A combat with the vending machine

One morning when Anjana and I walked into the cafeteria at office, there was a magazine vending machine placed there. It contained a couple of English weeklies, a Malayalam magazine, one for children and a few other not-so-common, yet common magazines. The Malayalam magazine- Vanitha is what caught our interest. It has been in circulation from the time of our mothers or even before. So my friend ran to the machine and decided to buy a copy of it for her.

You need to first choose the book you want and it shows you how much it costs. Then you insert the amount (only denominations specified can be entered) and confirm your choice again and the book rolls down from the rack to the bottom of the machine and it can be collected through an opening.

Our book costs Rs.15/- (I don’t have the rupee symbol on my system yet and so I have to stick to the antique way of writing it). So my friend inserted a 10-rupee note and a 5-rupee coin and chose the book. It rolled off the rack but unfortunately stopped half way. The book was stuck between the rack and the glass wall and could not fall down. We were taken aback and did not know what to do. Both of us were using the machine for the first time. We tried hitting the sides of the machine and then realized that people passing by were staring at us as though we were burglars! To our good luck, the magazine fell down after a small session of machine-hitting. We grabbed and fled from there.

This is a fortnightly magazine. And so, very soon it was time for my friend to pick up her next copy of the magazine. We kept our fingers crossed as we went through the buying process. She did not have a 5-rupee coin and so inserted two 10-rupee notes. This time the magazine dropped down without a problem but the machine refused to give us the change. We tried hitting it like the previous time but it wouldn’t budge. We did not plan to part with 5-rupees just like that and so we walked up to the duty-manager and told him the problem. He then came and opened it up for us and gave us the change.

The 3^rd time we went to the machine hoping there wouldn’t be a problem. We were wrong. It was the book’s turn to get stuck. We tried hitting and kicking but in vain. So we marched straight to the duty manager and explained the situation. With a snicker on his face, he came and pulled out the book for us. (If you are wondering why we keep going to the duty manager, it’s because he has the key to open the vending machine).

Soon my friend got used to the fight with the vending machine. Rather, she was prepared for whatever came her way. Almost always, she would have to go to the duty manager to get her book out or the change back. Soon they became friends and if he ever saw her near the vending machine, he would run to go get the key.

Of course, there were times when she would be 100% successful too. And once, she could not reach the duty manager and so called the help-number that was on the machine. The person at the other end said he would collect the book and leave it with one of the cafeteria vendors when possible and she collected it from there. There is another book (Magic Pot) that she buys for her son. She does not face this problem while buying that one. It’s the Vanitha that gives the problem. Soon, Anjana learnt the trick of getting the book out of the machine if it ever got mildly stuck.

After awhile, another friend, Roopa, started buying the Vanitha. Somehow, she did not face too many problems in getting the book, except for a couple of times. Roopa shared the book with Anjana (whenever she remembered to bring it) and thus Anjana had almost stopped buying it.

A few days back, Anjana decided to buy a copy for herself as Roopa was always forgetting to bring the book. That blessed day, when my friend decided to buy the book, she opened her purse and realized she had only 100-rupees notes. I offered her change but she decided to go ahead and try the 100. A colleague who was with us said that that the machine would return 5-rupee coins as change. Well, nothing much could be done about it as she had already put in the money and made her selection. The book got stuck as usual and she managed to get it out. In the mean time, we could hear the change falling down as coins. Only then did we realize that it was not 5-rupee coins but 1-rupee coins that were falling out. There were 85 of them.

Don’t ask me what she did with it.