Terms Which Have Disappeared

[Doctor Strange]

I gave up drinking soda regularly decades ago, but I always keep a few 7-ounce glass bottles of Coke in the fridge. Every couple of months, it's a special treat. I like that it's close to the classic original bottle size, and it's so much better-tasting from glass than cans or plastic bottles. (Some people acquire homes and things as a measure of having attained success: to me, only drinking Coke from small glass bottles is such a luxury!)

And as someone who has almost never in my whole life finished drinking even a 12-ounce can, I am totally mystified at the monstrous sizes of fountain sodas that are now ubiquitous. Who can drink a 32-ounce or larger soda on a regular basis? How do you justify ingesting such an insane amount of sugar/corn sweetener?!? I mean, I'm a overweight myself from other questionable eating habits, but that's downright self-destructive...

 

[Fading Fast]

And the pricing encourages customers to buy the mega version. It's like a buck twenty-nine for the small and a successive 10 cents more for each step up the ladder. So you get 100 percent more product for maybe 25 percent more cost.

Doesn't that tell you everything about the business model's fixed versus variable costs and how transportation and packaging, not the product itself, is the real cost to the company.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I noticed the other day that McDonald's is now selling fountain soda at a flat rate of $1 per cup, regardless of size. I know from my own personal experience at the theatre that fountain drinks have an enormous markup, which is even more when you buy it by the truckload like McDonald's does, but still....

For the record, we pay about $40 wholesale for a five-gallong "BIB" of Coke syrup from the fountain division of Coca-Cola New England. The mix ratio for syrup to water for Coke has always been one to five-- one ounce of syrup for every five ounces of water, and the Coke service department calibrartes the fountain head to deliver exactly that amount. There's 640 ounces of syrup in a five-gallon container, so exclusive of whatever you pay for your water, the raw product cost of a Coke is a little over six cents an ounce. The cup you drink it out of costs more than the product.

It's interesting that a fountain glass of Coke was originally, and for a long time, just six ounces -- and there was a medical scare in the early 20th Century about "Coca-Cola Fiends" who drank as many as six glasses a day of the stuff. You get more than five such glasses from one "Large Coke" drawn from any fountain today.

We don't sell as many 32oz sodas as they do at the multiplex, but I notice that when we do sell one the cup is almost always at least half full when we retrieve it from the theatre after the show. I don't get the people who buy a huge drink and throw half of it away instead of buying a small drink and finishing it. Waste, no matter what you're wasting, is never a "good deal."

 

[Fading Fast]

I noticed the other day that McDonald's is now selling fountain soda at a flat rate of $1 per cup, regardless of size. I know from my own personal experience at the theatre that fountain drinks have an enormous markup, which is even more when you buy it by the truckload like McDonald's does, but still....

It's interesting that a fountain glass of Coke was originally, and for a long time, just six ounces -- and there was a medical scare in the early 20th Century about "Coca-Cola Fiends" who drank as many as six glasses a day of the stuff. That's less than one "Large Coke" drawn from any fountain today.

The one-price-any-size thing is really interesting. Almost says (need to think more about it and, in truth, have more pricing date to have conviction) that upsizing had reached its profit maximization and the algorithms show that they'll capture more profit by encouraging more purchases overall. Knowing how McDonald's analyzes everything with precision (ad nauseam), that was not a decision made off the cuff.

Hey, "off the cuff," not quite a term that's disappeared, but seems to be used less today.

Also, just flying a touch against the grain (and certainly no doctor says drink a ton of soda), but it seems we are encouraged to drink a lot of fluids to stay hydrated today versus in the GE. Also, if you've ever had a kidney stone, they basically advise you to drink water from a firehose from when you wake up in the morning to when you put you head down on the pillow at night. Hence, some of the larger size bottles, etc., might be driven by the hydration meme [] promoted from the medical field.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Clown doesn't miss a trick. They do nothing at McDonald's without microanalyzing every possible percentage of every crumb.

I think a lot of the concern about hydration is a byproduct of the fact that most people spend most of their time in highly controlled environments -- central heating in the winter, air conditioning in the summer. I know the ventilation systems in radio studios used to just kill me -- I had to constanly be drinking something at all times to not feel like I was going to crumble to dust -- and my current projection booth environment is just as bad. Modern HVAC seems to be calibrated more for the needs of computers than for the needs of people.

 

[tonyb]

Doesn't that tell you everything about the business model's fixed versus variable costs and how transportation and packaging, not the product itself, is the real cost to the company.

I suppose I could look it up to see if it is indeed true, as I've been told, that the retailer has more money in the cup and the ice than in the beverage itself, but I'm feeling lazy this Sunday morning. Seems credible to me, though.

