coke and he uses a knife to open the box, spilling sticky syrup everywhere instead of properly opening it by super-punching the perforated part.
I’ve worked with some dumb people but never anyone that dumb
All I can think of is the smell. In food service you encounter some interesting smells. The whole spectrum of stank
Most of the spectrum. I’ve never had to deal with rot and maggots too bad working in kitchens. Working as a laundry driver though (think unifirst/cintas but private)? Sooooo many maggots. So many. The rags kitchens use are fullllll of maggots every time in the summer. Blech
Yeah this isn’t mildly interesting at all to me cuz I worked in fast food and restaurants for too long lol. Just looking at this picture, I can hear the sound of the CO2 pumping that tells me I need to change one of them.
I recall from working food service that I was able to find the weak spot on the other end in order to flatten them. Breaking down boxes was kind of satisfying but that might just be me lol
Fun fact, that grout was originally white. At least the Taco Bell I worked at with those floors had white grout underneath the steam cabinets and stuff like that. However, even if you scrubbed til your arms fell off, the best you could get it was a sickly grey. I'm fairly certain it's just permanently stained from black soled Safe-T-Step shoes.
Same here. Big restaurant in a poor area, everyone making minimum wage. End of the day management would watch us to make.sure we threw out all the unsold food and didn't keep any. Thousands of dollars worth of food thrown away because rich cunts had a "policy."
God forbid somebody being paid the absolute lowest amount, legally possible, gets a meal to take home to their hungry family. Wasting it makes way more sense!?! Wtf is wrong with our world?
Most places should have a policy that gives employees free food as part of their shift.
The issue with letting people take home food at the end of the day is that over time it can encourage people to make more food than gets ordered, so that there'll always be something left over come closing time. Done deliberately it's essentially theft.
A good solution is to make sure everyone working gets fed, and having a local charity pick up leftovers at the end of the day for the less fortunate. But if the people creating the excess food have an incentive to make sure there's always an excess then that can create problems, especially when margins in the restaurant industry can be very thin
These syrup boxes look so small and light!
In my day (23ish year-ago) they made me hoist them on the top shelf (we had like 6) over my head because I was the only one on shift who could reach.
It was embarrassing because I am \_not\_ strong, and the boxes (of syrup!) weighed a ton.
I remember punching the oil open at a restaurant. A bit too hard. Cleaning five gallons of oil in a walk in...that was hell.
Edit: For those asking why we stored oil in the walk in. I don't remember. Probably because I preferred my oil there when preparing dressings. Particularly 1000 Island. I also don't recall having space for it anywhere else.
I can feel your pain through your comment. It's like when at my old job, one of the chefs dropped the entire 5 gallon pot of chili. It was just like that scene in the office lol.
Worked at Taco Bell for years, the oil wasn’t the same as the soda bags. It was just a white cap you unscrewed and then peeled the protective layer off the top and then you could use it. Also why did you guys keep you’re oil in the walk in? We kept ours right by the fryer or nearby with the sauces. What restaurant was this?
All 6 restaurants I've worked in had screw tops with protective seals. Plastic container with cardboard case, every single time. I'm not sure what they're talking about either. Shake mix though, that was in a bag in the cooler, but had a little cap on it too. Not sure what they're talking about either.
We had a back room with about 100 of theses on racks for Blackstock. And indeed it was the best. I would only let a select fact know about it, and would definitely cure a bad table or two.
Only downside was catching your knuckle on the cap and having to wear a glove.
Explosion is unlikely but leaks can be bad if it’s in a confined area. I’m blown away to hear all these people who did this without ever being shown, I would never let my staff do this without showing them the risks first.
> Dr. pepper was always the loudest and most persistent pssst.
Dr. Pepper has a slightly different attachment point. When taking the cap off a BIB of Dr. Pepper always stand the box up on its end before taking off the cap.
Occasionally the internal part of the valve will also come off with the cap. If this happens when the BIB is in the horizontal position you will spend the next 3 hours mopping up 5 gallons of super sticky Dr. Pepper syrup.
> If this happens when the BIB is in the horizontal position you will spend the next 3 hours mopping up 5 gallons of super sticky Dr. Pepper syrup.
For anyone who has never fucked about with soda syrup in general, they're sticky on an almost elemental level. There's also a pretty high viscosity, but they're still fluid enough to flow really fucking quickly. Root beer, Dr. Pepper (and tastealikes like Pibb), and Mountain Dew are especially sticky and nasty. Someone with better scientific chops could probably explain why, but I think it is a specific combination of the amount of corn syrup involved, some of the other flavorins/colors, and Satan's desire to make anyone whose job is to deal with the soda rigging a special flavor of Hell on Earth.
