Out Of The Loop

Nobody tells me anything. I’m stuck down in my “hole” as it is graciously called, and nobody tells me anything.Not that long ago, I went to the break room to get a coke and ran into a TV. Someone had put a TV in the break room! We didn’t have a TV in the break room; we barely had a break room in the break room. We don’t even have a sink and now we have a TV with a remote! it’s outrageous. I wouldn’t be surprised if before too long we had chairs in there. We are moving up. But, of course, nobody told me.

I get all kinds of notices about things I don’t care about. TPTB feel the need to share all kinds of minutia with us but they can’t tell us about new TV falling from the sky and landing in our break room – no hard hat warning no nothing. I should have started to spend more time down there because I would have noticed New Thing Number 2

A New Candy Machine!

They gave us a new candy machine that takes dollar bills! Oh My Gawd! They gave us a new machine that takes dollars! This is a huge thing around here. The candy machine only took coins and the coke machine won’t give you change for a dollar even if you hit change return before you make your drink selection, because it doesn’t want us to be happy, it also wants us to all kinds of things that are not coke and that alone makes me very unhappy. We have a Pepsi machine too, but I don’t use it and I don’t know if it gives change better than the coke machine. Its Pepsi so I am going with my long held believe that it sucks, so of course it doesn’t give change, it probably eats your money and doesn’t give you your drink.

But. Back to the brand new magic candy machine. It even has more candy! It has gum! It has more kinds of chips! Its nirvana in a plastic case. I was really excited about the new machine and the wondrous promise it held, until I looked at the find print. The candy is more expensive, the chips in the old machine were .50, now the chips are .55! The candy in the machine went from .55 to .60! Oh the Humanity! So now if you just want a mid afternoon snack you have to have at least $1.25! For a can of coke and a candy bar! Granted, this is cheap in the world of concessions, if you went to the movies and wanted coke and candy it would cost you approximately $12.78 plus tax – but, still. I remember when candy cost .25! Gawd, I’m old. I don’t remember what it cost out of the machine back in the day because my Mommy was mean and we didn’t know about candy machines or putting money in them and coke machines were totally outside our ken, I did know about the lollypop trees at the bank, so I did have the idea that candy grew on trees but I don’t remember what our parents told us about those large boxes of candy we must have seen around - but they must have told us they caused cancer or ate people. Because I can’t see me passing up a candy machine for any reason unless I thought the machine was going to kill me.

Today, I mock the child eating candy machines, I rock the machines when they try to keep candy – yeah, that’s right, those stickers up at the top of the machines saying “Don’t Rock The Machine”, those are for me . “Rock Around The Clock” is my theme song, I’m all over those bad boys, they want to keep my candy and eat my change? It’s on! One of us is going to stand tall and one of us is going to throw up and one of us is going to win, and it’s going to be me. Until the machine tips over and kills me and then, my parents will be right, Candy Machines kill people.