I had kind of a stupid evening at school today. Walking back to class after grabbing my evening coffee, I noticed that the smirky undergrad who’d served me had aligned the sip hole with the ridge on the side of the cup, a fairly fool-proof way to ensure that unobservant customers end up with coffee on their shirts. (This is the same undergrad who often ends each sale with “Have a night,” and once shut down the Coffee Corner at its exact closing time of 7:45, despite there being five potential customers in line. She’s seriously elevated not giving a shit to an art form. Like many who’ve had bad jobs, I actually have a weird kind of respect for that, although I definitely didn’t the night I didn’t get my coffee.) I stopped and took off the lid to realign it, at which point I learned that her definition of not leaving room for cream means filling the cup right up to the very rim. So, scalding hot coffee all over my left hand. Ow.

I was kind of hungry, and the $0.85 bag of Gardetto’s snack mix in the vending machine looked tasty. So, I fed in a dollar bill, hit the appropriate button and found myself faced with a “CORRECT CHANGE ONLY” message. Okay, no big deal. I hit the money return button, and… Nothing. I tried a few more times to no avail, and so went back to the Gardetto’s button. CORRECT CHANGE ONLY. Dammit. Figuring the machine may be out of nickels, I looked for $0.80 and $0.75 options, but the few items at that price I kind of wanted gave the infernal CORRECT CHANGE ONLY message again. So, finally, I looked around for $1.00 items and found only one option, miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

I didn’t want peanut butter cups. Of course, I ended up getting them anyway. The machine might as well been wired so when you feed in a $1, you automatically get them, no button-pushing required.

Back in the classroom, I ended up venting to Yash and Jarred, two of the fellow students I’d worked with on the comparative analysis paper for the class. “You know,” said Yash, “it’s kind of fun watching you get annoyed. It’s amusing.”

“Great.”

Later on, at home, Lisa commented on my story. “Oh, you get so annoyed with machinery. It’s so cute.”