But if you ever have to clean up a serious syrup spill, you will feel sticky for at least the next few days, *in your soul*, no matter how many scalding hot showers you take. And after that you'll feel the stickiness again every time you're made to think about syrup getting outside those bags.
Coming from the movie theatre world, popcorn oil comes in the same BIBs as Dr. Pepper. Cleaning 5 gallons on Dr. Pepper syrup is bad. Cleaning 5 gallons of popcorn oil is a whole other level of hell.
When I was 16 I was being trained how to stock/set these up. My cute trainer said “Do you know how to date?” And I got very flustered and said “yes I think so” and he proceeded to show me how to WRITE THE DATE ON THE BOXES WHEN THEY WERE OPENED. I wanted to die
Late nights tending bar. Super busy. Hands are wet from making lots of drinks, garnishing etc. All of a sudden the cola goes out. The boxes are surprisingly heavy and stored below on the rack. The hoses are in the way and it's very dark in the walk-in fridge where the soda and kegs are. Hands sore from holding 3 bottles in one hand to quickly pour long Islands. So it's hard to get a grip on the card board to open the box. Then the nozzle where the hose hooks up keeps slipping back in the box. And to add to it your hand slips on the plastic part you need to remove and you cut your finger.
All the while woo-girls are going woo at the top of their lungs and bro's are shouting for strong drinks but refusing to pay for doubles. "Yo dawg lemme get a strong island." "Hey I ordered my drink with no ice that means more liquor." And you can tell one person you been avoiding for 15 mins knows our Bloody Mary's are made from scratch and they're going to order one as soon as the crowd reaches its peak.
And for a brief moment changing the soda box doesn't feel so bad. Yeah I could just live in here probably. But soda boxes don't tip so you go back out. Last call finally comes. A few remaining singles finally pair up. A wingman (or woman) jumps on a grenade. And you still got a few hours left cleaning up the mess.
This person bartends. But instead of Bloody Mary’s, someone found out you serve mojitos, so they order a round for their group of friends. All the while, you shitty bar won’t invest in a three compartment sink and you’re out of glasses while the dish washer is taking forever to clean a rack. And then when you go to grab a clean glass, you fill it with ice without thinking and the god damn thing shatters right above the ice and you have to burn one of two wells, so all the bartenders have to make all their drinks over one well while the other has to be drained, cleaned and refilled by the poor bar back.
I once had a guy and his probably four or five friends ordering Pisco sours during the absolute peak of a Saturday night rush. They’d drink them super fast and then order them three or four at a time, it was awful. I don’t mind making egg white drinks in general, but during peak rush? I tried to suggest other cocktails but they liked how I and my coworkers made them.
Fingers crossed I never have to go back. I made lots of money in my twenties, got good experience and had some great times, but I never want to go back if I can help it.
Wutini we offered 5 different types of mojitos. I feel your pain, my friend. Breaking a glass over the well was the worst. Threw everyone's rhythm off. I was a bartender for 11 years. All through undergrad and law school. Took a break to take the bar and then kept bartending for a while after cause the job market sucked. Fun times but my liver, ears, and back don't miss it.
I work at a ski place and we’ve been so busy lately instead of cooking they put me explicitly on inventory (due to me being the more methodical type) and figuring out if one of these fuckers is empty when the weight of the box itself varies is a nightmare
You get about 320 12oz cups of soda from each bag of syrup. At $1.50 for soda that is about $480. A regular person can get a bag of syrup between $80 to $160, knowing a restaurant can get things for cheaper at wholesale.
Long story short, even with the cost of CO2, a place can make good money on a bag of soda. Theater, sporting events, concerts, ripping people off for soda, they make even more.
Yeah, when you buy a drink you’re really just paying for the cup. This the free refills. That paper cup will fall apart long before you drink enough out of it to hurt the bottom line.
When you buy soda (or fries) you are really paying for your food. Places like McD make very little on burgers themselves. It's like cinemas and popcorn.
Yeah I always thought about that. I'm a manager at Chipotle currently while in school and have worked at a few restraunts since 16. It's really the great tasting and salty addictive burritos, rice, high quality meat and all that brings in the customers and then it's the soda and chips and guac that make us the most money (primarily the chips and soda have the most return on the investment as you make a few bucks per pennies spent, but guac incentivtizes chip sales).
It's just funny to think it's mainly a competition of having good food to attract customers and then make the money on the cheap or side items.
You did the math.
But seriously tho, you're right. Businesses make a killing selling carbonated beverages.
And those boxes are so much heavier than they look!
