an unacceptable practice

I don't like to talk about work on my blog but I must tell you about something distressing that has taken place in the office. It concerns the vending machine. We have a small little vending machine in the break room. It is nothing fancy and usually it has some combination of trail mix, nuts, crackers and candy for sale. It sits on the counter and you can see into it. They probably just buy the stuff that goes in there at a bulk food place and restock it as necessary. Items are priced at 50 cents which is actually pretty reasonable for a pack of M&M's.

Now, the vending machine is not something I really rely upon at work. I have used it approximately four times in almost a year when I just got too hungry and needed the aforementioned bag of M&M's. So I don’t really know if I have a bone to pick in this fight. But something disturbing has happened with the way the vending machine is stocked. You know how each column of a vending machine has the merchandise, and when that column is selected, by turning a lever or inputting numbers on a digital thing, a mechanism releases the merchandise found in that column? Well, someone has gone through and ALTERNATED the merchandise available in one given column.

This means you only have a 50 percent chance of getting what you want. The column normally reserved for Snickers now has Snickers alternating with Paydays. I can see why this might have happened -- both have nuts -- but Snickers have CHOCOLATE thus making them completely different than Paydays. And the M&M's are alternated with Reese's peanut butter cups. While I like both candies, I usually have a craving for one or the other.

Now, upon first inspection, I thought maybe the vending machine dispensed from the front, so that you could wait to procure a snack until your desired item was in view. Though of course that would be an inconvenient wait for anyone dying for a Snickers. How many people buy Paydays in a given day anyway? It seems like you'd spend a lot of time just waiting around in the breakroom asking people if they wanted a Payday. Or you could suck it up, buy both and save the other item for later. But we're in a recession, people! We might not always have a dollar in quarters to spare for 2 food items. How decadent.

But actually, the vending machine is not even as easy as waiting for your favorite item to be displayed! The vending machine dispenses from the back! Which means you can't even see what's next on deck back there. It will be a total surprise! I do not like this system at all, even though I did manage to get M&M's and that's what I wanted.

I suppose I could speak to the office manager about this. He was probably only trying to offer more variety. But I tend to avoid confrontation and would prefer that he find this entry through Google and determine on his own that I am probably talking about him.