I only ask because this is such a staple of pop culture: candy/bag of chips stuffed between gaps of a giant coil inside a snack machine, buyer puts his/her money in the machine, presses a button, the coil turns…but the treat does not fall into the bin at the bottom, leading to a frightful scene where the protagonist pounds on the unbreakable plastic window, rants about the injustice of losing 50 cents, you get the idea.
The problem is, this has NEVER happened to me. Not even close, though I’ve noticed over the past 10 years or so little plastic wedges installed on the end of the coils, presumable to give that tasty treat an extra push before the helix completes its rotation. I’ve talked to quite aq few people at work, and after we get past the “of course that happens” stage, they always concede that they have never seen a snack machine designed with rotating coils fail to dispense the treat.
The device of the defective candy machine has been used in a Seinfeld episode and a Beavis and Butthead cartoon, and I contend it is now a standard artifact of common culture. My question is, has anyone here actually experienced this supposed annoyance of the modern world? I’m not saying if couldn’t happen, but it seems far less common than one would suppose…
Yes, multiple times actually. As far as I can remember, it was always easily solved by slapping the machine around a little. Or if I was in a bowling alley or somewhere, I would ask the person working there to do it, and they would come over and bang on the machine until it came out.
This has certainly happened to me. Slapping, as MrDantastic says, sometimes helps. More often, though, I’m apt to spot a stuck item and shake it out, enjoying a free snack; or buy the same item and get two-for-one.
I think it’s most common when the items have not been installed properly, because in the past I have attempted to work around this by thinking “Well, I’ll just buy two - the next one will both push the first one down and drop as intended, it’s just a glitch.” Doesn’t work that way. The new purchase does indeed push the obstinate snack out, but then fails to deploy just like the first one. So it’s something to with not being lined up correctly.
All the freaking time at my last job, by which I mean it happened on a daily basis. There is nothing more aggravating than using your remaining change on something to tide you over until dinner, and having the stupid thing jam. For extra special fun, sometimes it would happen twice, and you’d end up buying 3 items and ending up with 2.I think it was the vending machine company, because the machines we had before, that never happened. I won’t even discuss how many times the freezer portion went out, sometimes for days, and then they would just turn it back on, leaving all the food inside to be vended.
I’ve worked 3rd shift for many many years, so I’ve eaten a lot of vending machine snacks.
I consider it a point of honor to never be defeated by one of them. I’ll buy two, three, how ever many it took before I’d give up. I’d even attack the suspect item from above, purchasing a heavier item above it having it hit & free the stubborn snack!
Usually though, just shaking the machine at the stuck thing’s ‘resonant’ frequency would suffice. Working nights it doesn’t matter how much noise it makes…
About two weeks ago. I was getting my oil changed. Put my money in, hit the button and it got stuck. No big deal, I thought, I’ll just put more money in and get two bags of chips. That one got stuck too. While the girl was writing up my slip so I could get my money back, I picked something else, and IT got stuck.
That sucked. I was really hungry.
Yes! In fact, I’ve had 2 items stuck in the coil machine - my original purchase, and the one I hoped would help push my original purchase out- no such luck.
All the time at my JC vending machine. So often in fact that I became a pro at “Fonzing” the machine for other hapless victims. Usually people unacquainted with this particular machine would pump more money into it hoping the bag behind the one stuck in the coil would push it out. I’d Fonz it and usually get the second bag in thanks. Sometimes people just walked off in disgust and I got two bags. Nice when you’re a starving student.
It happens here at work all the time. There is one on the second floor that is golden - nothing gets stuck. There is one on the first floor that might be Satan’s vending machine. My first week, I learned that it was night shift’s job to restock it every Monday. On Friday, I bought two bags of chips, which both got stuck, Saturday I got 1 stuck, and on Sunday I checked and made sure they were still there. Monday night was my sweet revenge on that machine as I opened the door to restock it - I was new and hadn’t learned where the keys were yet, otherwise I would have had revenge earlier. I stocked everything, picked up my three bags of chips, and went back to the desk.
The next morning, the people who drop off the stuff to stock it with came in. They took all those chips out to replace them with Snickers. Who wants a Snickers? darn people.
It happens a lot at the school my mother works at - at least once a day.
Yes, it used to happen frequently, and seemed to be connected to the vending machine being incorrectly loaded. And the same 1-for-2 scenario - the snack doesn’t drop down, so you buy another one in the hope that it will push the first one down into the tray. Very frustrating, particularly on night shift.
During the day we used to have great times surrounding the machine and mugging it for snacks we’d already paid for. Then the building administration realized what was going on and clamped the machine to the floor.
Yes, I’ve had it happen to me with snack vending machines at the leisure centre - it’s usually with non-rigid items such as bags of crisps, in my experience.
But of course the plural of anecdote is not data, so it never actually happens.
Yep. It’s happened to me as well. I assume the person after me got lucky and got two Snickers. A gentle slap to the machine did nothing so I gave up. I don’t buy from the machine anymore.
Has happened to me a few times. If you shake the machine, it can sometimes dislodge things, and sometimes buying a second snack gets you both, but other times I’ve been out of luck.
Yes perhaps 5% of the time. It looks like the coil needed to rotate another 1/8 turn or so and it would have fallen. I’ve never failed by buying a second item and having them both fall out. So I don’t get cheated, but sometimes I have to buy more than I’d like.
There is a new advancement in snack vending technology at my office. An electronic sensor detects whether the snack dropped or not, and if not, assumes it is stuck and rotates the coil one more time to compensate. So you’re guaranteed to get 1 product, and if you’re lucky, the compensatory rotation will dispense not just the product that failed to drop, but the next product in the queue.
For example, where I work there is a roughly 1/8 chance that the Doritos will dispense 0 bags on the initial rotation, but then dispense 2 bags on the compensatory rotation, yielding 2 servings of cheesy high-sodium goodness for the price of 1. I take advantage of this phenomenon often. Is this wrong?
I guess the snack machine strategizers have figured out that it’s worth the sacrifice of $0.85 to avoid irate customers complaining to building managment, who cannot fix the machines, but can choose to go with different vendors.
Several times. I think it’s very telling that our vending machines here have stacks of envelopes available for people to claim their lost money when their items get stuck or just fail to dispense at all. I got screwed twice in one month before I gave up on them entirely. Each week there are at least 15 new claims of lost money tacked to the little board.
