A day in the life of almost every vending machine | Hacker News Reader

A day in the life of almost every vending machine

theguardian.com

In 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 We had a contract with Transport For London (TfL) and Cadburys to help update the rather outdated chocolate vending machines in the London Underground - the metro/tube.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.

>>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.

I wonder how many places are recognizable by the particular smell?

gilroy california has a particular (not unpleasant) smell some times of year, I believe due to garlic.

There's a stretch of I-75 in Cincinnati that has a sickly-sweet yeasty smell from a distillery near the highway. There must be a ton of places like that.

There's a company in Tonbridge in the UK that amongst other things dehydrates food. This is an old story but it's still happening: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-24131949

Along I-70 in Denver about a mile or so west of the South Platte one could often smell a Keebler Cookies factory. On I-70 on the other side of the Platte one could always smell the stockyards and I suppose slaughterhouses. I spent more time on the west side, fortunately.

And for several miles around the Coors Brewery in Golden one could often smell malt.

Bloomers Chocolate Factory on Kinzie between River West and West Loop Gate in Chicago used to frequently smell sickeningly of chocolate (and violated EPA emissions a bunch of times in the process).

When the night train stops next to the cookies factory in Meilen (Switzerland) you should go out just for a second. Bliss.

> 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 see it the other way around... why do we keep people in such boring (or to use the official term, bullshit) jobs when we could automate away as much as we reasonably can and enjoy maybe a 20 hour work week or not work at all?! How much productivity, how much talent could we unlock from our society if people weren't wasting their potential away for something a computer can do faster and with infinitely better accuracy?

Agreed. Something to remember is, what people do with their free time is also economic activity. Usually they consume, but sometimes they also produce (arts, crafts, trades, etc.). These outputs have measurable effects on quality of life and local economic health. Not everything has to be filtered through the narrow lens of waged employment to contribute to the commonwealth.

Perhaps 20 years ago, this comment wouldn't have landed as a joke to me.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36696533-new-dark-age

The problem is not technology, the problem is that we (and in particular, the Boomer generation that was in power of society for the last 30 years) stood idle while democratic control of society was ceded to ever larger private entities piece by piece.

We could live in a world where technology serves the people so that we get back to the 20 hour work week that medieval peasants enjoyed - now, technology serves the ultra-rich elites (either as playthings or to further their interests) and increasingly repressive surveillance state governments, and unions have lost more and more influence.

I used to think that as well, and I still agree that the root problem is neoliberalism, if not capitalism itself. But as long as they remain the dominant system, technology will be developed in service to their ends.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60299346-scorched-earth

I think people need work. even meaningless work. It forces us to get out of bed in the morning and provides a crystallizing point for organizing our lives.

beyond that, I think people need to feel like they have a purpose or serve a function even if minimal.

People will work nevertheless - they just will do work unappreciated by capitalism: they will raise children (a large part of why birth rates have dropped is because it's absolutely impossible to raise children on two or more full time jobs), they will get into creative work (make music or art, write books, ...), they will take care of their elderly again instead of shoving them into "care homes", they will create open-source software, they will be managing their investments, they will work in whatever form of charity...

> It forces us to get out of bed in the morning

I'm European, even when I have vacation (yes, we actually have vacation) I still regularly get up out of bed. Medieval peasants also got out of bed.

I'd bet that most people, in fact, would sit on the couch and do nothing if given the chance. Most people are lazy. Most people are fat. Most people will take the path of least resistance and just do nothing.

Medieval peasants didn't have television, internet and video games to isolate them. Humans are social creatures. As much as HN loves working remote, for most people, especially introverts, I'd wager it's terrible for their longterm health and mental state.

> I'd bet that most people, in fact, would sit on the couch and do nothing if given the chance.

The data on UBI experiments [1] suggest that you may well lose the bet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_pilots

Speak for yourself. I’d be the happiest if I didn’t have to work another day in my life.

It doesn’t mean I’d be wasting away on the couch, just that I’d be able to do what I want and not the intersection of what pays/what I can tolerate.

I don’t think people need work to live full lives. But it’s like remote work: why dictate everyone’s preferences rather than letting each person choose for themselves like an adult?

There are many worthwhile things to pursue that a capitalistic society doesn’t value. I don’t think I need a boss coercing me to do mildly stupid and useless things to make some shareholders even richer to live a full life. But I’ve got rent to pay (so that some investors get richer) and so I must work, for now. I don’t consider it a source of personal fulfillment.

have you ever tried this? what was the longest stretch you had without a job?

In retirement you either find a hobby or fade away.

I have.

Was not working for 3–6 months stretches throughout my life, recently 18 months.

Could I ask how you generally spent your time then? I've always wanted to try it, but fear succumbing to terminal couch potato syndrome. (Ideally I'd be a "maker" of some sort, do a lot of travel and hiking, yadda yadda).

