Bartleby, the Coffee Maker

I always bring my own coffee to work in a Thermos, so the malfunction of the brand new office coffee machine does not affect me personally. However, as an engineer, I cannot help but notice that some very important principle about product design is missing when a machine that is supposed to do something as simple as making coffee politely declines to do so. "Please call operator. (Report error 399)," it suggests--as if that serves as an acceptable apology for refusing to pour hot water through ground coffee.

Perhaps the next generation of such machines will be so advanced they will simply declare, having been asked to produce a cup of coffee, "I prefer not to (Error 401)."