The Machine Had Other Plans

June twenty-third. The vending machine dispensed the wrong thing. I want to state that plainly before I explain anything else, because the sequence of events only makes sense if you understand that as the foundation: I put in the right amount, I pressed the right buttons, and I got the wrong snack. It beeped at me afterward.

Simone was at the sink and witnessed the whole thing, and her response, which I think says everything about where we both were by the end of that shift, was to take out her phone and photograph me standing there. Not moving. Just standing in front of the machine in a kind of open-ended stare, the wrong item sitting in the tray, me not quite ready to accept it as the final answer. She sent it to me with no caption. The photo is in this post. I look exactly as tired as I felt.

the standoff

We sat at the table after that and did what I think of as the debrief, which is the ten or fifteen minutes at the end of a long shift where you just sit in the break room and let the fluorescent light do its thing. The wrong snack sat between us like an artifact from a small disaster. Simone had her chin in her hand. I had my coffee. Neither of us said anything useful for a while. Then she looked at the snack and said, 'it probably thought you needed that,' and something about the delivery, the timing, the exhaustion, the sheer flatness of the fluorescent afternoon, made me laugh in the way you only laugh when you have exactly no reserves left.

the debrief

I ate the wrong snack. It was fine. The vending machine has not apologized.