It’s not so black and white. I had weeks on end where I’d do nothing special like watching tv shows or playing games all day. But I think I’d have these stretches anyway whether I worked or not at the time.

The rest of the time was spent reading many more books than when working, building side projects just for fun (sometimes even to completion, sometimes just to try or learn something). I learnt about building and maintaining bicycles (started rom not knowing a thing to having repaired and built many bicycles now), worked on home improvement projects I had set aside while working because I had “no time” (rather no energy left). I did hike some but I prefer cycling so went on loooong bike rides.

Had more time for my family as well (just spending time together doing whatever with no pressure or fomo that the weekend is over soon).

Also visited a bunch of museums and nearby cities and countries because all of sudden I could travel off peak for 1/3 of the cost and go places when it isn’t crowded.

But all this is very personal. It might not be what you’re interested in at all. The general point I think is that you might have a few weeks or months of couch potatoing (especially if you’ve worked all your life and never took a really multi months break) but I am convinced you’ll eventually find something worthwhile to you to do.

Nobody who is healthy enjoys spending months or years on their couch. I think people in that situation have other issues that should be addressed (mental health, depression, hormones, whatever). I don’t buy into the narrative that people without job are lazy and just sit around all day. Idem for retirement.

Anyway I highly recommend trying it out. Even if you end up doing nothing much for the duration it will teach you something about yourself, and maybe even reduce or eliminate your apprehension of spending time with yourself and your thoughts.

Thanks for the insights! Hope to try it for myself at some point :-)

Hope you get the chance. To me it’s like working part time: the income reduction is well worth it. Good luck

remember whatever a computer can do for you, it can do to you.

I agree completely. But IMO the inevitable result is going to be "we" (whoever that is) automating those jobs away, and "them" (the former workers) finding themselves that much closer to the edge of survival without benefiting in any way.

A Universal Basic Income, or something else equally broad and dependable, would go far to mitigate this issue for displaced workers. But who's going to pay for it? "Not me!" is the most common answer to that question.

At least, that's my cynical take from studying history and reading the news for way too many years.

My bet is that menial jobs like this will be automated away in the next few decades, but if/when it stops being necessary to work to live, these jobs will come back.

Think of it like a hobby. At a base level, people need something to keep their minds and bodies busy with. Some guys build massive elaborate train sets, and others become the singular world expert in stocking candy in a London train station.

I 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.

And cold coffee.so much cold coffee.brought my wife to tears (she's a hot coffee addict :)

There's also heated coffee in cans that can be had from vending machines.

And used underwear!

http://inventorspot.com/articles/japan_used_panty_vending_ma...

Talk about ways to bring a wife to tears :^)

Beer 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

They 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.

Much of Japan has real, snowy winter. Is there a cultural aversion to wearing gloves?

Quite the opposite: many Japanese work uniforms mandate gloves all year round in roles where we usually wouldn't use them, eg. taxi drivers. But the appeal of a hot drink on a cold day is pretty universal, I certainly appreciated them when I was camping in northern Hokkaido at the tail end of summer.

Yes, although almost all of them IME only sell drinks, which is a bit weird from my UK perspective where vending machines typically sell crisps and chocolate too...

That was my experience as well. I was so excited to see wacky vending machines in Japan but I just saw hundreds of drink machines, maybe 3 ice cream ones, and just a single snack machine. After doing some reading it seems the really cool ones that sell hot ramen and burgers and things are all at old roadside rest stops in the Japanese countryside.

I suspect it's partly the cultural taboo around walking and eating in Japan.

It’s more of a cultural taboo to be overweight

If that's somehow relevant to this thread why do they have plenty of shops selling food products of various types (including some amazing candy) in Japan? I've had the best cream puff in my life from a conbini.

Are you saying these drinks machines only dispense water?

I'm pretty sure otherwise that most sugary carbonated drinks like Coke, Pepsi, etc are highly associated with obesity.

Liquid carbs are even easier to absorb by the gut than any form of solid food.

I think the difference is one of degree, not kind. Two perspectives

1) harder to get many calories through beverages than it is foods. Mentally I’m weighing a coke against the burger mentioned up thread, so this one might fall down to a cursory inspection of liquid and solid offerings in nearby vending machines.

2) harder to get more calories when your selection is limited. If you would buy a coke and a snickers but you can only buy soda then you won’t buy two you will just skip the snickers.

So, probably a couple other more reasonable perspectives to explore before resorting to obvious hyperbole.

It is famously easier to get larger amounts of calories through drinking (doesn't make you feel full) than eating.

Does that hold for our hypothetical vending machine situation? Assuming your standard average test human only hits the machines once a day, getting a soda every hour would line up with what you are suggesting

The burger is not health food by any means but not all calories are equal.