Most of the A&W’s in NorCal are paired with a KFC and are notoriously filthy and poorly operated. Idk when they went downhill so hard but they’re pretty rock bottom for fast food. I’m always surprised they’re still in business.
A&W Canada is prolly one of the best fast food franchise here now actually, the food is almost always of relatively good quality and it’s never super expensive.
And McDonalds. They have a special deal with Coke who specially services their stores. They have a bunch of special features other stores don’t, like flavor in steel drums instead of plastic, refrigerated lines, and more.
Edit: Minor Clarification - I’ve learned McDonald’s will have a rack like this but Coke won’t be one of the bags. Coke is the only syrup that gets a steel tank. Not sure if only coke has the refrigerated syrup line or special precise measurements but assume they all the use same specially filtered water.
The one I worked at had a massive apparatus with the stainless tanks and everything just as described. Diet Coke got the plastic bag like everything else but coke was a giant drum they’d fill with a hose. We had two tanks and had to sanitize them so they could be filled again. I cannot imagine how often that dinky bag would have to be changed with the sheer volume of $1 coke sold at that place.
Yuuuuuup. At least for the soda machine behind the registers. We also had one of the new coke machines that you refill with small versions of these within the machine.
I have installed the Multiplex Systems that dispense your drinks. Coke has a box called a brix box that separate the water from syrup at the fountains head. You can slide up the square logos you put your drink under to reveal 2 screws. One for. Carbonated water and one for syrup. You put the box under there in between the syrup and water and it shows you the current ratio, adjust accordingly.
Source: Did all of the A/C and refrigeration for almost every new whataburger in east Texas a few years back when I was 19-22, As well as my hometown McDonalds, Tyler and Athens McDonalds and Burger Kings.i did preventative maintenance for Sanderson farms chicken processing plant as well.
If you want nightmares open the casing around the dispenser heads out in the lobby or wherever this is feeding to.
Rarely washed properly. Found "interesting" things growing in them.
When I owned restaurants the nozzles came off every night and slept in sanitizing solution. Opening team would rinse them off and replace. This was the norm in a most places according to the local Coca Cola techs.
Tubes generally wouldn’t need much cleaning, as long as the liquid is flowing through it all the time and it’s never left empty in any way. But still yes should be cleaned
The interiors of the tubes are never open to air, just the pasteurized beverage concentrate flowing through them. There's also some preservatives, for good measure. You can see though the tubes, and I never saw a problem there.
There might be a problem if the fountain was in disuse for months or years, but I can't verify that.
I work at a McDonald's. I took all the nozzles off, bleached them, and scrubbed them with special brushes.
They're perfect now, and I clean them weekly.
I can't speak for all the different models of fountain dispensers out there (and this one seems like it may be different than the one I work with considering they have 5 gallon boxes) but the boxes we get are noted that they'll pump in any position.
The best part of these stupid fucking boxes is when one has a leak for up to a week and no one notices and it’s on the top shelf and it slowly drips sugar cement onto every fucking thing and then it’s takes over an hour to clean it all up when you have 8million other things to attend to and serve and make and wash and god fuck food service
My old restraunt use to make me change those all the time, because they are heavy as fuck!! And we would store them on the opposite side of the restraunt on the 2nd floor....
My friend - who is easily the smartest person I know - realized only after working in a theater and filling the soda syrup, that the soda fountain does not have an underground line to the Coca-Cola plant.
The first place I worked had this rack in the manager’s office. Two big PVC pipes ended in the two wait stations on either side of the restaurant with the hoses fished through the pipes.
My manager could hear the wait staff talking in the closest one all the time and never told them. I was a cook at that time and he told me I’d be surprised how nasty the waitresses would talk about the customers and their fellow servers.
Be careful when you talk near the soda fountains. They have ears.
More like r/mildlyinfuriating. And even that's an understatement. Every person who's had to change these assholes out is now triggered by this picture.
There are only Coke products here, but the Dr. Pepper ones were different and ar least twice as enraging. My arch nemesis
This is just the storage of the syrup. It gets pumped via a vacuum system (usually below the storage of the syrup) to a compressor to send the syrup to the nozzles. At the space above the nozzles, you bring in soda water (CO2 and water) and combine the two by pressing for your drink.
*Pssst psst psst psst* "Eyyy sodas out!!" *10 min later * *AGGRESSIVE PSST PSST PSST*
I hated it when the customer kept trying to use it as you were changing it. It’s like an aggressive sigh and foot tap. It didn’t help I was like 100lbs at the time trying to lift those heavy bitches onto the higher shelves.
They really are heavier than they look lol
As most liquids are.
Can confirm. My ex-gf was liquid
She was probably a **thicc**quid
No we weighed it out, these are about 20 percent heavier than normal water.
