Vending Machine

There’s a snack vending machine on the 1st floor of my office building. There are six floors total in this building, (at least three different companies occupy the building), but just one snack machine. My office is on the 5th floor, so it’s a little excursion for me to hit the machine.

Whoever owns this vending machine restocks it only once every couple of months. And they stock it with a bunch of crap. I think they may stock it with crap so it doesn’t sell out quick so they don’t have to restock it often. Really.

I used to get a pack of chocolate M&Ms each day or so, but after it ran out the first time, they never put anymore back in. The slot for the M&Ms stayed empty for a couple months until they refilled it with some stupid cracker thing.

So I started with Oreos as my snack. Until it ran out the first time, and then they didn’t refill that slot with more Oreos. Hell, like with the M&Ms slot, they didn’t refill it at all for two or three months.

Over the year that I’ve been working in this building, I’ve had to change my snack of the day four or five times because they don’t refill the machine with the things that actually sell out. Yesterday, I went down to get something to chew on, and I found nothing in there I’ve bought from that machine before.

It looks like they refilled the machine over the Christmas holidays, but what isn’t all new stuff is stuff that never sold out. I mean, there’s a trailmix snack in that machine that has never even gotten close to selling out — I see the machine just about every day, so I’d see if people were buying the crap.

I was hungry yesterday for an afternoon treat, so I approached the machine with the same insane hope as I do nearly every day. Maybe, just maybe they’ve restocked it with something good.

Nope, nothing that I really like and buy a lot. Just more of the replacement scrubs that apparently no one else buys either. But I needed something to take the edge off my hunger, so I picked out some crackers that probably wouldn’t taste like dusty cardboard.

I put my dollar bill in, and got the “Please use exact change” message. Oh for christ’s sake! They had just restocked the damned machine and they didn’t bother putting in change? What kind of idiot runs this vending machine?

It’s like they don’t want to sell anything. They let the hot items sell out, then don’t restock them, but rather add in stuff that doesn’t move, and then they don’t have change for dollars?

And to make the whole thing more infuriating, instead of spitting out my dollar bill when I hit the money return button, it dropped out a dollar coin. <sigh>

A frickin’ dollar coin. They didn’t leave any quarters, dimes, or nickels in the damned machine for change, but they left dollar coins for returns?

Whoever runs that machine deserves a solid kick right in the junk. Idiot.

And I’m insane to have kept trying that machine over all these months. I won’t try again.

Bullgrit