Vendo: The God of Snacks

Here's the thing about vending machines. We have made great advancements in technology across the board: Cellular telephones, hi-definition TV, microwave ovens and cars that run on batteries. Meanwhile, the best way we can think of to dispense snacks is a machine with those spiraling mechanisms. At best, they're hit or miss. At worst, they'll make you buy two of something in order to get one of something.

They're stress-inducing. I call it a Vendosecond: The length of time between seeing the snack get to the edge and having it actually fall to the bottom. We're never sure if it's going to make it. Frequently, the machine at work is half-filled with snacks hanging perilously, waiting for someone with another dollar to get in on the two-for-one sale after a frustrated potential consumer walked away snackless.

I rode my bike the 6 miles to River Winds (out local fitness facility) tonight. Afterward, I needed a beverage to refill my bottle for the ride home. The machine upstairs sells Powerade for $1.25. Red is my favorite flavor (honestly, blindfolded I couldn't tell red from blue) and I put two dollars in the machine and was served one red Powerade and sixty cents change. I was shortchanged by 15 cents, and Powerless to do anything about it. The vending machine offers no appeals process.

I took my lumps and wandered downstairs where the snacks are. I'll have a bag of peanuts. I figure elephants like them, and if they're good enough for elephants, they're good enough for me. Look at what great shape they're in, so they must be good for you.

The peanuts are 90 cents. I put a dollar in the machine, was vended my bag (in a Vendosecond) and out came 25 cents change.

I broke even from two different machines. Those are the kinds of things I win at. Stuff that is pointless, and only valuable in that it keeps this writing project going another day. Otherwise, I couldn't care less about the 15 cents, although the sheer coincidence and happenstance of it all was quite amusing. It was at that point that I figured that the machines must be communicating via some wireless system at a frequency that humans cannot hear.

I suspect that the lottery machines have it in for me.

Bastards.