Vend for Yourself

xXvend lifeXx

Vend for Yourself

My suicide note will be just three words long. 

Goodbye cruel world. 

No. Not that. What a cliche, overused, and hands down unimaginative statement to leave for your poor loved one to find. Their trembling hand reaches out to pick up your final words, searching for an explanation to your desperate and selfish final act. And they see this. Goodbye cruel world?! Are you kidding me? They actually flip the paper over to read more. Maybe there’s a page two that was left around here somewhere?

No, just those three pathetic words. Unacceptable. So maybe ...

I’m so sorry. 

Really. Really?! One more syllable and you’d have the first line of a haiku. So that could be the start of something. It’d fit on a bumper sticker, that’s for sure. 

What is the opposite of a Shakespeare sonnet? 

No, my suicide note will be of such impact that the three words will never be forgotten. It will spark a family tradition, passing down the tale from generation to generation. Maybe the movie rights could sell. A web series. A trending hashtag at least. 

To whoever finds my note, placed gently to be found with the slightest scan of the room. Placed there on the altar my life has become. They will lift the page, feel the thickness of the cardstock. They will notice the elegance of each word. The care in each letter. They will read quietly to themself, each word echoing in their head. Three words ...

Car vending machine. 

And they will understand. 

They’ve seen the commercial. Not even a late night, 3 AM infomercial. We are talking prime time commercial slot. Between Walmart and Doritos. Between Toyota Summer Sales Event and Jack Daniels. Between Nike and M&M's. There it is again. 

Car vending machine. 

From atop an ascending drone the camera pans across the towering glass structure. The lens flare gleaming off each level. Perfect vehicle on top of perfect vehicle, your future family ride just has be inside. Ready to be chosen, to be plucked from the heavens, be taken home this instant. 

Car vending machine. 

The voiceover relates, “tired of those same old stuffy dealerships? Those bossy salesman giving you the runaround?” 

Yes, we utter as our tingling asses sink further into the permanent indents in our couch cushions. God yes. How dare they. There has to be an easier way...

“That same old car buying experience is over thanks to our patented car vending machine. Simply-“

Yes, simply. With the tap of a finger the vehicle you’ve chosen from the god damned motherfucking car vending machine will be delivered to your door on the back of a flatbed truck. Your neighbors will envy you. Your children will rejoice. Your wife will want to f**k you again, right there on the flatbed truck. 

In Japan there is an estimated one vending machine per every twenty-three people. They can purchase fresh baked bread, a can of beer, a pair of panties in a ziplock bag. 

But, in the USA we can buy a car. 

In Germany you can buy a vibrator from a vending machine. In Canada you can’t walk two blocks without passing a vending machine full of healthy organic granola bars. In the USA - a Dodge RAM 5.7 L V8 with 410 horsepower is in slot E5. 

You can shove that granola bar up your a*s, Trudeau. 

****

Standing in front of my first vending machine, I slide the key into the plug lock. It pops out, and with a clockwise crank the door opens. A Dixie Narco bubble, the convex front is backlit to show an aluminum can pouring soda into an ice filled cup. It overflows, cascading down to fill the negative space with liquid and bubbles and the very essence of refreshment. I didn’t spring for an actual Coca-cola or Pepsi branded machine, but you get the picture. 

I’m in the break room of a four story office building. After wheeling a dolly through the entrance, past reception - she didn’t even look up - and into the elevator, I placed my hand on top of the stack of 24 packs of pop, stuck my foot in front of the dolly wheel, and set the dolly flat. 

Most vending machines are outsider owned. Rent the space, cut in the owner of the business with 15% - 10 if you’re lucky - 8 if he’s an idiot - and simply come in on your own time to fill your inventory and collect the day or week’s earnings. The more spots you own - and within driving distance to knock out in one day - you could make a few thousand a week. 

The CEO of Sprinkles, the cupcake vending machine - yes cupcakes - takes in $25,000 on a good high traffic, summer day. With locations in 6 major US cities, and charging $4.25 for a fresh made, ready to dispense  cupcake, the machines churn out close to 1,000 a day. 

$25,000 selling cupcakes to tourists. 

I’m here at my first stop selling cans of pop to office zombies. They get up to stretch, drop a few quarters into my machine, and with a case of office amnesia they forget where their desk is on their return trip. I am able to be their distraction from office monotony by offering five slightly cooled cans of carbonated sugar. 

And no one wants to drink a root beer between October and March. Remember that. 

****

Across town I’ve made my way to my second machine - a glass front Crane National 167 5 wide - sitting in the break room of a family owned grocery store. The fluorescent lights buzz as I bend down to reach in the door flap. 75% of vending machine repairs end up being that some a*****e shoved a bent up wire hanger in through the bottom to try and get something for free. Playing the Mexican lottery, it’s called. You always have to check for bent up wire hangers. 

An employee walks in with a plastic bottle of soda and a small bag of chips and sits down at a random chair. 

I tap on the glass with my knuckle and tell him “Coulda got that in here, bud. Some machine cuisine.” 