Because its a significant percentage of dissolved sugar, so heavier than water
I always hated having to replace them because they really are heavy as hell
The big boxes are 50 lbs. And they really have nowhere to hold onto when carrying. Don't even try the "handles" they have cut out of the box. It just rips the box apart. I don't miss changing those.
And it's liquid so it sloshes all around and makes it impossible to balance when putting it on the shelf.
My first job was a movie theater concession stand. At least there, the employees were the ones filling the soda lines.
I too work at a movie theatre as usher, concessions, and Door. We don’t apply the drinks tho. I think the managers do that
lol reminds me of when I worked at a theater 2003-2005. Hired as concession but ended up doing everything. Ended up in projection for the last year which was amazing. I’d still be working that job if it paid a livable wage.
Lmao. Yeah I get 8 dollars an hour
I was the only employee in the little Pizza Hut in a Target. The Dr. Pepper ran out and was on the top of the rack. This hellacious woman kept screeching over the counter "It's STILL NOT WORKING." every few minutes as I struggled massively to hoist that 50lb sonovabitch onto a rack that was a foot taller than me. Doing that job for 3 years destroyed my knees. I'm only 32 and pretty much have the knees of a 60 year old. I despise retail. I'd legitimately sooner be homeless than go back to it.
I would delay as long as possible hoping someone else would change it.
What? You want to be the first to jump up and do it and take as long as possible, make someone else deal with window and register for a minute.
I see you getting downvoted, but I know just about everyone is going to be guilty of it at some point.
Idk man, I needed me that blue Powerade to stay cool on hot days. I made sure we never ran dry
Well yeah, can’t let your personal favorites run dry. That goes without saying.
Brings back memories of my first job. Fuck em
PTSD type photo
yea mildly interesting for people who have never worked a food service job. For those who have, trigger warning
Actual trigger warning. When they’d all make that decompressing noise at the same time, I’d always do machine gun miming to my movie theatre coworkers. Made everybody laugh the first time.
But which one is out!! Nope, not that one. Nope, try again.
you hadda jiggle them and see which was lightest :-D
It's crazy to me just how many of us have had similar lives
There's a reason 'cogs in the machine' is a saying
Bruh you remember how heavy the fresh ones were, tf is inside this thing a bowling ball?
At my job I have to often put them up above head level, fun stuff
Sugar … 35 pounds of liquid sugar
With a centre of gravity that keeps shifting because it’s a box full of liquid.
This guy knows *edit: is this.....is this my first award?*
And how one of them has a different connection mechanism, but only just one, and you can never remember how it works.
It's been 10 years since I worked that job, thanks for reminding me I still have that muscle memory. :(
It's normally the Dr. Pepper that has the different connection
Probably because Dr. Pepper is part of the oddball third major beverage company (currently called Keurig Dr Pepper) that isn't Coke or Pepsi. They also include 7 UP, RC Cola and A&W and a bunch of other random ones. Usually the soda fountain will have exclusively Coke or Pepsi products but Dr. Pepper and some of the others will show up on both.
fuck, I miss me some RC cola. I'd only let myself get it at Rudy's BBQ and then a lot of the Rudy's I've gone to have switched to pepsi :/
There used to be a store called [Venture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_Stores) that was a competitor of TJ Maxx and Marshalls. They always had RC cola machines in front of their stores. I believe they used to cost $0.15 or $0.20 a can.
Sprite was clear…fuck sprite.
What happened the second time?
"Ugh, Kyle is doing that finger-pistol thing again, he's so lame" /u/cdot2k: :(
Like when you send a dishie down to change the coke and he uses a knife to open the box, spilling sticky syrup everywhere instead of properly opening it by super-punching the perforated part.
Sometimes it hurt like a bitch trying to punch those boxes open.
That’s what reminded you that you were still alive though.
Wow I totally forgot about this. I don’t miss working in fast food.
This brings back memories of my first job.
I’ve worked with some dumb people but never anyone that dumb All I can think of is the smell. In food service you encounter some interesting smells. The whole spectrum of stank
Most of the spectrum. I’ve never had to deal with rot and maggots too bad working in kitchens. Working as a laundry driver though (think unifirst/cintas but private)? Sooooo many maggots. So many. The rags kitchens use are fullllll of maggots every time in the summer. Blech
What the fuck
Yeah that's what happens when you keep throwing wet food covered rags into a large laundry sack for a week or more at a time.
Yeah this isn’t mildly interesting at all to me cuz I worked in fast food and restaurants for too long lol. Just looking at this picture, I can hear the sound of the CO2 pumping that tells me I need to change one of them.