There’s more in the burger but the absorption rate is much lower compared to the liquid sugar in the soda which will go straight through the gut.

Some of the burger is probably going to be passed undigested and the protein and fat are going to need energy to break down before they can be used.

Meanwhile the sugar in the soda is immediately available to be used or stored as body fat. Pius you can keep drinking that stuff all day in between meals without ever feeling full.

1) the real point is that there is no reason to hyperbolically ask if the vending machine is only serving water

2) good point, I should further clarify my assumption that I’m thinking of a McDonald’s hamburger that I last saw listed at 1200 calories, and I’m presuming a soda in the range of 300-400. At that point I’d believe that the caloric intake would be the dominant factor

3) if you want to get into the nitty gritty then the next step would be a case study, get an idea of offerings and popular items in different locales, that sort of thing.

> I should further clarify my assumption that I’m thinking of a McDonald’s hamburger that I last saw listed at 1200 calories, and I’m presuming a soda in the range of 300-400.

A McDondald's hamburger is only 250kcal here in the UK and even a US cheeseburger is only 300 cal. 1200 calories is more like a full meal including chips and, as it happens, soda.

https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/good-to-know/nutrition-ca...

https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/cheeseburger.html

I accused you of hyperbole because I did not think anywhere in the world sold just water, or at least no high sugar beverages like coke in a vending machine. If that question was meant in earnest then I apologize.

I think that cheeseburger might not be representative, the quarter pounder might be more so [1], at 520 calories, regardless I think it’s clear that my calorie estimate was wrong and plainly too high (I think you are correct that I was referring to the meal option calories), I retract my claim that total calorie count was likely the dominant factor.

That leaves me without further points as I have conceded or apologized on the ones that mattered to me. I think that means I went off half cocked, my bad, thank you for explaining yourself to me.

[1] https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/quarter-pounder-w...

Not at all. You’re all good fella.

No offence taken and no apology needed.

Might be worth noting that the variety of stuff you can get from machines tends to be better than in the west, e.g. http://www.hachiyoh.co.jp/master/products/kirin.html / https://www.suntory.co.jp/group/sbs/business/vending/suntory...

where there's some soda, sure, but also various teas, juices, coffee, flavored water, sports drinks, etc with way more of the display space given over to non-soda stuff. Sure, you can get a water, a gatorade or maybe a tropicana juice but that's usually about it for the average American machine.

> Are you saying these drinks machines only dispense water?

Kind of?

https://youtu.be/lr4MmmWQtZM?t=349

The healthy/unhealtly food availability ratio in the western world is like 10%/90% whereas in Japan it seems closer to 70%/30%.

Personally, I have never seen a vending machine in the western world that had a healthy drink in it that wasn't plain water.

I remember hearing a story years ago of the first Baskin and Robbins (aka 31 flavours) opening in japan, and how no one would leave the tiny lobby until they’d finished their ice cream cone. Japanese norms totally broke that american franchise model. Not sure what happened after that, bigger lobbies maybe?

Someone told me 7-11 in japan was "broken" in a different way. They sold the 10 best of something and didn't seem to be convenience at the expense of quality.

I purchased some CalorieMate from a Japanese vending machine half-way up a mountain.

I was taken aback as I’d assumed it was a fictional product as I’d only encountered it in the video game, Metal Gear Solid 3.

I love corn, so I was excited to run into a corn option at a Japanese vending machine. Out came a beverage container of hot corn soup or something that I would not buy again, but interesting experience.

We had hot corn soup/drink from a couple vending machines in Hokkaido in the winter. I thought it worked well on a cold day, who knows, maybe it was the novelty!

I had hot corn soup, red bean soup, and asari clam miso soup from vending machines in Japan during my trip there this month, and they were all fantastic.

It's also incredible and probably one of the many reasons they are so successful in Japan is the don't charge more for products out of a vending machine. A typical vending machine might sell a drink for 100-150 yen. The same drink at the store will at 3-7 yen less. Vs, Here in the USA, most vending machine raise the price 50%-300%

"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.

In 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

I 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

hopefully it was hot oats, hot noodles too :)

I mean, that doesn't sound like a great combo to be, but what do I know, maybe it could work somehow...

The 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.

The 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.

Sorry,

  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.

It 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.

> The last time I had a vending machine failure was maybe 15 years ago.

Vending machines became much more reliable once electronics for checking was added. The spiral wire pushers now have an infrared beam across the delivery area. If something doesn't fall, there's no beam break, the software notices, and the spiral gets turned a bit more. If there's still no object detected, the program returns the money and marks that row as empty.

I wish these advancements were more common. )-:

Not only do I still see people struggle with failures, some machines seem to have received as their only upgrades a card reader and maybe a camera.

