New American president Joe Biden has removed a button from the desk in the White House’s Oval Office that summoned a butler bringing a Diet Coke.
While most people can only dream of having a button on their desk that on pressing resulted in someone serving you a drink, one such service has gone from the White House’s Oval Office.
Newly inaugurated American president Joe Biden has removed a red button which sat on his predecessor Donald Trump’s desk.
When Trump pressed the button, a butler appeared and served him a cold, refreshing Diet Coke.
In his early days in office, President Biden has reversed many of Trump’s actions, such as the US rejoining the Paris Climate Change Agreement, and the red Diet Coke button has also bitten the dust.
The chief political commentator at Times Radio, Tom Newton, tweeted that when he interviewed Trump in 2019 he was fascinated by what the red button on his desk did.
Eventually, the then-president pressed it and a butler brought him a Diet Coke on a silver platter.
However, it seems such luxuries are not in the world of President Biden who has consigned Trump’s button to the bin.
Other former presidents also used the button with President Barack Obama believed to have used it to get a cup of tea.
President Biden has removed the Diet Coke button. When @ShippersUnbound and I interviewed Donald Trump in 2019, we became fascinated by what the little red button did. Eventually Trump pressed it, and a butler swiftly brought in a Diet Coke on a silver platter. It's gone now. pic.twitter.com/rFzhPaHYjk
— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) January 21, 2021
Our choices
Hearing this, the food and drink team wondered what we would have delivered to our desks if we had a little red button to press.
I guess this is rather predictable, but I would have a large gin and tonic delivered to my desk. However, for this, the button would only become active on a Friday at around 4pm.
The gin would be accompanied by the lovely Fever Tree spiced orange ginger ale a friend of mine sent round for me to try last weekend, and there would be plenty of ice, some slices of lime and frozen raspberries in there too to kick off my weekend in style.
I asked my daughter during a break in her home schooling what her choice would be – and emphatically it was chocolate fudge cake.
Big juicy burger
My colleague Julia Bryce said: “If I could have my own way, I think I would add another button so I could have one for food and one for drinks.
“My drink of choice would have to be a sensible one, because having a whisky only a button tap away could prove dangerous, although maybe a curfew in place would be of benefit. A fresh natural lemonade with lots of ice and a wedge of lemon in it would probably be my go-to.
“For my food button, it would always have to be a big juicy burger – although I’d have to be careful with how often I was pressing it!”
Another colleague, Rebecca Shearer, said: “My button would definitely summon a cheeseboard that would have an array of my favourite cheeses as well as some grapes and oatcakes.
“Like Julia, I’d probably also have a drinks button that, when pressed, would cause someone to bring me a glass of wine. It would be one of those buttons I ‘accidentally’ lean on with my elbow throughout the day so that I would make a big deal about the fact they’d already poured the wine and I wouldn’t want it to go to waste, meaning I wouldn’t feel so bad about drinking during the day.”
