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A day in the life of almost every vending machine
- neilv 4y ago> come Halloween, Johnny Brod has been known to park a machine full of sweets in his driveway, I suddenly have a new goal to own a house, mainly so I can set out a vending machine one evening a year.
- 082349872349872 4y agoI appreciate the condoms in local vending machines (is this true of Selecta in the UK as well?) which help not only with preserving the low adolescent pregnancy rate but undoubtedly have other public health benefits. [edit: added preserving]
- lynx23 4y agoI get what you are writing, but... "help not only with the low adolescent pregnancy rate" reads like you consider the rate too low and it is being increased by vending fake condoms :-)
- Eleison23 4y ago[dead]
- 082349872349872 4y agoOops, my bad. My brother sells cheap prophylactics He punctures each one with a pin My aunt does coathanger abortions My god how the money rolls in (To the tune of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean")
- lynx23 4y agoMuahaha, thanks for that laugh! Its refreshing to see that some HN users have not lost their humor :-)
- amelius 4y agoBy the way, your iPhone is a vending machine too ...
- giuliomagnifico 4y agoA subscription machine now.
- hulitu 4y agoAnd also your Android device or your Windows computer.
- HardwareLust 4y agoThat's an interesting take! The similarities never occurred to me before, but you're right. Your phone even physically resembles the typical vending machine (the vertically oriented rectangle).
- lopis 4y agoSo is your rotary phone.
- keithalewis 4y agoThat is a major societal problem. They bring out the worst in human behavior. Oh, wait. I thought you said venting machine. Nevermind.
- m463 4y agoI thought that of the kindle when it first came out. I see the iphone as more of a cash register.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- colinb 4y agoIn a (very) previous life I worked for a company that made planogram software for Windows CE handhelds. This caused me to have a (brief) subscription to The Grocer magazine. We had a contract with Transport For London (TfL) and Cadburys to help update the rather outdated chocolate vending machines in the London Underground - the metro/tube. These machines had no screen, or indeed viewing window. They looked like something from the 19th century. But they did have an IR port. I recall learning the details of the IR protocol ( > 20 years ago. I don't remember its name) with an aim to gathering telemetry as part of the refilling routine. I got to spend a day following a guy from TfL as he wheeled boxes of chocolate around the stations, with a route calculated to require the least amount of stairs. He had caches in locked rooms in a few stations. What strikes me now is the sheer analogue concreteness of it all. The selection of chocolate was limited by the rather small machines. The machines had power connections but no other active comms. I don't think the IR ports were in use at that time, so everything boiled down to the TfL guy's record keeping on hand-written notes. The route was governed by the combination of accessibility - meaning we serviced some machines in a station, but not others on a different, hard-to-reach, level. We moved from station to station stopping off at the locked-rooms to restock his trolley. I did get to visit the offices of the chocolate factory at Bournville, which could be smelled from some distance. Dreams of Willy Wonka aside, I didn't even get a selection box, never mind a tour on the chocolate river. Ho hum. This job was probably the two worst years of my career. I learned for more than I wanted to about layout of cereal boxes and magazines in supermarkets. I travelled a lot - two international flights a week, every week. I nearly froze to death trying to find a bookshop in Montreal. But I learned one really valuable lesson. There are plenty people in the world doing jobs that are boring, even to them, but they don't care because they can make a living, and that's the important thing. I am not one of those people. A job that doesn't engage me is one that I do badly, and will eventually get fired from. I left this job just in time, for something much more interesting, and initially at least, much less well paid and I never regretted doing so. Not for a second.
- gadders 4y ago>>I did get to visit the offices of the chocolate factory at Bournville, which could be smelled from some distance. Slough is like this due to the Mars factory.