He twists the cap on the bottle, puts it to his mouth until half the bottle has emptied. He’s young, this could be his first job ever. With a head of blonde stubble and blue eyes he can’t be a relative of the owners. “I get a discount here,” he says. “Saved ten cents.”

No wire hangers in the shoot. I scan across the top row and see that the gum is still stocked full. Running low on Fritos and Snickers. A6 is empty again. I’m going to have to take out the peanut M&M's in order to add a second row of Kit Kats. 

The music plays low in the break room while I open the machine and begin to fill the candy slots from the bulk boxes I’ve brought in. From the overhead speakers Sheryl Crow sings something about every day being a faded sign. 

“You know this one?” I ask the employee while pointing to the ceiling. “She said how she hitched a ride ... with me. With a vending machine repair man.”  He finishes the pop and free throws it over the table into an open trash can. He spins the cap between two fingers. 

“What,” he blurts out. 

“Sheryl Crow. She sings this one. 90s singer songwriter ... married Lance Armstrong...” I pause to see if any of it is registering with this kid. 

“I don’t know it,” he says. 

I pull out the change box and dump the earnings into a money bag before zippering it shut. “But, Sheryl Crow is a murderer,” I tell him. He stops spinning the cap. 

“She was really going nowhere with her first batch of solo songs. I mean she had been a backup singer for Prince. Toured with him, sang a duet every night, all that. Did you know that?”

He’s just staring at me. 

“But, when she wanted to be a front woman, she ended up getting this backup band. Tuesday Night Music Club they were called. Just some guys, jamming. Whatever. Sheryl started dating one of them and pretty much took over from there.”

His eyes dart to the clock on the wall. 

“A lot of those songs ... on her record there ... he wrote them. Her new boyfriend and that band wrote them. So she gets shot to stardom but, next thing you know, her boyfriend ends up dead.”

I make a loose fist and jerk it back and forth. Then I place my hands at my throat and do a little gag. ”It’s true.”

“What the f**k, dude,” he asks. “Do you even work here?”

“This is my machine. Lawrence knows I’m here, and we got a little real estate deal going on,” I joke. “So yeah, I kind of work here.”

The little skinhead shakes his head and looks at the clock again. 

“I mean that’s not even all, my man. So Sheryl Crow has a hit song ‘Leaving Las Vegas’ right?  That was a movie with Nicolas Cage. And it was a book before that. But, she goes on Letterman saying ‘Oh noooo, it’s uh, uh, its autobiographical.’ Couple weeks later the guy who wrote the book puts a bullet in his own head. Read about it. It’s all on the internet.”

“My breaks over,” he says while backing towards the door. He turns, pushes the door open, and it swings back with a thud. 

I walk over to the table and pick up the bag of chips he left behind. I pinch the bag and pull it open with a popping sound. I reach in and take out a yellowed chip, misshaped and burnt in the center. 

****

“There’s my second favorite coke dealer,” a walking pair of overalls says. He wipes grease off his hands onto a once red bandana and shoves it into his front pocket. 

This little auto repair shop, it’s one of two in the entire town. The other one is half burger joint. Eat while you wait I guess. 

I’m at my last stop to collect my money. They have one snack machine and one pop machine. The owner - who I give 8% - swears from the back of the shop. 

“Hey. Afternoon, my man,” I say to the mechanic. I couldn’t tell you his name if you gave me one million dollars. 

He walks over and scans the items I’ve stocked. It’s the same selection every day for the past year. 

He presses a dollar bill against the corner of the machine and begins to slide it back and forth to smooth it out. Then he feeds it into the machine and makes his selection. A two-pack of chocolate cupcakes tilts forward and falls to the bottom with a plop. 

“Going to ruin your dinner,” I say to the person I probably get the most money out of on my entire route. 

“This is my dinner,” he says. 

I pop open the soda machine and begin to refill the empty slots. He leans over and inspects the inner workings of the machine. 

“Stays cold in there, huh,” he asks. “Could keep a bottle right there on that shelf in there and have a Jack and coke ready to go whenever you want.”

Yes, I would totally drive out here to your little town just to make myself a Jack and coke. I could chug the bottle then beat myself over the head with it. 

Speaking of drinking yourself to death, stop in any dive bar in middle America and you’ll find a new type of vending machine. Flickering lights sliding up and down, from green at the bottom to red at the top. While it doesn’t dispense any physical item, 25 cents will vend some much needed life advice. Drop a quarter in and you are the proud customer of a single use, standard breathalyzer test. Never underestimate the joy a group of drunk rednecks will get from competing to illuminate the top red light on the scale. What you do with the results are your choice. 

I don’t even want to tell you the number of mouths that have been on the nozzle of any given machine. 

I forcefully laugh at the mechanic and shake my head. “Yeah, well ... it’s five o’clock somewhere, right?”

He laughs, thus completing the social interaction. He believes me to be social. He believes me to be humorous. I cant believe he hasn’t left me alone already. 

He drops the empty cupcake wrapper into the trash then reaches out for me to hand him my empty Pepsi box. 

“Do you have recycling anywhere,” I ask. 

He shakes his head with his mouth full of chewed up cake and takes the empty box. He folds it in half, then once again, then one final time before stuffing it into the small trash can. 

