Prices recently changed in the vending machines at work, and nothing makes much sense anymore. The Big Grab potato chips (a sack large enough to please even me) cost just 75 cents, for instance. But regular Reese’s (or as they’re called back home: Reesey Cups) are $1.10.
My inner snack-sensor says those prices should be flip-flopped. Don’t you think? A normal candy bar should not be so expensive, and a family-sized serving of chips shouldn’t be so cheap.
As I was standing there contemplating this most pressing of issues, I started thinking about work vending machines in general…
The company that maintains ours also maintained the ones at my previous job. So, it’s all very familiar; the lineup never really changes.
We’ve got two fancy-pants Coke machines, with buttons the size of dinner plates. They offer what you’d expect, plus bottled water, and several (often mysterious) varieties of iced tea.
There are also two non-affiliated soda machines, with full plexiglass fronts. These are loaded-up with all manner of drinkables. There’s Pepsi products, milk (both white and brown), iced tea from a local “farm,” Mexican soda with dragons on the labels, etc. etc.
The chocolate milk is a major roll of the dice. Sometimes it’s fresh and delicious, and other times a little light chewing is required. The secret is in the chunks! One guy was having a bottle one night and I thought I heard crunching. But I could be wrong.
And there’s almost never a Dr. Pepper to be found in that cold beverage dumping ground, so when one appears it’s immediately snagged. Whether the person wants a Dr. Pepper, or not… Then they prance around, wearing a big shit-eater, and singing, “Look what I got!”
There are also two snack machines, with the aforementioned pricing. Chips and chips-related items are at the top, cookies and candy bars are in the middle, and large pastry-style things are at the bottom. It’s a logical set-up, I guess, but not completely.
Lorna Doone, for instance, cannot withstand a fall from the middle shelves of that machine. The two cookies that absorb the brunt of impact almost always turn to dust. And if the package happens to land on its side, well… you might as well just throw it in the trash.
Unless, of course, you’re interested in rolling up a hundred dollar bill and snorting a line of shortbread.
At the very bottom is an assortment of terrible Life Savers knock-offs, for seventy cents each. I once bought a roll of the five flavors, and it was just one solid column of candy. All the pieces were sealed together, and I had to peel and eat the thing like a banana. Pitiful.
They also try to pass-off what looks like premium Hostess snack cakes from a distance, but are actually something called Mrs. Freshley. I once made the mistake of purchasing the cupcakes, and it tasted like two car washing sponges with a creamy bathtub cleaner filling.
Actual high quality candy bars are available in these machines, but they’re $1.10. Sometimes I have an inexplicable craving for a Hershey bar with almonds, like a filthy dumplin’ child in 1945 Berlin, and agonize about whether or not to spend the money. Usually I can’t go through with it, but am perfectly able to justify it in a true emergency situation.
There are also two machines I’ve never used. One purportedly sells ice cream bars, but I haven’t witnessed a single person buying anything from it. I imagine everything is radically freezer-burned, with wrappers that say, “Win a trip to the 2006 Grammy Awards!”
Then there’s the machine folks have dubbed the “wheel of death.” It features rotating shelves, with little compartments containing pre-made sandwiches, microwavable burritos and hot dogs, and the like. People who forgot to pack a lunch are often seen standing in front of it, engaging the flywheel, and looking sad and hopeless.
I’ve never bought anything from the wheel of death, but when I first started working there, a guy told me, “NEVER buy a salad from that machine on a Friday. Seriously, you need to trust me on this…” Heh.
On the other hand, one of my co-workers swears by something called the Big Azz chicken sandwich. He insists it’s really good, but I don’t know anything about it. All I know is, it’s one of only two commercially available food items with profanity in its name, that I’m aware of. The other is Heluva Good dip. Are there others?
When it gets right down to it, the vending machines at my job are fairly standard and dull. Does your place offer anything more interesting, in the world of coin-operated food dispensers?
Tell me about it, so I can live vicariously through your better situation.
And before I call it a day here, check out this mind-blowing Smoking Fish sighting. Siberia! How cool is that? Probably very cool, huh? Keep ’em coming, folks! Our logo, man, he gets around.
See ya next time.
1st!!!!
Second! Woo Hoo! I got my t-shirt at the weekend! Thanks, Jeff!
Holy batshit this is an early post! WooHoo – Top 5!
This place is just a few short miles from my house and my 6 year insists on calling out the name EVERY time we drive by it – it was probably the first sign he could actually “read” …
http://www.nmbadasscoffee.com/
Hey, where’s the OTHER smoking fish sighting?
