Illinois woman gets orange soda from gas station soda fountain. Then she sees what else came with it: ‘Imagine you got a Coke’

Shay (@shayshontez.music), a musician in Illinois, walked into a gas station for a fountain drink. When she walked out, she ended up filming the cup instead of sipping on it.

The reason, she says, is because of some unidentified specks that appeared to float in her drink. Her commenters say she avoided drinking a soda crawling with pests.

As of this writing, Shay’s video has more than 57,000 views.

‘Imagine if I Drank This’

“Y’all, I came in here to get something to drink,” she says at the top of the clip. “Look at this. Look at this [expletive].”

The camera leaves her face and drops to the fountain—a row of nozzles above a price board reading 44 oz for $2.29, 52 oz for $2.49, 99-cent refills—then settles on the cup with specks in it.

She’s disgusted, but she never says on camera what the specks are. Some viewers guessed they were ants that had found their way into the syrup lines.

Her caption carries the verdict: “Imagine if I drank this,” trailed by two nauseated faces and #gasstation. Her account doesn’t say whether the specks came off the ice, the syrup lines, or the nozzle. She only adds that she noticed them before the first sip.

Viewers Weigh in on the Specks

“Imagine you got a Coke,” one commenter said. Shay replied, “I swear. Good thing I don’t like dark soda.”

One woman could suddenly understand why her husband avoids dispensed beverages. “And now I see the reason why my husband doesn’t do fountain drinks at all!” she wrote.

“Literally takes an extra 5 mins at the end of a shift to take the nozzles off and soak them overnight then a wipe down and it stays clean,” a third person commented. “Y’all would be surprised how nasty those fountains are!”

Who’s Minding the Machine?

There are no gray areas for self-serve fountains under Illinois rules. The state’s Food Code defines a “Food Establishment” as an operation that “stores, prepares, packages, serves, [and] vends food directly to the consumer,” which is what a gas-station soda counter does. That puts it under the same sanitation law as any restaurant.

Illinois adopted the 2022 FDA Food Code, whose pest provisions are clear. It says that insects, rodents, and other pests must be “controlled to minimize their presence within food establishments.” Nozzles, ice bins, and syrup lines are the spots inspectors flag when they go uncleaned.

Catching it falls to local government, not the state. The Illinois Department of Public Health says such businesses are “regulated by local health departments serving the jurisdiction where the establishment is located,” so a cup like Shay’s is a complaint for the county health department. It can inspect the machine and cite what it finds.

Subplot News reached out to Shay via TikTok message and comment, and to the Illinois Department of Public Health via email for more information.

This story is republished with permission. It originally appeared on Subplot News.