Harger: McDonald’s is killing the self-serve soda fountains. My coworkers are taking it personally. I have questions
May 5, 2026, 6:53 AM | Updated: 2:02 pm
McDonald’s is getting rid of the self-serve soda fountains. Customers will now get their drinks handed to them by an actual employee, like it’s 1987. The chain has been phasing them out since 2023 and plans to complete the transition by 2032, ending the free-refill era at every location in the country.
I thought this was a minor fast-food story. A footnote. Then somebody brought it up at yesterday’s news meeting.
There was a gasp. There was plenty of cursing. Someone used the word “tragedy” without irony.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I realized something.
I work with sip stealers.
Theft with ice. Enjoyed by millions. Mourned this week like a national tragedy
Here’s what the self-serve soda fountain actually was. You paid for one soda. You walked up, filled your cup, and then, while you were standing right there in broad fluorescent light, you filled it again. Nobody stopped you. Nobody charged you. You just took a second soda because the machine was there and the teenager behind the counter was thinking about something else.
Theft with ice. Enjoyed by millions. Mourned this week like a national tragedy.
And it doesn’t stop there.
These are the same people sneaking candy into the movie theater. Junior Mints in the jacket pocket. A full-size Snickers in the purse. The theater charges too much, they say. Sure. Just sit there and enjoy that contraband KitKat. It’s fine.
These are the people grabbing a fistful of NutraSweet packets from their table at the Denny’s “just in case.” Those packets go straight into a kitchen junk drawer where they will live for three years next to a dead battery and a menu from a Teriyaki restaurant that closed in 2008. You didn’t need them. You never needed them. You took them because they were free and nobody was counting.
And the streaming passwords. A full-grown adult, still on their parents’ Netflix login. You make a salary. You have a 401(k). You have a LinkedIn profile that describes you as a thought leader. You are a thought leader who has been watching prestige television for free since the first Trump administration.
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This is how it starts
Today, it’s a second soda. Nobody saw. Nobody stopped you. Felt pretty good, didn’t it?
Tomorrow you’re in the carpool lane alone. And your Good To Go pass is flipped to HOV. You are not HOV. You are one person in a car. But you flipped it anyway because you were running late, and the general-purpose lanes were backed up, and honestly, what are the odds?
The day after that, you remember the pen. The one from Applebee’s. The waitress set it down with the check, and you just … kept it. You didn’t mean to. Except you did. You put it in your pocket while she was walking away, and you have used it every day since. It writes great, and you feel nothing.
And then one morning, you wake up, and you’re casing a bank. You don’t know how it happened. One day, you were a thought leader with a LinkedIn profile and a junk drawer full of NutraSweet packets, and now you’re in a parking lot with a ski mask and a duffle bag, running logistics for one of the most powerful cartels in North America.
All because of that Fanta.
The machine was right there. Nobody was watching. You filled the cup a second time.
This is how it starts.
The refill generation
None of these people would have said they were criminals. They coach Little League. They hold the elevator. They are, by every conventional measure, good people who decided that certain things just don’t really count. Free refills. Borrowed passwords. Expired NutraSweet packets. A pocketful of candy smuggled past a 16-year-old in a red vest.
American consumer culture spent decades making theft so small and so frictionless that it stopped feeling like theft at all. One free refill at a time.
McDonald’s noticed.
The self-serve era is over. Killed quietly by the refill generation.
Somewhere in North America tonight, a cartel lieutenant is lying awake. Not thinking about the money. Not thinking about the risk. Thinking about a Fanta. And the exact moment he decided to fill it twice.
It didn’t have to be this way.
Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here.