My employer doesn’t have vending machines. He stocks sodas, Nabs, candy bars, chips and microwave popcorn for us – all for free.
Every Friday a lady comes around to the office with a rack full of pastries and sandwiches costing from a dollar to five bucks. It’s not bad for a quick snack but eating all that bread for lunch isn’t good for the afternoon slump.
Another woman comes around every morning with a cooler full of mini-yogurts and energy drinks. I haven’t bought any because I don’t think a person should trust yogurt that’s been bicycled all around town in a crappy cooler that’s used to carry pizza’s. The energy drinks might be good though…
Good Morning Surf Reporters……….
I was just getting ready for work and I thought I’d check to see if there was any new developments at the Surf Report….
sure ’nuff , there was…
Another hard fast rule regarding any office Wheel-of-death: Never, and I mean NEVER, purchase pork products from the wheel of death. They taste great, but hours later you learn the awful source of the “Wheel-of-death” moniker. Let’s just say Wheel-of-death pork is to intestines as Drano is to clogs… I get a full body shiver just thinking about my encounters. Yes, encounters. I was dumb enough to try it not once, not twice, but three times.
Helluva Good sponsored pole day and some of the support races at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in 2008. It was funny to keep hearing the P.A. announcer saying “Welcome to Heluva Good Pole Day” and “We are only a few minutes away from the green flag for the Heluva Good 125.”
TOP TEN!!…just barely
We don’t have a snack machine in my office, just a mini-fridge with bottled water and a three month old plastic cup of feta cheese…talk about your wheel-of-death.
Just marking my spot, move along nothing to see here…
We do not have a wheel of death, but since I work at a university, that is what the campus union is for! One long poorly organized steam table of death.
Has anyone seen the Kroger vending machines? It’s a giant vending machine that sells bleach, 2 liters, toilet paper, and so on.
Click on my name for a picture.
I remember reading somewhere about vending machines in Japan. They’re obsessed with them. They have vending machines that sell used panties, live squid, and shit like that.
In the customer waiting area of the service department at the Beckley Auto Mall, there’s a 10-foot long line of vending machines, with a wheel-of-death directly in the middle. It reminds me of the altar layout in my church: you have the big, main altar in the middle, with the Joseph and Mary altars on either side, being the coke machines, candy machines, etc. I often see employees standing there, in front of the wheel-of-death, pondering their poison, with this dazed look on their faces. The rotating contents look like they are museum artwork replicas of real food, but upon closer inspection, you can tell they’re not real food. I have NEVER, EVER seen a customer purchase an item from one of these machines. Those Beckley people are onto something!
Jason, I assume those Kroger machines take plastic.
we have the standard vending machine fare in one machine and then mexican pastries and candies. most with lead as a flavor enhancer.
i tried a mexican version of the york peppermint patty once. it tasted like i was blowing r2d2.
food. should. never. taste. like. electricity.
the interesting thing to note is that we’re not allowed to bring peanut products but they sell payday and snickers and nutrageous bars in the american vending machine and a prepackaged peanutbutter and jelly sandwitch in the mexican one.
No snack machine at my place of employment…it was taken away because the vendor couldn’t make enough money from my cheap a$$ co-workers.
Used panties in a vending machine? You better be sure about this or we’re gonna have problems, man. You and I.
The only snack cakes worth eating are Drakes! I would do anything for a Ring Ding! I enjoy wrapping my lips around a Funny Bone once in awhile but I have to really be in the mood for it. Yankee Doodles, Yodels, Devil Dogs, Coffee Cakes…I really miss those yummy snacks!
Since moving south I have had to settle for Ding Dongs and I have a VERY hard time finding them!
I am snack cake deprived….
Frankly, I think $1.10 for a standard sized candy bar is ridiculous. I would never pay that. Not when I could get a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger from Wendy’s for only .99! But, I guess you all don’t have a Wendy’s Vending Machine, huh? Tough luck, there.
No direct-experience vending machine stories here, but my husband works at a community college and if he wants to get to the vending machines he has to snake by two hot coed lesbians actively engaged in girl on girl action. Seriously. I’m guessing those vending machines are positively bursting with change, hence why the school doesn’t put the kibosh on the, er, activity.
As for the Further Evidence link, holy shit I thought that was leading right into squid porn!