- black_13 4y ago[dead]
- brainzap 4y agofor vending machines enjoyers: Eating at the Largest Vending Machine Park in the World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEOkMRCWPb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEOkMRCWPb4
- armini 4y agoIn my last job we built this pretty epic vending machine that made hot oats & noodles. If anyone is interested to know what’s possible https://youtu.be/tB6Bb9NbQHk https://youtu.be/tB6Bb9NbQHk
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- pimlottc 4y agoI will admit I watched the video just to see what a dish consisting of "hot oats & noodles" looks like, before learning that it's (of course) just two separate menu items... :P
- _dain_ 4y agoAn article about vending machines has no right to be this exciting!
- tailspin2019 4y agoAgreed, it’s a superb article.
- davidkuennen 4y agoI loved the vending machine game of Japan. It was incredible to be able to get water or other drinks basically anywhere. Even in the most remote places there was a vending machine. They always worked flawlessly as well.
- NikolaNovak 4y agoAnd cold coffee.so much cold coffee.brought my wife to tears (she's a hot coffee addict :)
- LeonidasXIV 4y agoThere's also heated coffee in cans that can be had from vending machines.
- bentobean 4y agoAnd used underwear! http://inventorspot.com/articles/japan_used_panty_vending_machines_5650 http://inventorspot.com/articles/japan_used_panty_vending_ma...
- notpushkin 4y agoTalk about ways to bring a wife to tears :^)
- rwmj 4y agoBeer too (very common) and there's also a sake vending machine centre which I hope to visit one day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaKcXpr0tUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaKcXpr0tUU
- asiachick 4y agoThey generally switch the machines from mostly cold drinks in the summer to 20-30% hot drinks in the winter. It's a well known and common way to warm your hands, buy a hot drink from a vending machine.
- dghughes 4y ago"Big change was sweeping through automated vending.." oof Dad joke majesty lol I used to stock vending machines. It's an art to know what people like in the area you stock. At the time I had to be fast since July and 30C and chocolate bars in a cheap no AC car made my job tough.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoThe vending company owner was upset at this 'unexplained reference' to the unreliability of vending machines. What? Is he living in a bubble? Every person on earth has a story about how a vending machine failed them. Billions of failures.
- pm215 4y agoThe article contains neither the word 'unexplained' nor 'reference'. What it says is "unexamined expectation", which I think is clearer and not an unreasonable thing for somebody in the industry to be irritated about. Yes, you probably have a "vending machine failure" story -- but it might have been years or decades ago, and you have an awful lot more successful-purchase experiences you don't think about. So bringing an expectation of failure to every vending machine transaction is not entirely rational, and it does ignore efforts to improve reliability.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoSorry, Vending people hated it, he explained to me, this unexamined expectation of mechanical failure. The same meaning far as I can tell. How can anybody doubt that vending machines suck? With the mountain of experience and anecdotes. Hardly anything has been more examined, has had so many failures as to to build an expectation. Once burned; twice cautious. Or 100 times cautious in this case.
- wpietri 4y agoIt is a different meaning. People are being asked to think about their expectation. So let me examine mine. The last time I had a vending machine failure was maybe 15 years ago. Not sure how many times I've used them since, but maybe once a month on average. So my personal failure rate is well below 1%. And if he's right that vending machines have improved, perhaps my current/future rate is well lower. Are the failures memorable? Sure. Super frustrating. But at least in my experience, they work just fine. So although I too would laugh at a vending machine joke, I get why he feels the stereotype is unfair. My failure rate with computer software is much higher; I'd guess I have an app crash or a reportable bug about daily these days.
- TomMasz 4y agoTraveling to Japan (~1999) really got me aware of vending machines. Even then, you could buy so many strange things from machines compared to what I had seen in the US. It took a while but the rest of the world did catch up.
- asiachick 4y agoMaybe in your neck of the woods but vending machines a relatively rare in the USA (relatively to Japan) because they will be abused, vandalized, burglarized, and destroyed. You generally only see them indoors.
- m463 4y agoIts interesting that redbox can be found outside in even the sketchiest neighborhoods.
- B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago"He once had a shoebox full of recovered dud coins in his Wythenshawe office, but it was stolen during a break-in." Hard-working burglars there ...
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