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Thursday, August 26, 2004
1:39 PM

Score: Vending Machine 3; Sarah 0.

Do you ever have one of those days where you feel like all (or most of) the forces in the universe are conspiring to make your life as difficult as possible? Where every little thing goes wrong and pushes you to the brink of insanity? Yesterday was one of those days. Nothing inherently bad, just unusually busy and frustrating.

I had a hearing at 11:00 which I expected to go an hour or so. No problem. Get ready for the hearing, go to the hearing, eat lunch, come back to work. Piece of cake. Except that I was still there at 1. And then at 2. Finally got out of there at 2:30, at which point I was ready to eat my desk if need be. But I had stuff to do so I didn't stop for lunch (I'm such a good little worker). I figured I'd just hit the vending machine in our office. (The vending machine company must make a killing off of us.)

Of course once I got back I was barraged with a gazillion little things that had to be dealt with right now. So the vending machine and food waited. Until 4 pm. By then I think I had in fact eaten part of my desk. But finally I broke free, dislodged all the splinters from my teeth, and headed down to the kitchen ready for "real" food.

The Machine has a long history of being quite persnickety. Sometimes it won't take bills, sometimes it won't take change. Sometimes it won't take either and it just keeps the food while silently mocking your hunger and crushed expectations. I was prepared as could be - I had bills and change. Nothing was going to stand between me and my food. Or so I thought. Apparently the Machine was in the mood to mock.

After carefully surveying my options, I decided to keep it simple - popcorn (I figured that I might want dinner later). Besides, it was the only thing that wasn't 150% crappy. So in goes my dollar bill. I make sure that I key in the correct row and number. Lord knows I didn't want to get stuck with the pack of Juicy Fruit gum by mistake. The machine does its thing. I hear the magical whirring sound of the machine pushing my popcorn to the front, ready to drop it to the bottom for me to grab. But then tragedy strikes - it stops, and the popcorn is still stuck in its row. No!! Given how desperate I am, I figure that if I just try again, the machine will fix itself and will give me at least one popcorn, hopefully two (which I would have happily eaten at that point). So in goes my change. Whirr whirr whirr. Now there are two popcorn pouches stuck in their row, none in my hand, and one really annoyed person staring in.

I tried shaking the machine a bit and found two things: (1) the Machine is REALLY heavy, so I really just made it vibrate mildly; and (2) moving it at all makes a TON of noise. Which drew the attention of one of the staff members who came over to see what was going on. I told her and she decided to take pity on me and contribute her own 85 cents to the cause to see if we could get the machine working. Care to guess the outcome? No popcorn. By then we are both really pissed off (and out a total of $2.55), so she starts shaking the machine. She was much better at it than I, but still no popcorn. But we did manage to make enough noise to attract the attention of a partner lurking nearby. Great, I'm going to get fired for trying to break into the vending machine. Luckily that didn't happen. In fact he then insisted that he could get it loose. So he proceeds to again shake the machine. That popcorn was not budging. And the Machine was in full mock mode.

Finally, after all that commotion, another person comes in, asks what all the racket is and when she sees the problem, she tells me she has popcorn at her desk she would give me. Thank God!! Finally popcorn. But not from the evil money-eating Machine.

In short, after spending $2.55, shaking the heck out of the Machine, and making enough noise to disturb the entire office (and maybe building), I finally got my food (which was a good thing given that I ended up stuck at the office until 7:30 pm). But the Machine remains undefeated. And I have a bizarre newfound respect for the Machine. But it won't get any more of my money! (Until the next time I'm starving . . .)

P.S. I did leave a note on the Machine letting the company know that it ate my money. Funny enough the guy came to refill it this morning and I got all the money back. So I get my money and the Machine kept its popcorn. All is right in the world.

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