Shane,
Here’s a snopes article about used panties in vending machines. It’s TRUE!
http://www.snopes.com/risque/kinky/panties.asp
Tammie-
Interesting choice of words….lucky Funny Bone.
I can relate to the food item being pulverized as it crashes to the bottom of the hand eating metal door receiving bin.
Always happens to me when I get me some nip cheese or swiss and rye crackers. Sumbitches turn into parking lot gravel almost everytime. You’d think I’d get a clue by now and quit wasting my fiddy cents….
I saw a vending machine at an airport selling iPod’s. I’m pretty sure that one took plastic.
We don’t ave a vending machine here, but the Roach Coach “Lunch Truck” Does come every morning at 9:15. You can get anything from Frito Chili pie to a triple bacon cheese burger, to Sno-balls and Zingers.
A 20 oz drink is $1.10. So you are getting screwed on the Hersheys.
Other than that we have to run to Quik Trip (the best convience store ever) to fulfill our snacking needs.
I had a ham and cheese wrap from the wheel of death on saturday. It wasn’t bad. Not great, either though but if I left the building I’d be locked out and that just couldn’t happen.
1.10 for a candy bar is steep. Anytime you see a weird price point like that you’ve got to wonder what people are thinking.
There’s a shitty club in Cincinnati (Rhymes with Bogarts) that has decent bands (Violent Femmes, Clutch, Toadies, Weezer, Foo Fighters, to name a few I’ve seen there) but they don’t take credit and charge things like 6.75 for their drinks. The bartenders are already painfully slow, just make it an even 7 and they won’t have to worry about change.
Not exactly on topic, but it goes to my price point point from above.
Also, Jeff, I ordered some stuff from Amazon over the weekend and I got there through your site. Is there any way to know if I did it correctly or if I’m really as computer illiterate as I fear to be?
My workplace has a similar vending machine set-up as Mr. Surf Report’s job. The items are about a dime cheaper though. However, I found out the hard way that it’s not plexiglass in the vending machine when a bag of Sun Chips got hung up on the spindle. It just teetered on the edge, ready to drop in the void where I could grab, and yet, it wouldn’t. That bag of chips was a big tease.
Anyway, I gave the machine–which was anchored into the floor–a hip check to knock the Sun Chips off its perch. The next thing I know, the “plexiglass” front shatters into pieces and I fall into the machine. Turns out this company actually uses glass for its vending machine. Thick glass, but not the thick enough to withstand a hip check.
I thought about stocking up, but for once, the building security was quick to act and rushed into the break room. Fortunately for me, I had two small cuts on my arm. I casually mentioned “lawyer” and it went down as an accident report instead of destruction of property.
“Win a trip to the 2006 Grammy Awards!”
Kanye was robbed.
Way back in the day in college, the vending machines had a brand of baked goods in them called “Ho-Maid”, The question always was “Is the maid a ho?” or “Were these made by a ho?” I saved a wrapper and still have it to this day (15 years later.)
I just posted this at Suggestaholic:
http://suggestaholic.com/do-fifth-albums-usually-suck/
Also, there will be a very special Surf Report update in a couple of hours. Stay tuned.
I guess panties are snacks.
My junior year in HS our cafeteria got replaced by a bank of those wheel of death things (we even called them that).
They had hoagies from a local company called JTM (which we all translated to Jesus, that’s meat?!?).
They were the most edible things in them. We also had a soup dispenser that spit out soup that was hotter than hell. Many a small child was burnt by spilled tomato soup.
That Kroger vending machine is just plain wrong. Cheez-its and Tide in the same row??
We had the exact same set up at my old job. (Note: “my old job” means I am now unemployed and living the sweet life as a full time student! I was done for the day by lunchtime). And I wore my new shirt to school today. It felt gooooood.
Anyway, the old job also had a deli come in every day. They’d have sandwhiches made already, but you could add stuff to them or grill them if the mood struck.. They also had soup everyday (one of the facilites people would send out at building wide “soup of the day” email) and I think that Tuesdays were taco days.
I never ate at the office, but the people who did seemed pleased with the fare.
And every now adn then I did see someone eating fresh from the machine ice cream. I think my wife may have done it once or twice, but I can’t be sure.
Now I’m off to buy a pen light because my eye doctor sister in law hasn’t come through.
Our vending machines have these “Make a Healthy Choice Today!” stickers on ’em, which makes me want to grind my teeth. Sun Chips are the healthiest thing they offer!
Just give me a vending machine stocked with really good candy, and maybe some airplane bottles of Jim Beam, and I’d be a very happy camper.
