On the way home tonight, I had an experience with a vending machine I want to relate.
I left work late tonight. Chicagoland was dark as it ever gets. Downtown looked like a Milky Way of square starry windows. I was thirsty and stopped by the vending room of the Student Center where I spend half of my time. I had a one, a five and a twenty, but 20 oz. Diet Pepsis cost a buck and a quarter. I would have to pass. Wait, though, the change machine accepts ones and fives. I tried it. It was broken. In fact it was so broken that the light that indicated it was broken was broken. It didn't even blink at me and when I shoved my five in its bill slot, it just stared at me like a one-eyed toddler offered creamed spinach for the first time. I would have to move on.
I had another chance at the Blue Line station. I realized that I had a tiny amount of change at the bottom of my mesh pocket in my backpack, enough for the $1.25 Diet Coke. I'm brand-agnostic. I put my dollar in. It whirred at me. A little background may help: Chicago Transit Authority builds its stations in such a way so that they're never entirely weatherproof. Great steel and glass structures wrap pierced by multiple tracks always have, by some curious law of CTA contractors, at least one face ripped away so that bitter winter winds may howl through the station, mitigated only partly by heating lamps they have installed in 0.10% of the station. Anyone who wants to remain warm must get in early and not mind getting squeezed to the back while several hundred people try to cram themselves into the same 10' x 10' area. It sounds like a frat joke, but it's the Chicago way. In the midst of this, the CTA has installed two vending machines, one advertising Diet Coke and the other Dasani, a flavor of Diet Coke without caffeine, sugar, artificial colors or sweeteners, flavor, or effervescence, although, through clever processing the Coca-Cola corporation did manage to add a cancer-causing agent to mitigate any possible health benefits one might glean from drinking the water.
It's clear the autumn has been unkind to the Diet Coke machine. After rejecting my dollar, the machine continued to whir as though to say, "No chance, sucker, move on." Not so easily daunted, I considered a cool drink of water. Water is for wimps. I put my dollar in the Dasani machine, not to give up my quest, but because I'd had a better idea. Some vending machines give you the paper back when you hit the "Coin Return" button; others dispense coins. Assuming the latter, I might bypass the whirring Black Knight of the Diet Coke money input and score myself the Holy Grail of my soda experience. I hit "Coin Return".
Perhaps the Coca-Cola Corporation had got wind of my plan, or, in the relative drought - forgive the pun - of Dasani vending machine purveyors of late, did not have good change to give, but the machine gave back not four quarters but, for reasons of its own, one quarter, one nickel and seven dimes. Yes, it adds up to a dollar, or so I hoped. Something sat uneasy in me about the non-quarter change, though the biggest problem I could think of at the time was that machines sometimes reject it.
I dropped the quarter in. The red LED lit up: $0.25. Not a bad start. Dimes followed. A few slipped through without tripping the LED, but I assumed they went to the change return slot and could be fed through again. I was wrong. The counter sat at $1.05 and I had put in all my change, including the extra quarter and dime I had found in my backpack. Some demonic entity unknown to me had rendered three of my dimes entirely moot.
At this point, I could have just pressed the "Coin Return" button and considered myself suitably chastised. After all, thirty cents is not too much to pay for wisdom. But I would have done so thirstily. I went into a frenzy. I started pressing buttons. I searched through my backpack. Could I maybe have missed one quarter? Four nickels? We knew what had happened with the dimes but I was willing to chance it if at the end of the day I might hold a Diet Coke in my hands. Maybe if I hit the machine at just the right angle, whatever supermagnetic force (a combination of science and the supernatural?) might release its hold on my dimes. I looked at it crossly. It just whirred at me. Sometimes, as though to taunt me, it would change the direction of the whir, sucking instead of rejecting. If I still had my dollar bill... I stopped short of kicking the beast. Also, I had seen enough violent pictograms representing hapless stick figures trapped under vending machines to know that only evil could come of my rocking it.
In the end, the train came and I had to give up the entire enterprise. I had to console myself with happy memories of vending machines gone wrong in the past. Like the one in college that kept rejecting my change but adding it to the tally. Or the one at the other end of the platform that dispensed two Diet Cokes in quick succession where I'd only put in the cash for one. Instant karma, indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment