I have never met a Starbucks barista who wasn’t delightfully off in some way, but they’re all amazingly patient and hardworking people who wish to tell me about their childhoods in rural Oregon. Alas, they are people, so their days are numbered. In the long run, when the pain has diminished, it will be for the best. The opening of Christopher Mims’ Quartz article about automated caffeine:

Starbucks’ 95,000 baristas have a competitor. It doesn’t need sleep. It’s precise in a way that a human could never be. It requires no training. It can’t quit. It has memorized every one of its customers’ orders. There’s never a line for its perfectly turned-out drinks.

It doesn’t require health insurance.

Don’t think of it as the enemy of baristas, insists Kevin Nater, CEO of the company that has produced this technological marvel. Think of it as an instrument people can use to create their ideal coffee experience. Think of it as a cure for ‘out-of-home coffee drinkers’—Nater’s phrase—sick of an ‘inconsistent experience.’

Think of it as the future. Think of it as empowerment. Your coffee, your way, flawlessly, every time, no judgments. Four pumps of sugar-free vanilla syrup in a 16 oz. half-caff soy latte? Here it is, delivered to you precisely when your smartphone app said it would arrive, hot and fresh and indistinguishable from the last one you ordered.•