A few boring mini rants

In My Humble Opinion
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  1. Someone broke into my soda machine…again. We’ve only had the machine about three weeks now. About a week ago I went to check for money and see if anything needs refilling. It seemed hard to open, but I didn’t think much of it until I got it opened. As soon as I opened it, money spilled out. For those of you that know the innerds of soda machine…When I got it opened I noticed that the edge of the door was bent out of shape, then I noticed that the divider door was ripped apart (the sheet metal one in between the soda and the electronics). When I pulled the divider door back, there was singles scattered around in the machine and the bill catcher was a big mangled mess. Also the nut that the lock screws into was bent. So the person didn’t acutally get anything out of the machine, but they got a crow bar pretty far into it. I called Coke, they came out and put a new bill catcher in and put a big steel box over the catcher. Well this morning I went to go check the machine and I notcied that the edge of the door was bent again, and the steel box was all scratched up. The nut was bent, but I hammered it back into place. Again, they didn’t get anything and becuase of the metal box they didn’t mangle the bill catcher. They knocked it loose, but didn’t do any damage to it. The cops know to watch are machine and know they they have my standing persmission to press charges against anyone the catch messing with it. (Meaning, don’t call me at 3 in the morning, just arrest them and write a ticket and let me know about it in the morning. I’m thinking of putting a big heavy chain around it so the person thinks that even if they can crack the lock, they still won’t be able to physically open the door. But that’s kinda tacky. And I’m wondering if the person is just trying to break the bill catcher and then pull the money out with a hanger or something. There’s already a note on the door saying that the money is removed each day (which it is), but I wonder if I should add something to the effect of “Bill catcher inside a steel box and impossible to break from outside the machine” But that will probably just make them work harder. Besides, if they’ve been doing this for a while, or if they have filled soda machines in the past and know what this box is, they might know how to get around it.

  2. About 8 months ago we had a girl working for us that we suspected was stealing. Her register was regularly coming up VERY short. We fired her and when questioned by her parents about it. We told them that her drawer was coming up short. They asked if we were suggesting that she was stealing and we said no, we didn’t say that at all. We just think she isn’t catching on and that she must be having problems with the register. Coming into our busy season we can’t have that. Well about a month ago one of our current employees bumped into her at a mall. Our current employee asked why she didn’t work their any more. She said that she was fired becuase we thought she was steeling. “Well where you?” She actually said “Yes” :eek: All in all, she got about one thousand dollars. Her mom works at a business next door. Hopefully it’ll come up in conversation someday and we can tell mom that she admitted it.

3)I mangled a Windows reinstall and now I have to go and buy a full version of XP home. :mad:

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Woops, that was meant for MPSIMS.
Mod if you please…

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Oh yea and the baby doesn’t like going to bed anymore. :frowning:
She’s damn near the perfect little 8 month old. Until bed time. Then it’s time to excercise the lungs.

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My Saturday afternoon commute is 100% ruined because of Garrison Keillor. Someone PLEASE take away his ludes. The local PBS station is only 1 of 2 decent radio stations in the DFW area, but for some reason they feel some psychotic desire to run Prarie Home Companion for TWO FREAKING HOURS that neatly coincide with my long grueling drive home from Dallas to Fort Worth. If I hear anyone say the words “Lake Wobegone” today, I will draw blood. Why can’t they play Thistle and Shamrock an hour earlier? It’s not like they’d be bumping any actual CONTENT or anything.

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Oh, and my hat goes off to Joey P for having the patience and fortitude to run vending machines. It’s a rough business - and this is coming from someone who runs house rentals! :wink:

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Just one single soda machine, I’m no hero, though it is outdoors and easy to hide behind in the dark which seems to make it a bit of a magnet.

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Joey, where are your machines placed? In public places where people can get it with a crowbar? WTF? It must be happening really late/early. I’m curious.

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It’s sitting outside a store. The store is on a main road, but the machine is on the side of the building. Even though it’s the first thing you see when coming down a hill (beeing lit up and all), I’d imagine if you hide on the side of it, no one will have a clue you’re there. It just so happens the dark side is the side where the door opens. As for what time, at least once it happened between about 10 at night at 6 in the morning. Luckily the town is small enough that the second and third shift cops said they’ll keep an eye on it. The second shift cop (4-12) said he already drives through the parking lot 5 to 6 times during his shift (presumably after dark) since we’ve had problems with our pallets being stolen, but he’ll bump it up a little I’m sure.

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Oh, and breaking into them is somewhat common. The first time it happened the cop said he figured it would be about a week before it happened. The coke guy that fixed it said they have a machine thats on one of the busiest intersections in the city that get’s broken into a few times a week. Apperently it must be making enough money to cover the repair or Coke would have pulled it by now.