Vending Machines

They're are few mundane things that really sets me ablaze. One of those things are vending machines. At times they're the greatest thing to have ever graced a break room or any other waiting vestibule, and at others their the bane of our existence and dollar bills. 

You know when you glance by one and you see all of those goodies that it offering you and it lures you to who out your wallet and spend spend spend... It entices you with their ice cold beverages and the high calorie, high carb, low nutrition candies and pastries, and yet, that's THE NORMAL STUFF!!! It's the other crap they put in that to the machines that are off the wall. Let's take a stroll along the off the wall weirdness that is vending machines. 

One thing I've noticed is the tender machines take. When the hell would someone break a $20 for a Twix bar?!? It used to be if you didn't have change you were screwed. Don't get me wrong, I love that little bit of convenience that they implemented into them. Since the introduction of the dollar feeder I was impressed. Now a days you can get a Pepsi by coins, bills, credit card, thumbprints and retina scan, hell, even telepathic inception so I can think it as soon as I get there and debit my account... It seems that no matter how you want to pay for it, they got you covered.

Now that we covered how to pay, lets get into what we're paying for. When you usually think of vending machine goods we think of a candy bar or can of soda. Normally that's all good, maybe the occasional bag of chips or an ice cream bar. But from what I'm seeing is that vending machines are automated quickie-marts. They house everything from gum, to aspirin, to 5-hour Energy, to diapers and wipes, to just about everything. Whatever happened to being the weirdest thing to buy from a machine was condoms, tampons, and cigarettes; and those were in bars, not in the front entrance of a mall. I just don't know when did we get so inept to needing such things at a moments notice that we need to have it along with our Butterfinger?!?

Speaking of Butterfinger, who the hell are these people that fills these machines. Just about everywhere I see them they put the inconvenient of snacks in these things. Why do you put something as fragile as Butterfinger or a bag of chips at the TOP OF THE MENU!?! I know that it probably don't apply to chips much, even though I hate half the bag being crumbs, but Butterfinger of all things? It's broken in half half of the time when I buy it at the grocery store, why take a potential good one and set it to fail from the top row?!? That irks the crap out of me. It's just as bad as when they put in sweet, beautiful looking pastries and smash the creme filling right out of it making a danish look like a drive-by Gingerbread Man massacre. (BTW, if you haven't played Texting of The Bread yet, try it, it's friggin' awesome.)  About the only "food" that can survive the vending machine gauntlet are gummies. Anything gummy is just about bulletproof from the tight quarters of it's screw-fed housing to the seemingly forever free fall from where it's placed within the machine. 

Like I said from the beginning this isn't a rant to discredit vending machines, they're actually a pretty damn good thing, just not a great thing. It definitely made some advancements since the old "exact change only, pull the lever and peanut butter crackers come out" (I still wonder if my old barber still have that machine), but it cod still improve on some things. If anyone of you out there reading this a vending machine engineer, just take note on what I've discussed. Or at least if your a vender, make an effort to not commit Butterfinger genocide. That really pisses me off. 

BootLeG sampler.. signing out...