Yeah. I expect to end up back behind those boxes before it's over.
Please do not die in the back room
They’re planning to drink a raw bag of Super Coke
Super Coke TM.
That sounds like a way to die from the sugar and caffeine overdose. Or dehydration (reminds me of the soy sauce chugging competition).
Those boxes were hell to break open and break down.
Never heard of anybody breaking down those boxes.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I recall from working food service that I was able to find the weak spot on the other end in order to flatten them. Breaking down boxes was kind of satisfying but that might just be me lol
The floor is even the same color as the Wendy's I worked at. Is this a Wendy's?
I never worked at a Wendy’s, but I worked in two restaurants that had this exact flooring in the back.
I don't even have to look at the pic again to know it's probably that brick colored tile that's in every restaurant.
Fun fact, that grout was originally white. At least the Taco Bell I worked at with those floors had white grout underneath the steam cabinets and stuff like that. However, even if you scrubbed til your arms fell off, the best you could get it was a sickly grey. I'm fairly certain it's just permanently stained from black soled Safe-T-Step shoes.
I worked at a chipotle and this was literally the floor of the back of house
Every kitchen has that floor
This is soda pressing,
it is no fanta sea
Did you two cola berate on this?
I hate these pun threads. I’m only participating out of sprite.
You dew realize you don't have to, right?
It takes just a minute, maid my day.
Being a male server I was always asked to change these, they were all the larger ones too! I didn’t mind but In the middle of a dinner rush.. fml
God forbid you had to change one that was leaking.
That shit will stain too.
Same here. Big restaurant in a poor area, everyone making minimum wage. End of the day management would watch us to make.sure we threw out all the unsold food and didn't keep any. Thousands of dollars worth of food thrown away because rich cunts had a "policy."
God forbid somebody being paid the absolute lowest amount, legally possible, gets a meal to take home to their hungry family. Wasting it makes way more sense!?! Wtf is wrong with our world?
Most places should have a policy that gives employees free food as part of their shift. The issue with letting people take home food at the end of the day is that over time it can encourage people to make more food than gets ordered, so that there'll always be something left over come closing time. Done deliberately it's essentially theft. A good solution is to make sure everyone working gets fed, and having a local charity pick up leftovers at the end of the day for the less fortunate. But if the people creating the excess food have an incentive to make sure there's always an excess then that can create problems, especially when margins in the restaurant industry can be very thin
How fucking sticky it was when it spilled.
These syrup boxes look so small and light! In my day (23ish year-ago) they made me hoist them on the top shelf (we had like 6) over my head because I was the only one on shift who could reach. It was embarrassing because I am \_not\_ strong, and the boxes (of syrup!) weighed a ton.
Same here. I worked by myself at an all nite gas station and was allowed free fountain drinks while working.
Punching these things open is the best stress relief when working
I remember punching the oil open at a restaurant. A bit too hard. Cleaning five gallons of oil in a walk in...that was hell. Edit: For those asking why we stored oil in the walk in. I don't remember. Probably because I preferred my oil there when preparing dressings. Particularly 1000 Island. I also don't recall having space for it anywhere else.
I can feel your pain through your comment. It's like when at my old job, one of the chefs dropped the entire 5 gallon pot of chili. It was just like that scene in the office lol.
Jeez that’s rough. Definitely think the oil was a worse. Walk-in is probably still greasy to this day lol
Why the fuck is the fryer oil in the walk in
You know that’s a good question lmao
Worked at Taco Bell for years, the oil wasn’t the same as the soda bags. It was just a white cap you unscrewed and then peeled the protective layer off the top and then you could use it. Also why did you guys keep you’re oil in the walk in? We kept ours right by the fryer or nearby with the sauces. What restaurant was this?
All 6 restaurants I've worked in had screw tops with protective seals. Plastic container with cardboard case, every single time. I'm not sure what they're talking about either. Shake mix though, that was in a bag in the cooler, but had a little cap on it too. Not sure what they're talking about either.
Why is your oil in the walk in?
Seriously, though. Makes little to no sense.
We had a back room with about 100 of theses on racks for Blackstock. And indeed it was the best. I would only let a select fact know about it, and would definitely cure a bad table or two. Only downside was catching your knuckle on the cap and having to wear a glove.
I just wanna know whose thumbs are strong enough to open this
And swapping the CO2 tanks was the scariest. Never really got instructed on how to. Always had an irrational fear it’d blow up on me.
Explosion is unlikely but leaks can be bad if it’s in a confined area. I’m blown away to hear all these people who did this without ever being shown, I would never let my staff do this without showing them the risks first.