Anecdata: one recent failure I'd never seen before is that a machine's card reader started charging $5 USD per transaction on top the advertised price. This showed up only on users' transaction records, but not on the machine itself.. The vendor blamed the credit card processing company, and the building's management taped an "OUT OF ORDER" sign over the card reader for a couple weeks while it got fixed. The people who noticed the overcharge and complained got refunded, but I don't know about the rest.

That explains it. I've stopped using vending machines about that long ago. So my experience was with the older machines.

Which doesn't make my experience wrong; just out of date.

And yes that comment about super frustrating is right. You dug around for coin or currency the machine will accept then got cheated, you were out of luck. Wasted 2 or three minutes and you're frustrated and still hungry/thirsty and out of options.

Probably why the memories stayed fresh so long.

I think the difference is significant. If he says it's an "unexplained reference" to unreliability he would be saying "everybody knows the machines are great, I don't understand why the heck the journo brought up unreliability when they had a trouble free transaction", which would be pretty living-in-a-bubble. Talking about an "unexamined expectation", on the other hand, is "I know that many people approach vending machines assuming they all suck and a malfunction is a likely outcome, but in the industry we think this isn't a correct view of modern machines and it would be nice if people updated their priors".

'100 times cautious' seems to me a pretty good example of an unexamined expectation...

I think I've had more machines refuse to accept my coins than refuse to give me change after a purchase.

Given how many fake coins are in circulation that are good enough to fool a fool like me that's probably not too unexpected.

Back in the olden days when you got a crisp bill and saved it specifically in case you needed to get something from a vending machine later on. Those were good days! I don't think I've carried cash for many years now. Was kind of an issue in San Francisco where some restaurants still didn't accept card payments.

These days I find I rarely even keep credit/debit cards on me.

I’ve got so used to using Apple Pay with my phone, it works pretty much everywhere in the UK.

I guess the next wave for me will be setting up a smartwatch with Garmin Pay.

There's a long history of coin detection. A company called National Rejectors developed the first coin rejector that was any good, and dominated the business until their patents ran out. You can still buy a standard National Rejectors coin unit on eBay.

It's a very clever little piece of machinery, about six inches square and an inch thick. Size, weight, bounce, and magnetic properties are checked, and nickels, dimes, and quarters are sorted. One of the classics of mid 20th century mechanical design.

The "unexamined expectation" cuts two ways though.

My eyes were opened once I found out that those "claw and stuffed toy" machines were not based on skill - the grabbing strength of the claw was only strong once in a while - controlled by software.

> but it might have been years or decades ago,

I'll assume the reason it was decades ago is going to be because things that were $0.25 are now $2.00.

> Every person on earth has a story about how a vending machine failed them.

Can you give an example? Because I have a hard time remembering if a vending machine ever failed on me. Even the ones in school, with lots of rough teenage boys, always worked. There were ticket machines that stood out in the open that had a hard time accepting EC/Geldkarte. One needed to insert the bank card up to six times. But that was 20 years ago.

And ok, one could say the UI on the touchscreen driven ticket machines form Deutsche Bahn (German railway) was a fail! But they still printed a ticket. (They where introduced ~15 years ago. I booked online ever since. No idea if they are still bad. The machines before that, if you where a regular, you cold buy a ticket in 10 seconds.)

I had one in the past couple months not give me change. I was going to buy a snack and a drink, but after the drink machine stole $0.25, I wasn't going to give the neighboring snack machine a chance.

I also remember a time where I bought a snapple from the drinks machine at my community college, and it was vended, but got stuck on the way down. Of course, passerby tried to help by shaking the machine and all sorts of other products came out. Net loss for the vendor, but I didn't get my preferred drink :( That last one was at least 20 years ago, but it sticks in mind... that's probably part of the problem, we don't generally remember the times things went right, only when they went wrong, and I couldn't even hazard a guess at how many times I successfully used a vending machine.

for vending machines enjoyers: Eating at the Largest Vending Machine Park in the World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEOkMRCWPb4

> 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.

By the way, your iPhone is a vending machine too ...

A subscription machine now.

And also your Android device or your Windows computer.

That'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).

So is your rotary phone.

That is a major societal problem. They bring out the worst in human behavior.

Oh, wait. I thought you said venting machine. Nevermind.

I thought that of the kindle when it first came out.

I see the iphone as more of a cash register.

"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 ...

Traveling 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.

Maybe 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.

Its interesting that redbox can be found outside in even the sketchiest neighborhoods.

An article about vending machines has no right to be this exciting!

Agreed, it’s a superb article.

I 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]

I 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 :-)

Oops, 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")

Muahaha, thanks for that laugh! Its refreshing to see that some HN users have not lost their humor :-)

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