I hit the McDonald's drive-thru regularly and buy the largest unsweetened iced tea, for a buck plus tax. Just something cold and wet and calorie free to sip on while the miles go by. I generally consume the entire thing, melted ice and all. It's good for several hours in an air-conditioned car. God bless America.

 

[tonyb]

...

I think a lot of the concern about hydration is a byproduct of the fact that most people spend most of their time in highly controlled environments -- central heating in the winter, air conditioning in the summer. I know the ventilation systems in radio studios used to just kill me -- I had to constanly be drinking something at all times to not feel like I was going to crumble to dust -- and my current projection booth environment is just as bad. Modern HVAC seems to be calibrated more for the needs of computers than for the needs of people.

As I tap this out on my iPhone I have three humidifiers running on the main floor of this not large house. I may get a plumbed-in system that humidifies the air in the ducting. It would be less hassle than refilling the tanks in these room-size jobs.

 

[scottyrocks]

For the record, we pay about $40 wholesale for a five-gallong "BIB" of Coke syrup from the fountain division of Coca-Cola New England. The mix ratio for syrup to water for Coke has always been one to five-- one ounce of syrup for every five ounces of water, and the Coke service department calibrartes the fountain head to deliver exactly that amount. There's 640 ounces of syrup in a five-gallon container, so exclusive of whatever you pay for your water, the raw product cost of a Coke is a little over six cents an ounce. The cup you drink it out of costs more than the product.

Wouldn't it taste better with club soda or seltzer?

 

[LizzieMaine]

A fountain has its own carbonator unit, usually running off a tank of CO2 gas. The system is plumbed directly into the building water line, and the carbonator charges it, and presto, soda water. That's also why fountain drinks taste different from town to town and place to place -- it all depends on the quality of the tap water that feeds the system.

This system is a lot simpler than the fountains of the 19th century, which charged their water using sulphuric acid mixed with crushed marble dust. Not the easiest or safest apparatus to maintain.

 

[MisterCairo]

I used the expression "kissing cousins" on the weekend. Have not used or heard it in a donkey's age (another term seldom heard...).

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Remember the scene in The Maltese Falcon where Casper Gutman "slips a mickey" to Sam Spade? Apparently it wasn't another Golden Age anti-Irish slur. Mickey Finn was a real person.

 

[SHOWSOMECLASS]

How smart are you now?
Look at what the trap caught!
Would you like to start this process again?

 

[SHOWSOMECLASS]

My parents used the term: "shaking up"
this phrase now has no context for many reasons, government housing, shared apartments, and the acceptance of co-habitation.

 

[scottyrocks]

Did you mean shaking up or shacking up?

 

[tonyb]

Did you mean shaking up or shacking up?

I suspect he does mean "shacking up." Still, his point that the phrase has all but slipped out of popular usage is accurate. It was still heard frequently in my earlier years, but not much anymore.

 

[Bugguy]

Years ago, practically in another lifetime, I knew an old busybody on Orchard Street who was half Chinese and half Jewish. She was what you would call an Oriyente. She used to say that I was an occident waiting to happen...

This reminds me of an acquaintance who escaped from Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia and called himself a Cancelled Czech.

 

[Bugguy]

Not a term, but a gesture -- how long has it been since you saw someone express contempt toward an authority figure by thumbing their nose at them? In the Era, this was a very popular way of expressing a sentiment similar to "Up Yours" or "F. You" toward some dignitary you disrespected. The type of people today who go around with middle-finger stickers displayed on the rear of their pickup trucks would, in the 1930s, go around with a radiator ornament depicting a devil figure with a thumb raised to its nose.

I appreciate the hood ornament - that's a great image. Too bad today it wouldn't last 10 minutes on the street before it was ripped off. Kind of like the gremlin gas cap on an AMC Gremlin. I went through 3 of them before I gave up. I guess I could have welded it on, but that would defeat the purpose.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

In one of the hundreds of Three Stooges shorts I watched after school each day when I was a nipper, one of "The Boys" (I can't remember which) complained of "lumbago". Does anyone have lumbago nowadays?

 

[3fingers]

In one of the hundreds of Three Stooges shorts I watched after school each day when I was a nipper, one of "The Boys" (I can't remember which) complained of "lumbago". Does anyone have lumbago nowadays?

I remember older people using the term, usually while sighing and looking dejected, and as a child it sounded pretty bad. I think now people just say that their back hurts.

 

[Zombie_61]

...I think now people just say that their back hurts.

Give that man a cigar. "Lumbago" is/was a broad generic term for any form of lower back pain, but was usually used to describe pain that was recurring or chronic. So, yes, people still have lumbago, they just don't call it that any more.