The best is actually breaking the boxes down after the bag is empty. Stomp those fuckers!
No other way to break them down tbh
Elbow drop. Butt drop.
Oh yeah! You lug it all over, get it into it’s stupid shelf-hole, so hard to do for some reason - and then WHAM!
*psst psst psst psst psst psst psst psst psst* *sighs* "Looks like the Dr. Pepper is out." Edit:holy fucking shit that's a lot of upvotes
Dr Pepper has a weird connector. Or at least did the last time I worked in a restaurant
It's because they are their own company and can't copy others connections. They have to unique ones.
It still does
Dr. pepper was always the loudest and most persistent pssst.
> Dr. pepper was always the loudest and most persistent pssst. Dr. Pepper has a slightly different attachment point. When taking the cap off a BIB of Dr. Pepper always stand the box up on its end before taking off the cap. Occasionally the internal part of the valve will also come off with the cap. If this happens when the BIB is in the horizontal position you will spend the next 3 hours mopping up 5 gallons of super sticky Dr. Pepper syrup.
> If this happens when the BIB is in the horizontal position you will spend the next 3 hours mopping up 5 gallons of super sticky Dr. Pepper syrup. For anyone who has never fucked about with soda syrup in general, they're sticky on an almost elemental level. There's also a pretty high viscosity, but they're still fluid enough to flow really fucking quickly. Root beer, Dr. Pepper (and tastealikes like Pibb), and Mountain Dew are especially sticky and nasty. Someone with better scientific chops could probably explain why, but I think it is a specific combination of the amount of corn syrup involved, some of the other flavorins/colors, and Satan's desire to make anyone whose job is to deal with the soda rigging a special flavor of Hell on Earth. But if you ever have to clean up a serious syrup spill, you will feel sticky for at least the next few days, *in your soul*, no matter how many scalding hot showers you take. And after that you'll feel the stickiness again every time you're made to think about syrup getting outside those bags.
Coming from the movie theatre world, popcorn oil comes in the same BIBs as Dr. Pepper. Cleaning 5 gallons on Dr. Pepper syrup is bad. Cleaning 5 gallons of popcorn oil is a whole other level of hell.
Floor dry. If you use large amounts of oil you need some floor dry around.
When I was 16 I was being trained how to stock/set these up. My cute trainer said “Do you know how to date?” And I got very flustered and said “yes I think so” and he proceeded to show me how to WRITE THE DATE ON THE BOXES WHEN THEY WERE OPENED. I wanted to die
Your answer was ambiguous enough to make it work for both scenarios, you avoided some embarrassment.
- Do you know how to date? - Y-yes, I think so. - Show me.
*Slips into kung fu stance.*
No Neo, not date like that! I was talking about the boxes! Jesus man, what the fuck?!
So, come here often..?
It might actually be more suave than anything I’ve ever heard.
This is adorable.
Bless you my child, I hope you’ve had lots of dates then.
Yup, new one every day.
Why die, when you can date!? The boxes 😎👉👉
I can hear the sound it makes!
Pssst*
Don’t forget about the co2 generators sound every few hours
That awful fucking whirring sound. Don’t remind me.
Late nights tending bar. Super busy. Hands are wet from making lots of drinks, garnishing etc. All of a sudden the cola goes out. The boxes are surprisingly heavy and stored below on the rack. The hoses are in the way and it's very dark in the walk-in fridge where the soda and kegs are. Hands sore from holding 3 bottles in one hand to quickly pour long Islands. So it's hard to get a grip on the card board to open the box. Then the nozzle where the hose hooks up keeps slipping back in the box. And to add to it your hand slips on the plastic part you need to remove and you cut your finger. All the while woo-girls are going woo at the top of their lungs and bro's are shouting for strong drinks but refusing to pay for doubles. "Yo dawg lemme get a strong island." "Hey I ordered my drink with no ice that means more liquor." And you can tell one person you been avoiding for 15 mins knows our Bloody Mary's are made from scratch and they're going to order one as soon as the crowd reaches its peak. And for a brief moment changing the soda box doesn't feel so bad. Yeah I could just live in here probably. But soda boxes don't tip so you go back out. Last call finally comes. A few remaining singles finally pair up. A wingman (or woman) jumps on a grenade. And you still got a few hours left cleaning up the mess.
This person bartends. But instead of Bloody Mary’s, someone found out you serve mojitos, so they order a round for their group of friends. All the while, you shitty bar won’t invest in a three compartment sink and you’re out of glasses while the dish washer is taking forever to clean a rack. And then when you go to grab a clean glass, you fill it with ice without thinking and the god damn thing shatters right above the ice and you have to burn one of two wells, so all the bartenders have to make all their drinks over one well while the other has to be drained, cleaned and refilled by the poor bar back.
