Would you like some additional morphine sulfate to go along with your skin graft?

The other day, Molly and I ordered drinks at a Whole Foods Market in San Francisco. I forget what Molly ordered, but I ordered a hot cocoa. When I received my drink, I could feel that it was very warm indeed and so I poured some cold milk into it in an effort to bring the drink down to a more suitable temperature. Following this, I cautiously sipped my drink and immediately burned my tongue and the roof of my mouth. Yes, despite the large amount of cold milk, I still felt as if I were sipping lava.

Now this is by no means the first time I have had my mouth burned by an excessively heated drink, but beyond simply swearing this time, I contemplated this plague on our society…

Who exactly is being served by making the drinks scalding hot like this? Is there a large demographic out there that enjoys searing the inside of their mouths? Seriously, why the fuck are drinks served to us like this?

It can’t be energy efficient (and therefore cost effective) either to heat the liquids in the coffee or hot chocolate or whatever to temperatures one degree less than boiling. And I’ve never heard of any companies being sued for serving a drink that wasn’t hot enough, but I can think of a number of companies that have been sued for serving drinks that people burned themselves with. So, why does this inefficient, expensive and sadistic practice continue?