My company had all the regular snacks taken out and now we only have “healthy” snack options instead. Pretzels, animal crackers, baked-only chips….real healthy fare. The only thing I can stand out of there is the Chex Mix. And our only chocolate option is the low-fat 3 Musketeers.
Back in the day, one could reach up into the Coke/Pepsi, etc… machine and get a free prize from the extra stock that was usually placed in the bottom of the machine. You had to reach in the little door then go left or right over the edge of the ramp. Once we found beer…REAL BEER!!! 5 of them! Five beers was a virtual kegger to 2 -13 yr olds. Those were the days
oooh, a very special Surf Report update in the works…. I am all tingly and shivery in anticipation……
Years ago, my local drinking establishment carried Mother Fukker’s Peanuts. They were quite good.
Here’s a link to a picture of their logo:
http://img.moonbuggy.org/mother-fukkers-salted-peanuts/
I remember Mother Fukkers Peanuts. The last time I had any was about 25 years ago. Wish they would make a comeback…crazy name…serious nuts.
Jason, where do you live that there isn’t a whole Kroger store open 24-7? I love how the 2-liter bottles are thoughtfully placed on the very top row. Bet those are fun to open after a 5-foot drop!
Kroger owns Fred Meyer, which operates throughout the northwest United States. AFAIK, Fred Meyer stores always closed at night, and that continues to be the case.
Kim,
I love in Huntsville, AL. The Kroger stores may be open 24 hours, I don’t know. We don’t have any of those vending machines here.
the Tampa airport has a vending machine with fresh flower bouquets. Nobody’s ever been thoughtful enough to stop and get me any though… i’m lucky if my pickups are nice enough to help me put the suitcase in the trunk and don’t charge me gas money. jerks.
We are down to 1 snack machine at work. Halloween size bags of potato chips. Some chocolate bars, microwave popcorn. The usual. Most everything priced at $1.75. F.dat.crap.
There was a pop machine, but they removed it last year citing poor sales to make it worthwhile…Then explain why it was always out of nearly everything regularily?
The worst part of all this, in the warehouse section they had their own pop machine, charged 50 cents for a can. The vending company made us remove it about 6 years ago… Now we are left with one snack machine, no carbonated drinks to be had anywhere unless you rob somebodys personal stash.
The previous place I worked at had a wheel of death. It was decent, and always fresh. The guy came every morning at break time to restock the machine, and sold sandwiches off the tray which where always tasty. They also had a coffee/hot chocolate machine that looked like it belonged in a stall at a bar. The guy cleaned it everyday, but it seemed to perpetually have that freshly splattered look.
How come I havn’t recieved my secret mailing list agree to subscribe from the new place yet? I’m not going to miss out on the new update am I? I better not. The wheel of death might have to roll…
Is this Nancy:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=6551439
Far better than the wheel of Death has to be the “coffee truck” 10am Noon and 3 pm the guy from the:”Devils Rejects” pulls up outside the plant & Blasts his horn! Within seconds eager workers line up to buy antique coffee to wash down one of the various cellophane wrapped goodies that he is more than happy to warm in a microwave that he bought second hand from Noah! Nothing like a nuked meatball sandwich to make your day!
P.S. Google rude food! 100 years worth of WSVR cams at your fingertips!
My vending machine at work USED to offer milk and I LOVED SEEING it in there! Ice cold and you could see the date on the label through the glass.
But I haven’t seen the milk in over a year now.
I pick my battles and milk is just not one of them.
Working the system:
One of our vending machines uses those coil sprongs to twist the vending choice off the line and down to the door.
I can get a 2-1 on the beef and cheese by how they are sitting in the coils. I am 5/6 on hitting 2-for-1 on the beef and cheese. (80cents!!)
It is always sweet getting the vending 2-for-1
Pretty good vending machines where I work. 2 soft drink machines, one for cans, one for bottles. The bottled drink machine is top of the line – – there’s actually a little elevator-style contraption inside to gently convey your beverage to the distribution slot ( it’s like living in space !) The snack machine has a pretty good, reasonably priced selection of candy bars, snacky snacks ( chips, pretzels, etc. ) and pastry snacks, including the elusive “zingers” (once made by Dolly Madison, sponsors of the Peanuts specials, nowadays part of the Hostess family of deliciousness.) I treat those like Jeff’s coworkers treat Dr. Pepper. If I see ’em I buy, even if I’m not hungry for zingers at that moment. They’re that rare … and that good.