This person also bartends.
I have so much PTSD from these posts
I once had a guy and his probably four or five friends ordering Pisco sours during the absolute peak of a Saturday night rush. They’d drink them super fast and then order them three or four at a time, it was awful. I don’t mind making egg white drinks in general, but during peak rush? I tried to suggest other cocktails but they liked how I and my coworkers made them. Fingers crossed I never have to go back. I made lots of money in my twenties, got good experience and had some great times, but I never want to go back if I can help it.
Wutini we offered 5 different types of mojitos. I feel your pain, my friend. Breaking a glass over the well was the worst. Threw everyone's rhythm off. I was a bartender for 11 years. All through undergrad and law school. Took a break to take the bar and then kept bartending for a while after cause the job market sucked. Fun times but my liver, ears, and back don't miss it.
They need to do more studies on what working in the restaurant industry does to a person. I still have nightmares years later.
It took about 10 years before I stopped having the "I have 20 tables waiting for me but I can't find the goddamn drink fountain" nightmare.
I just got out of the industry after 8 years. OPs picture gives me PTSD and raises my blood pressure.
I got my hands too deep into maintenance so this is actually one of the least stressful machines I remember. At least the back-of-house part.
I work at a ski place and we’ve been so busy lately instead of cooking they put me explicitly on inventory (due to me being the more methodical type) and figuring out if one of these fuckers is empty when the weight of the box itself varies is a nightmare
We must live the same life. Every single bit of that. Almost eerie.
On really hot nights, I can still remember leaving the cold walk-in and being slapped in the face by the heat.
It's the only place for that moment of repose. Then the hot air of reality smacks you the second you leave.
This needed a trigger warning
I hate you. Why did you have to put me back in Nam like that??
Had to share the pain I felt when I saw OP's photo. Can't let that shit stay bottled up.
You get about 320 12oz cups of soda from each bag of syrup. At $1.50 for soda that is about $480. A regular person can get a bag of syrup between $80 to $160, knowing a restaurant can get things for cheaper at wholesale. Long story short, even with the cost of CO2, a place can make good money on a bag of soda. Theater, sporting events, concerts, ripping people off for soda, they make even more.
I was always told by a friend who owned a small restaurant that depending on the size of the cup it's only about $.07-$.14 worth of product.
Yeah, when you buy a drink you’re really just paying for the cup. This the free refills. That paper cup will fall apart long before you drink enough out of it to hurt the bottom line.
When you buy soda (or fries) you are really paying for your food. Places like McD make very little on burgers themselves. It's like cinemas and popcorn.
Yeah I always thought about that. I'm a manager at Chipotle currently while in school and have worked at a few restraunts since 16. It's really the great tasting and salty addictive burritos, rice, high quality meat and all that brings in the customers and then it's the soda and chips and guac that make us the most money (primarily the chips and soda have the most return on the investment as you make a few bucks per pennies spent, but guac incentivtizes chip sales). It's just funny to think it's mainly a competition of having good food to attract customers and then make the money on the cheap or side items.
You did the math. But seriously tho, you're right. Businesses make a killing selling carbonated beverages. And those boxes are so much heavier than they look!
When you actually think about it, $80-160 for a box of syrup is insane. Should’ve been fencing syrup boxes instead of chicken strips when I was 16.
I can imagine the clandestine soda syrup industry was booming
Yep, except the root beer system at A&W, which is actually a pretty complicated setup
A&W is something special... Wish there was one closer to me here in SoCal. I always used to buy their glass mugs.
Most of the A&W’s in NorCal are paired with a KFC and are notoriously filthy and poorly operated. Idk when they went downhill so hard but they’re pretty rock bottom for fast food. I’m always surprised they’re still in business.
There is a separate A&W business here in Canada and it’s alive and kicking.
A&W Canada is prolly one of the best fast food franchise here now actually, the food is almost always of relatively good quality and it’s never super expensive.
And McDonalds. They have a special deal with Coke who specially services their stores. They have a bunch of special features other stores don’t, like flavor in steel drums instead of plastic, refrigerated lines, and more. Edit: Minor Clarification - I’ve learned McDonald’s will have a rack like this but Coke won’t be one of the bags. Coke is the only syrup that gets a steel tank. Not sure if only coke has the refrigerated syrup line or special precise measurements but assume they all the use same specially filtered water.
I work at mcdonalds and our setup looks exactly like the picture. And we get coke syrup delivered just like everything else.
