On Saturday, Keurig announced they would no longer sponsor Sean Hannity’s show after the Fox News host said things the coffee machine overlords did not like about the scandal Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore has found himself in.
In response, lots of Hannity’s fans decided to smash their Keurig machines to show support for their favorite media personality. On Monday, Hannity called a truce and urged his listeners and viewers to stop smashing their machines after the coffee machine company’s CEO publicly apologized to the host.
I pulled an “Office Space” with my Keurig… Would be a shame if everyone else joined me in the Keurig Smash Challenge #BoycottKeurig #IStandWithHannity #SundayMorning pic.twitter.com/yEADeRC006— Angelo John Gage (@AngeloJohnGage) November 12, 2017
I fully support the Keurig boycott for reasons that have nothing to do with the allegations of sexual assault against Moore or Hannity’s coverage of said allegations, but because Keurig machines make bad coffee.
There, I said it. I have never had a cup of coffee from a Keurig machine that was not watery or did not taste like chemicals from the plastic cartridge the grounds had been sitting in for God only knows how long. And it’s expensive! The machine itself is upwards of $200 for a decent model, a drastic increase from my $40 Black and Decker auto-drip machine that runs like a champ.
The individual cups are also pricey. Using K-cups can be five times more expensive than drinking coffee from a pot. In a 2015 interview with The Atlantic, John Sylvan, the founder of Keurig, admits he does not own a machine because it is too expensive. Sylvan also bemoaned inventing K-cups that were not recyclable, creating an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen.
“In 2014, enough K-Cups were sold that if placed end-to-end, they would circle the globe 10.5 times,” the narrator says in an ominous YouTube video Sylvan shows the reporter profiling him. “Almost all of them ended up in landfills. They are not recyclable.”
The water tank is also stupid small on most machines. My parents have one that my five siblings and I all use when we go home for holidays. Every other time I go to make a cup of coffee I’m stuck spending five minutes filling up the tank and waiting for the water to heat up before I get my single cup of subpar java. I may as well have made a French press of coffee or waited for a drip machine to do its thing. It would taste better, at least.
Keurig machines are also impractical when making a batch for a large group of people. Instead of making a pot for 12 or more cups like a regular drip machine, one must stand by the Keurig machine and wait for each cup to individually pour. I also have yet to find a Keurig model that allows you to set the machine on a timer the night before and wake up to fresh coffee like a drip machine does.
The Keurig machine deserves to die, because they’re charging us all an arm and a leg for coffee that does not taste good.
