65 Cents for Your Dignity?

Some guys have all the suck.

Check this scenario. It’s a Friday at your place of work. The inbox has shrunk, the dress is casual, and most people at this point are just counting down until Happy Hour comes around. Now you’ve been busy with a mid-day meeting to prepare for, so somehow lunch was forgotten, and the cafeteria is officially closed for business. (Let’s be honest though, we both know they phone it in on Fridays. Grilled cheese for everybody!) And while fasting until some 5 o’clock chips and salsa magically appear at your local watering hole of choice seems viable, you’re going to need a snack.

With no other hope, you turn to the vending machine.

Now YAB has warned you before about these food distribution mechanisms. The 7 Simple Rules of Vending Machines smacked a big old “BUYER BEWARE” on the smudge-covered glass panels of your local foodbox. However, Hunger can be mean. If spare change and intestinal fortitude allows, sometimes you just have to take your chances. That said, I proceeded up to the sixth floor for a nice nutritious bag of Sun Chips.

Or not.

You can never underestimate a vending machine. It’s not just a lifeless box; it has a mind of its own. Without independent thought, it would never be able to orchestrate some of the devious ploys that comprise the 7 Rules. One would think that anyone with a college degree should come to the fight able to outsmart the vending machine. As I found out this afternoon as I turned the corner into the machine’s alcove that just might not be true.

Enter Lunchbox. (Names have been changed not so much to protect the innocent, but rather because I have no idea what they really are.)

Lunchbox looks a little upset. I don’t even have to look to realize what has happened here. Lunchbox put in some money. He made his selection. The machine responds by rolling the selected coil forward. The snack then proceeds to pull a cliffhanger – the crucial point at which the vending machine no longer claims responsibility for delivery and the item has suspending animation altogether. Now Lunchbox is out 65 cents, and that candy bar just doesn’t have the legs to make its final freefall. What now, Lunchbox?

Apparently, the answer it Rage.

Despite the fact I was 20 feet away and that other people were passing through the hallways, Lunchbox performed a showcase of brute force rarely seen outside of those old World’s Strongest Man competitions. Standing to the vending machine’s side, he rocked the thing with reckless abandon, doing anything and everything to get that Kit Kat to give in and drop. He didn’t care that I was watching. He didn’t care that the coffee pots on the adjacent counter were rattling to a near point of shattering. All he cared about was getting his money’s worth.

After 3 minutes and complete upper body exhaustion, the Kit Kat gave in and made Lunchbox a very happy man. He was happy. I got curious.

How good does a snack have to be to warrant such behavior? 65 cents doesn’t go far these days, but neither does a vending machine snack. How good would that dangling snack have to be to force you, the reader, to go to such extremes? For me, I look at it mathematically. The value of the snack must be 3 times the price I paid into the machine. Otherwise, I’ll walk away and save fact. For 65 cents, that amounts to about 2 bucks.

So unless that vending machine’s packing a Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese, looks like I’m out.