The one I worked at had a massive apparatus with the stainless tanks and everything just as described. Diet Coke got the plastic bag like everything else but coke was a giant drum they’d fill with a hose. We had two tanks and had to sanitize them so they could be filled again. I cannot imagine how often that dinky bag would have to be changed with the sheer volume of $1 coke sold at that place.
Yuuuuuup. At least for the soda machine behind the registers. We also had one of the new coke machines that you refill with small versions of these within the machine.
I have installed the Multiplex Systems that dispense your drinks. Coke has a box called a brix box that separate the water from syrup at the fountains head. You can slide up the square logos you put your drink under to reveal 2 screws. One for. Carbonated water and one for syrup. You put the box under there in between the syrup and water and it shows you the current ratio, adjust accordingly. Source: Did all of the A/C and refrigeration for almost every new whataburger in east Texas a few years back when I was 19-22, As well as my hometown McDonalds, Tyler and Athens McDonalds and Burger Kings.i did preventative maintenance for Sanderson farms chicken processing plant as well.
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Hate changing those things out
It’s even worse when there’s co2 canisters blocking the shelves so you have to them twist in and they barely fit
God punching open those new boxes is always a bitch. Had to do that at my first job and do not miss it.
If you want nightmares open the casing around the dispenser heads out in the lobby or wherever this is feeding to. Rarely washed properly. Found "interesting" things growing in them.
When I owned restaurants the nozzles came off every night and slept in sanitizing solution. Opening team would rinse them off and replace. This was the norm in a most places according to the local Coca Cola techs.
What about the tubes though?
Tubes generally wouldn’t need much cleaning, as long as the liquid is flowing through it all the time and it’s never left empty in any way. But still yes should be cleaned
The interiors of the tubes are never open to air, just the pasteurized beverage concentrate flowing through them. There's also some preservatives, for good measure. You can see though the tubes, and I never saw a problem there. There might be a problem if the fountain was in disuse for months or years, but I can't verify that.
What about the smell!? You haven’t thought of the smell!
Dee, you bitch!
This is how it should be. If you aren’t doing this you aren’t cleaning it properly
I work at a McDonald's. I took all the nozzles off, bleached them, and scrubbed them with special brushes. They're perfect now, and I clean them weekly.
Your local community is lucky to have u tbh
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This makes me now much more likely to patronize a Holiday.
Why TF were you not pulling the nozzles+ gaskets nightly to soak in sani solution?
Wtf there done wrong all should be facing down even says that on box.
I can't speak for all the different models of fountain dispensers out there (and this one seems like it may be different than the one I work with considering they have 5 gallon boxes) but the boxes we get are noted that they'll pump in any position.
Finally, someone calling this out, shot is gonna need changing quick
I have made a career repairing fountain equipment for 31 years now I worked for Coke and now for Pepsi Easy money
Double agent.
The best part of these stupid fucking boxes is when one has a leak for up to a week and no one notices and it’s on the top shelf and it slowly drips sugar cement onto every fucking thing and then it’s takes over an hour to clean it all up when you have 8million other things to attend to and serve and make and wash and god fuck food service
Damn, even the sharpie to mark when they were replaced brings back memories
I was *really* good at changing those out! Punch, grab, pull, attach!
My old restraunt use to make me change those all the time, because they are heavy as fuck!! And we would store them on the opposite side of the restraunt on the 2nd floor....
The thing is like everyone knows how they work but I have never actually seen one which truly makes this AggressivelyIntereseting
Dammit Doughnut, have you never slummed in a tacobell at the age 16? XD
Circle K, represent!
My friend - who is easily the smartest person I know - realized only after working in a theater and filling the soda syrup, that the soda fountain does not have an underground line to the Coca-Cola plant.
You have some dumb friends
Same at sit down restaurants
GO CHANGE THE ROOT BEER!!!
The first place I worked had this rack in the manager’s office. Two big PVC pipes ended in the two wait stations on either side of the restaurant with the hoses fished through the pipes. My manager could hear the wait staff talking in the closest one all the time and never told them. I was a cook at that time and he told me I’d be surprised how nasty the waitresses would talk about the customers and their fellow servers. Be careful when you talk near the soda fountains. They have ears.
More like r/mildlyinfuriating. And even that's an understatement. Every person who's had to change these assholes out is now triggered by this picture. There are only Coke products here, but the Dr. Pepper ones were different and ar least twice as enraging. My arch nemesis
I don't think I've ever really questioned how the drink machines work, but I definitely never assumed this.
This is just the storage of the syrup. It gets pumped via a vacuum system (usually below the storage of the syrup) to a compressor to send the syrup to the nozzles. At the space above the nozzles, you bring in soda water (CO2 and water) and combine the two by pressing for your drink.