#837 Pushing those little buttons on the soft drink cup lid


Cola, Diet, RB, or other.

When we were kids, my sister and I carefully pushed those little plastic buttons every time we scored a meal at McDonald’s. We pushed Cola if we had cola, RB if we had root beer, and Other if we were sucking back some McDonald’s orange drink, which was our usual.

Survey says

Honestly, we thought there was a big Garbage Survey at the end of the day and every customer had to punch their button to send in feedback. We figured some poor McDonald’s employee stuck his arm shoulder-deep in that bag of lettuce scraps drenched in Big Mac sauce, assorted ice-cream cone bottoms, and greasy French Fry containers to pull out all the cup lids. Then we imagined he arranged them in tipsy, drippy piles and counted up how many of each sold that day, quickly tabulating the results on a clipboard and calling them into head office so they knew how many batches to make for tomorrow.

Kids, huh?

Anyway, these days every time I enjoy a fine dine at a fast food joint, I still make sure I take lots of napkins, swivel in my chair, and press those little buttons on the drink cup lid.

There’s just something about the way they give, the way they turn white, and the way they’re permanently transformed for all eternity that just makes me itch for it.

It’s just compulsive. It’s just instinct.

It’s just


Photo from: here and here

63 thoughts on “#837 Pushing those little buttons on the soft drink cup lid

  1. Excellent entry, so true. I was already loving McDonald’s Orange Drink (which was also a mainstay of mine), but I just had to stop reading when I saw “lettuce scraps drenched in Big Mac Sauce.” That…Is one of the greatest combination of flavors ever created.

  2. You only pushed the correct one? I always pushed all of them in. No matter how you do it, it is truly awesome.

  3. You have root beer at Maccas in the US?! What the…?! Root beer (aka sarsaparilla in Australia) is incredibly foul.

    But it IS awesome to push in all the little buttons on the drink lid <3

  4. @ali
    coke, diet coke, and root beer all look the same color (black!) when you get them in your cup. so the buttons are for the STAFF to push to tell the customers which is which… right? but that doesn’t explain other.

  5. The staff usually only pushes them in if you’ve ordered more than one drink that looks the same but is different. If you order 3 diet cokes, and you get three brown beverages then you can safely assume they’re all diet coke, even though the buttons are pushed.

  6. When I was a kid, we only went to McD’s on rare occasions, since our little town didn’t have one, and my parents were really frugal (five kids on a teacher’s salary will do that to ya.) The rule was, if you were 12 or over, you could get a Big Mac. Otherwise, a cheeseburger will do you just fine. Somehow my little brother managed to get Fillet ‘o Fish all the time, but since the rest of us thought it was disgusting, we didn’t really care too much.

    Anyway, I digress from the topic at hand: the buttons on the drink cups. I am a little embarrassed to admit that my family never figured those out. We would just taste the drink and then argue over what it was. This often resulted in a fair amount of your Root Beer being repeatedly sampled by the Coke orderers who suddenly wished they had asked for RB. Getting Sprite was a smart move if you didn’t want to pick up random sibling cooties.

  7. There is no way I could only push JUST one. Those little buttons are sitting there just asking to be pushed in.

    I think the obsession with lids buttons would fall into a similar category as the bubble wrap folks. And I sure do love my bubble wrap!

  8. I like the restaurants that have one for Dr. Pepper. They recognize that the Dr. deserves its own button, and the true awesomeness that is Dr. Pepper.

    But as it stands, I do push all the buttons because its awesome.

  9. But Dan, shouldn’t they then make a button for Diet Dr. Pepper? It tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper, you know.

    A lot of people think Dr. Pepper is flavored with prune juice, but this is totally false.

    I remember my first trip to the south, and I had Mr. Pibb – a competing soda to Dr. Pepper. I thought it was very funny that Mr. Pibb was trying to compete with the good doctor, despite the fact that he never got a medical degree. A similar southern soda war is the Mountain Dew vs. Mellow Yellow battle.

    What was this awesome entry about again?

    1. But thats why Pibb is better, he speaks to the common man. As a college student i need his down to earth goodness. As for Mellow Yellow, I dont know who thought to call something with that much caffeine in it “mellow”

  10. just a note to freddo & dan, there is no period after the Dr in Dr Pepper. don’t know why or why that little factoid has always stuck in my head.

    1. That would be because the “.” is used if the abbreviation isn’t using the last letter of the word

      ie St, Rd, Ave (no .)

      No. (as in number) … can’t think of another off hand, must be time for bed lol

  11. I used to work at Coca-Cola. If anyone put root beer or cream soda syrup on the wrong line, you can never get the taste out of it.

    Sprite, Ginger Ale, etc. will all taste like Root Beer. You need a damn Exorcist to fix dat.

  12. I work at McDonald’s, and the “Other” is generally used to show iced tea at our store. It is slightly lighter that coke, diet coke, and root beer, but when we are in a hurry we sometimes make mistakes, so the punched lids help speed things up.

    I must say, even when making drinks that are obvious(orange drink, sprite, fruitopia) I tend to push in the “Other” button. I know its unnecessary, but it’s so much fun! I’ve worked there for 3 years and I still get a kick out of it.

  13. I’ve just completed a project including soft drink cup lids, strangely enough. I have about 10 – and I’m going to press them all when it’s marked. ;D

  14. I STILL push all of the buttons down. I always liked the fact that the McDonald’s lids have cool shaped buttons.

  15. Before I do anything else, I push down the little buttons on my drink. Only a couple of times in my life I have forgotten to, started eating, and gasped in shock! I must push down the buttons! Then I do, and all is well.

  16. Most times, I push them all in.
    On some rare occasion, though, I decided to only do one. I was horrified to realize I did the wrong one. So I took the lid off and popped it back up.
    Basically, the little buttons are awesome. :D

  17. it was my favourite thing about mcdonald’s when i was a kid. i would take a handful of the lids and pop the buttons and then put them back.

  18. When I was a kid, my mom never really let me drink pop whenever we went somewhere that had cups like that so I would always press the Coke tab, thinking if I did that it would magically turn into Coke.

    Thankfully, I am now allowed to get pop so I just push them all in!

  19. My siblings and I always used to think that it was the buttons that magically designated what drink you had. If you pushed Cola, it was cola, if you pushed RB, it magically became root beer…. Strange, but just one of the awesome things from childhood!

  20. I do this. I also tear the straw wrapper from the middle and take the top off so the bottom is ready to shoot off into the garbage can when I blow in it.

    I just found this site and adore it!


    hahahahaha I thought I was alone. X]

    And yes, this is indeed awesome.

  22. I used to do this all the time when I was little. I thought there was some kind of technology that went in the lid, and something would happen when you push one. I pushed all of them, every time. But I never knew what they were for until a few years ago.

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  24. Wow! Awesome post! My boyfriend HAS TO push in all of the little bubbles on his lid, he has been doing it for years and if the day comes where he throws out a drink without pushing them all in… well.. I am sure he would probably reach into the garbage, push them in and then throw it out! it’s like a superstition of his, weird, but endearing i think!

  25. sometimes when i eat fast food with my fiancee i pust the diet button on her soda… she really doesn’t like it :P

  26. When I was little I actually thought pushing those down some how make the drink come out of the straw faster haha.

  27. WOW, it’s amazing what “pushing a few little buttons” will bring up, eh?!*!

  28. What are those little buttons on the lid called?
    The opposite of an indentation? What would you call them? Those small, raised bumps of plastic that you push…a tab? Those little buttons?
    This is driving me out of my mind…

  29. This is my favorite entry, and personally spot on. I never really realized it until just now how religious I am with it. AWESOME!

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