McDonald's Restaurants used to supply coffee buyers with a handy little stirrer/spoon for adding very tiny amounts of sugar to your joe. Now the stirrers are supplied by McDonalds are flat. Good for stirrin' but not so much for distrubuting sugar. Why would they do this? Shouldn't products and tools be improved to make life easier, not more difficult? Isn't this the definition of progress?

The issue with the spoon-tipped stirrers was that cocaine users discovered that the little spoons made ideal, albeit lo-fi, coke spoons. They became common Exhibit As in drug busts and in the late 1970s McDonalds, uncomfortable with the affiliation, started offering the flat-tipped spoons for coffee drinkers.

There was a time when, upon exiting your local McDonald's, the ground would be peppered with the infamous stirrers. Even though it's been decades since they were last made available to consumers, they are a very affordable collectable. You can pick them up on sales and auction sites for $4-$5 - ironically about the price of a venti latte.