One The Most Exciting Things To Happen At Work

You could ask ten people in my office building what they thought was the most exciting thing to ever happen in the office, and I bet you anything at least nine of them will say "the new vending machines in the first floor lunchroom."

Actually, they aren't technically a vending machine.  As you can see from the picture, there is a section of shelves with various potato chips, crackers, candy bars and other snacks, and a good sized refrigerated case with all kinds of soft drinks, Monster energy drinks, PowerAde, bottled water, milk and Starbucks drinks.  In the refrigerator case are some shelves that contain sandwiches, wraps, salads, cheese, giant dill pickles and other snacks.  There are also shelves with soup, cereal, muffins, candy, little Pringles cans and other snacks.  But I digress.  As I said, it's not really a vending machine.  You pick out what you'd like to buy, and then you scan its bar code on the white and green machine on the right of the picture.  Then you can pay for it one of three ways -- you can set up an account and deposit cash into the machine and use a thumbprint scanner, you can use a debit or credit card, or you can use cash. But if you use cash, you don't get any change back.  And I forgot to mention one important detail about the new "Vending Canteen Market" - you can't see it in the picture but there are four cameras covering the area, in case someone gets the urge to get something without paying for it. 

By the week's end, the Vending Canteen Market still hadn't lost its fascination with us.  We bought things all week long even if we really didn't want them.