There’s a new vending machine at work, and it seems to be a hit among my colleagues. It offers better deals than the old machine, and the opportunity to win money by picking the winning square on a colorful grid and ... um, well, I don’t really understand what the game is, or how it works, because the grid scares and confuses me, but I’ve been told that you could win $500. And it’s got a flashy screen that tells you the latest headlines, so if you don’t get enough news in the newsroom, you can always visit the vending machine for more. These bells and whistles are certainly impressive — I’ve never seen a vending machine quite like it — but I wasn’t exactly clamoring for more meaningful interactions with the vending machine, and I kind of miss the old model, which didn’t promote gambling or try to keep me up to date on world events. I know Barack Obama is the president-elect, thank you very much. Just give me my soda.
The vending machine and I got off on the wrong foot. The day it was installed, I went downstairs to buy a soda and pick up a snack for a friend, who handed me a dollar and said, “See what you can do with this.” “What do you want?” I said. With the old vending machine, she’d always been very specific: Get me Skittles. Get me Reese’s Pieces. Etc. But with the arrival of the new vending machine, she had become weirdly vague, almost coy. “Just see what you can do,” she said. “You can get two snacks for a dollar, but one snack costs 75 cents. So get two.” My head was spinning. “Oh, God,” I said. “Just try it,” she said. “It’s fun.”
I’m not looking for fun when I go to the vending machine, but I trotted on downstairs anyway. I managed to buy a bag of cookies and a bag of pretzels for my friend, and then I put in the $1.25 needed to buy a 20-ounce bottle of soda, which is considered a premium item and thus costs more than everything else. Unfortunately, the soda got wedged in the door. I bought another soda, thinking maybe this would help, but the second soda got wedged, too. I trotted back upstairs. “I broke the new machine,” I said.
My friend seemed to think I was over-reacting, and we went downstairs to investigate; pasted on the vending machine was a toll free number we could call for help. “Ugh,” I said. “I don’t want to call for help.” Fortunately, a more sociable colleague entered the cafeteria, and phoned the company on my behalf. “I think this is a problem that can only be fixed manually,” he told the guy who answered the phone. “You watch,” the man said. “I can fix this from a remote location.” He sent some kind of electronic signal to the machine, which dropped a soda on my sodas, knocking them loose.
This technical wizardry was certainly impressive, but the vending machine continues to vex me, mainly because it won’t just give me my soda. Instead, it insists that I either select an additional item, or punch in a special code indicating that I only want one item. Just when I thought I’d figured everything out, some of the prices changed, and now I have no idea what anything costs. So I punch in the code and wait for the machine to give me change, and if doesn’t give me change, I assume I’m not entitled to any. But you never know. I put in $1.25 yesterday, thinking a bottle of soda was a premium item, and got 50 cents back. Today I put in $1, and the machine demanded another 25 cents. I feel like this machine is taking me for a ride, and I don’t know what to do about it.
My sister points out that I’ve never really understood 2 for 1 deals, which could explain my difficulties. Growing up, there was a 2 for 1 deal at the local video store that I thought was the greatest deal ever, until one day my sister explained that I had interpreted the deal all wrong. “You’re renting three movies,” she said. “Right,” I said. “Two for one.” “It’s two for the PRICE of one,” she said. “You’re renting two movies, and then another movie. That’s not a deal at all. If you’re going to do that, you should get four movies.” “Huh?” I said, baffled. From then on my sister referred to the deal as “Two for one ... or three.” (And, yes, just typing that paragraph confused me.) When my massage therapist called yesterday, to tell me about a 2 for 1 special he’s offering, I felt similarly confused. Do I get three massages, or two? Is it buy two, get one free? Aghhhhhh.
So it’s easy to blame the vending machine for my confusion, but the problem is really me, and my problem with numbers. For instance, I’m incapable of doing math in my head. My friends laugh at me whenever we play darts, because I always compute my score in longhand, though usually someone takes pity on me and just tells me what it is. I have similar problems in bowling, and cribbage. I struggled last weekend when playing Yahtzee, which I hadn’t played since I was 11. I won’t ramble on about the little bits of strategy my friend tried to impart as I stared at her blankly during her explanation of the rules, but finally she said, “I know it involves numbers, but it’s not that hard.” Well, you know, I’m the one who has a problem with numbers, so I’ll be the judge of that. But she was right. It wasn’t that hard. Her 8-year-old son understood what she was saying, and I suspect most normal humans would.
Ah, well. Eventually I got the hang of Yahtzee, and I imagine that someday I’ll get the hang of the vending machine, too. Or not. Because that 2 for 1 deal at the video store still kind of confounds me.