“You ever see those commercials, ones with the car vending machines?” I ask. 

I don’t know why I ask him this, maybe I genuinely wonder what his opinion is for once. 

“Yeah, yeah. But, what do you put in a few thousand and push the buttons for which one you want? Then the car comes crashing down just because you picked the top row?” He laughs again. 

“I’d never get a car from that, man” he continues. “No way. Gotta drive it first. Any car I ever had I got from someone I know. My brother has a ninety-nine Civic if you’re looking”

“No, that’s ok,” I say. “Those commercials are pretty dumb, huh?”

“Yeah. F**k those things,” he says. 

“Right. F**k those things.”

I close the machine and turn the lock. I guess I have something in common with what’s his name after all. 

****

Now I know what you’re thinking. 

Vending machines kill more people than sharks. Every year. Sharks ain’t that bad ... compared to the monstrous vending machine industry. 

Let’s talk about it. 

It’s not true. Not at all. This whole rumor can be traced back to 1995 when the Consumer Product Safety Commission reported just two deaths in the United States were caused by vending machines. Meanwhile not a single person died from a shark attack that same year. And thus the statistic stuck. 

In more recent years, the death toll by sharks has reached six per year. Compare that to death by vending machines - which has consistently averaged around two a year - and you have your answer for which is deadlier. 

But, why even compare vending machines to sharks? Humans kill 100 million sharks a year so I wouldn’t cry over those six people who become shark bait anyways. 

And, as for the two humans per year, they’re not much better. Their bag of pretzels gets stuck so they give the machine a slap. 

Nothing. 

So another slap. 

Nothing. 

So a shove. Still nothing. 

So they eye up the width of the machine. Then they get a good grip, and pull forward. Slowly at first, they think they’ve got it. 

Suddenly upwards of 900 pounds shifts forward, and this poor office zombie who just wanted a bag of pretzels will now have a special order put in for their dental records. 

Might as well grab a mop. Someone call his mother. 

****

I know I said the auto shop was my last collection of the day, but I’ve made one extra stop. Coming back from the little town with a half auto shop, half burger joint I could see it from the expressway. The setting sun was in its final minutes behind me, reflecting off the enormous tower. 

Car vending machine. 

I took the early exit and now here I am. 

Shopping after hours at a dealership is a actually a good way to see the vehicles without attracting a salesman in thirty seconds. The lots stay lit. Any fluid spots underneath the cars are easily visible. If there’s a ladder or tarp left along the side of the car then they don’t want you checking underneath to begin with. 

But, here I stood in front of the eight story tower. What a s****y way to buy a car. It’s a gimmick, I get it. But it’s an insult. To go from being able to purchase candy, chips, and pop from a machine to ... this. 

They went right from snacks to cars. They could have tried so many things in between. 

Out on the town and need that bottle of Jack immediately? Boy have I got the machine for you. 

Need a gun but that pesky waiting period is too long? Try our handy-dandy automatic rifle vending machine. 

Patent pending. 

The very first vending machine was actually built in the first century AD. When temple goers in Egypt were helping themselves to a little too much holy water, the inventor Hero of Alexandria came up with the mechanics to limit the amount. Drop a coin in the slot of this new contraption, and a lever would come down to release the perfect amount of blessed H2O. So next time you’re having some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on your lunch break, or you’re in a gas station bathroom and see that metal box bolted to the wall with its variety of condoms ... thank religious greed for the technological advancement. 

So I walk around to the back of this monstrosity, and there I see it. A ladder leading up the side of the car vending machine. 

I start to climb and no one stops me. I climb further, and the building doesn’t slowly tip over. Of course I didn’t expect that to happen, but it’s nice to know I won’t be the a*****e that changes the two-per-year statistic. 

Sitting atop the tower, my feet dangling over the side I can see beyond the entire city. The expressway trails away to a pinpoint. The smaller streets and neighborhoods become blurs of yellow lights and shadows against the black earth. 

I reach in my jacket pocket and pull out a Snickers. I tear and peel the wrapper down then take a bite. The chocolate cracks and caramel slides into a nerve in my back tooth. I feel it down into my gums. 

I suck hard on that side of my mouth trying to get at the slimy candy bite. I lean forward and spit out a brown glob. It falls two stories before being blown back and splattering against the glass. 

I stay hunched over and feel the icy wind against my face. I stand and stick my leg out, twirling my foot around in the air. I pat my jacket pocket, then slide my hands into the pockets of my pants. I feel a piece of paper in one hand and pull it out. 

On a half folded white card I see the written words. 

Car vending machine. 

I plant my feet firmly and hold the note straight out. I hold it tightly with only two fingers and the wind flaps it violently up and down before the paper whips out of my hand and swirls in the air in front of me. It circles up then sharply blows to the right. I watch as it flows back and forth lower and lower before blowing out of sight in front of the backdrop of blurry lights and black earth. 

I think about the office zombies. 

I think about Sheryl Crow. 

I think about sharks. 

I think about Hero of Alexandria. 

I think about nothing. 

My suicide note will be just three words long.  

Car vending machine.