I worked as an engineer at a place that not only had free soda but one of the multi-flavor fountains like you'd see in a fast food place. It was initially quite cool; you could come in with your cup and just fill up whatever you wanted.

Of course, soda syrup costs literally pennies. Food places pay more for cups than soda, and since the engineering group wasn't buying that many cups (people used their own) the cost was essentially wrapped up in the machine itself.

Now comes the true stupidity. To "cut costs" they stopped refilling the soda dispenser but they kept the machine and even left it plugged in. It became a glorified ice dispenser (when the break room already had a different ice dispenser), consuming electricity. It had a bunch of now-useless fountain dispensers on the front of it.

Think about that. The company decided not to pay the pennies it would have cost to make employees happy, and elected to continue operating a machine that didn't have any reason to exist without the soda. The beginning of the end was signaled loud and clear to employees and I saw a marked drop in giving-a-crap-about-things after that point. The company is not around anymore, long since divided into pieces and sold to the lowest bidder.