Pranay Pathole

Who are these guys? They're hilarious!

Those are called Chinese

This is not an intuitive UI. An ideal UI shouldn't make a user think even a bit. Moving the lever either on extreme right or extreme left would have made this more intuitive since we are used to pushing things with just a hand rather than with a cup AND a hand.

You’re overthinking this. Or maybe every fountain soda machine ever made got it wrong. Could go either way.

As a teenager, I worked in a shop with a similar machine for juice. Except the lever was shaped like a "U" handle. So, people grabbed the handle and pulled. Juice came out, because it split the valve casing, which further encouraged the error until the valve mechanism broke.

There was an issue with the Coke machine as well. 4 rectangular buttons in a row, one large white nozzle in the middle. Put cup under nozzle, press button. Yet, people would put the cup under the button and press. Or horizontally over the button and then press the nozzle.

User is king and kings are often fools.

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools” Douglas Adams (Mostly Harmless)