Machines

I learned the other day that the people who own the single candy machine in our break room, fired us, they said it was because 1) poor sales and 2) Too many complaints.

“Too many complaints”. That’s what I call customer service. The only complaints was ever aware of was there was almost always a sign taped to the front of it complaining that the machine ate money. Those damn customers and their sticky money! And the machine was pricey - Nothing cools your adore for that .85 snickers bar like knowing that at every other building on campus it doesn’t run more than .65, and I don’t even want to talk about the .75 bags of chips. The tiniest chip bags on the market and they had the nerve to price them like that and the less said about the $1.00 poptarts the better. The pirates on my corner don’t even have that much gall.

The balls on the candy machine people. They price themselves out of the market and then blame their customers when their product doesn’t move... And then someone assaulted it, but that was the just the one time and it was clearly an isolated incident - and it was just simple assault - If she had punched a person like that she wouldn’t even have gotten a fine. A ticket, maybe. Well, anger management classes. You would have thought they would have brought us a bigger machine, one more able to stand up for itself, take punch if it had to.

And before you say Oh, just bring candy from home, That would mean that you would absolutely have candy in your desk. All the time. All you would have to do would be to open that drawer and grab some. There isn’t any effort involved. You want some candy, you get some candy. There isn’t any investment. If you have a stocked machine, you have stop what you are doing, scratch up the change, and hike to the machine and then once at the machine you have to figure out what you want, if you want anything it has. I can’t count how many times I went to the candy machine thinking I wanted a candy bar , only to get there and discover that I really didn’t, or that the only true candy bar they had was a Snickers and once I thought about it for a while, what I really wanted was a Milky Way and the machine didn’t have any so I walked away. But sometimes the machine had Lorna Doone cookies and that was always a very good day. I never walked away from the Lorna Doones - But sometimes I had to wait for them.

They would be behind some other cookie that I could resist and I would have to wait for someone to get those cookies and there was always a lot of them because everyone found them easy to resist, and then only after the lesser cookies were gone, then I could get “my” cookies - But that gambit involves always having the right amount of change or holding back a dollar and going back and forth to the machine to see if any progress has been made and being able to move on a dime. You have to be ready to go at all times, Lorna Doones aren’t about your schedule. Lorna Doones are totally free spirits. A successful pursuit involves a lot of back and forth. It’s almost a work out, especially if it takes a while for someone to finally buy those nasty cookies that have been standing guard over the Lorna Doones.

But then you really have to get down there because once the Lorna Doones are freed, they are gone. There were only like four packs ever and they would be gone by lunch. And they would never give us more, “Oh, look they bought the hell out of those Lorna Doones, They really seem to like cookies, why not this time we give them twice as much of the Pecan Sandie's”

Bastards.