Explain Yourself! corners the worst tech in our lives and demands to know: WTF?! This week: the XP1000 – Krups’s absolute bottom-of-the-line espresso machine, which, we discovered, is dealing with serious self-esteem issues – not to mention a few … other problems.
Look, I didn’t ask to be the cheapest espresso machine on the market; I was born this way. Do you know how it feels to grow up alongside a whole family of coffee makers who are better than you? To sit there on the countertop and be ignored your whole life? No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, there’s always going to be somebody in the family that does it better. It’s not fair, and unfortunately there’s nothing I can do about it.
Nothing scares a mug off faster than an unautomated steam nozzle.
Nobody will give me the time of day. Listen, I know I’ve got some flaws, but don’t base your entire opinion of me on that first time we made coffee. I know I shot my brew too soon on those first few tries, but can you blame me? It was my first time with a mug. And besides, my therapist says that’s totally normal for coffee makers in my price range.
I get really lonely sometimes, and it’s not for lack of trying. I thought I could meet mugs and make more coffee if I joined one of those online dating sites – Batch.com, OkBrewpid, Broosk – but nobody ever responded to my messages. I even tried Krupslist “Casual Encounters” because the mugs on there seem more desperate, but did you know most of those mugs aren’t even real?
If everyone could just get past my flaws and give me a chance, I know I could get better at brewing, but right now I’m stuck in this vicious cycle of screwing up. You don’t want to brew with me because I make the kitchen smell like burnt plastic, so then nobody wants to use me in the morning, which means I never get to make any coffee. So when the time finally comes that somebody DOES take a chance on me, I get all nervous and awkward and end up blowing it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten mugs all steamy and ready to be filled up, practically begging for my hot brew, only to ruin things when I can’t figure out how to put on the filter. Sure, I’m inexperienced, but how much of that is my fault, and how much of it is because you people are too shallow to try me out?
