The Vending Machine Blues

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Talktober on news radio ELEVENFA. Excuse me, how to blow
my nose there? Do you do that to me? Not yet,
I haven't given you one. No. Oh, well, that's good.
I just wanted Krispy to get some maritime. That's all
all right, Chrispy. Sorry, didn't know, Chrispy. Chrispy was out
there listening, all right. So a couple things bottom of

(00:24):
the hour, got ourselves a got ourselves a interview with
Senator Deb Fisher later this half hour. Going to give
away some tickets to that special screening of an American
Werewolf in London, so we have that too. And I
guess the first thing that I wanted to mention and

(00:44):
talk about here was the thing that you bought in
a vending machine yesterday. Wow. Leading off the top with that,
why not? What else is it talk about? We could
talk about the thing last night, the what's its face?
Al Smith dinner.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Just to be completely honest, I did not bring it
into the studio. I looked at it before I left
my studio and purposefully didn't bring it in, hoping you
would forget all about the topic. No, I want to
talk about this. I think this is relatable and it's
a good Friday topic and it's my show. You played
somebody blowing their nose at the beginning of this.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Segment, So yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna it's not really
roasting you, I guess, but so so tell a story
what happened at the vening machine yesterday? What happened at
the vending machine. We were start in the process of
kind of wrapping our show yesterday and you told me
this story about what happened with you in.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
The vending machine. Yeah, me and the vending machine. We
have a vining machine here, iHeart vending machine.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Is do we know? Do we do? We have a
vending machine. Person. I just want to be careful about
how candid I'm going to be about my vending machine conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Will you'd be as candid as you want. That guy
found another job about four years ago. All right, so
we haven't seen anybody for a while. Uh huh, all right,
go ahead, what happened? Well, this vending machine is uh,
you know, sometimes it's all about quality. It's quantity or quality.
This vending machine is leaning heavy on quality, or at
least not on quantity.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
That's for sure. There's only a couple items left in
this vending machine. And it's also a terrible vending machine.
Let's just sew that out there. Yeah, you can't use
your card. It doesn't have an app connected to it.
I mean when I was in Des Moines, and I'll
get to that in a second, there was an app
connected to this, like so I could just like on
the app pay for whatever I wanted. It would tell
me what stuff cost. I'll get to that in a second.

(02:28):
But that's none of that stuff's here. You have to
have like the cold hard cash you do. And I
had some.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
I had some quarters and some dimes, okay, walked up
to this vending machine yesterday, I was in dire straits.
I was in need of something. I really was craving
a cookie. But yeah, you know, I saw some candy
bars there and I went for it.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah. Low, you know, blood sugar situation.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
You don't really have a whole lot of ton of things. Yeah,
I had the shakes, I had the tunnel vision. I
needed some candy, okay, fair enough, And I went to
the vending machine and there's that there's a row at
the bottom with a couple of different candy bars, and
I put my stuff in that the coins, and then
I selected one of the candies and it said what
did it say? It said sorry, try another one, something
like that, over and over again.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, So I tried another seat like this isn't like
it didn't even try to get it for me, I mean,
and you can see it there.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
I pressed E seven and it didn't even move. It
just said, sorry, try another one.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
What does it even mean?

Speaker 2 (03:19):
And I said, I don't want to but it didn't
talk back because it's not a sentient being.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
It's not a sentient being. And it also is less
somehow less advanced than Sicko, the robot from Rocky four right,
which we'll get to eighty stuff later in the show.
But yeah, I mean, this is not an advanced advanced machine.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
So I tried another one the candy bar next to it,
tried that one, said the same thing, sorry, try another one.
So there was two more in line that I tried
progressively throughout. So I tried all four of these different
candy bars, and every single time it told me it.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Wasn't gonna work. So then what did you do?

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Well, there was this there was a bag of chips
on the top row that I did not want. But
I tried everything, and so I decided to get my
money back. So I hit the little button that returns
your money for you.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, they would happen. Nothing, Nothing happened, It gave you
nothing better even try to give it back to me.
It didn't even say sorry, try another one. It just
didn't do it. So it was like that button just
as far as the machine goes, so it didn't exists.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
It basically was just like, this is my money, now
go away, you dumb shlub. That's basically what it said.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Okay, well, so you can't get your money back, it's
just in this machine, So then what do you do?
Well then I saw the bag of chips, and I
thought maybe that'll work. You know, at this point, if
you've stolen my money and you won't give me a
candy bar, at least I want something so where.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
You're out, like the dollar fifty you put in there, right,
So I hit the number to get the candy and
then it tells me. It doesn't say sorry, try another one.
It tells me to add another dime. I was ten
cents off. Now this is the funny part the bag
of chips. Actually it was only like seventy five cents.
But there's no inflation in this thing because that's how
long it's been without actually getting updated. This thing hasn't

(05:01):
been touched since before COVID. I mean, I mean, chips
are still going for like seventy five cents a bag.
At least that way we know that it's not contaminated.
It's you know, pre COVID chips.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah. Yeah, the chips don't know what COVID is. Oh,
COVID world. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
So so I hit the button and then it worked,
and I thought, okay, well, at least I get something.
And it drops down. I pull it out of the
thing and it's a year and a half expired. July
of twenty twenty three was the last time you could
enjoy that product. It didn't say eat, by the way,

(05:36):
which I think is hilarious that it doesn't say eat
this before July twenty twenty three. No, it's a use.
It didn't say enjoy. It's a use, Like what I use.
I'm only doing one thing with this chip. I'm not
it's going in the mouth, no other place. I'm not
using this.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
I'm eating. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
The wording is strange, but yeah, use that I.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Did not use those chips before July twenty twenty three.
They're still sealed. You didn't open the bag yet. It's
back there. It'll be back there. I think I might
keep it around.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
At tgif Friday shedd flavored potato skins. That is such
a specific chip for a vending machine to have. No
wonder it's expired.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
How long would that have had to have been there for
it to Actually I don't see potato skins expiring with
any kind of frequency. I mean, it had been in
there for several years. Those potatoes were grown pre Irish famine.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Maybe maybe we're talking about Irish potatoes before the famine.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
Man, Oh, it's funny. Yeah, I don't know. Man. I'm
sure that we could share some venning machine stories later
in the show if we really wanted to. But I
just found that areas. I mean, of all the things
that could possibly happen, I mean, that is just a
calamity of misfortune with the vending machine. Now I am

(07:10):
on the other end of that when I was in
the morning before I came here, And I'll explain how
the vening machine works there, and we'll do that next
on News Radio eleven ten kfab. Oh, Maurice Sunger on
news radio eleven ten kfab. I've tried to get stuff
out of there. I hate it. I don't even carry
cash that often, so, like I mean, and I was
a little spoiled because into wine where you know, when
I worked there, we had two vting machines. We had

(07:32):
a soda machine and we had a food machine, and
the guy was like a good vending machine guy. Like
they switched guys like around twenty twenty, probably like right
around the pandemic. We got a new vending machine guy
with new vending machines, and he was always stocking stuff
in there. But the stuff that he was offering in
the soda machine all of a sudden went up like
fifty cents, and then the food stuff, okay, and here's

(07:55):
a guilty pleasure. He would regularly put like real like
legitimate meal stuff in there. Oh. So I would go
to work at four in the morning because I worked
the morning show over there, and sometimes I'd forget to
like pack food and I'd get super hungry, or I'd
have a moment where I'm like getting like lightheaded or
you know, need something in my system, and I would
get like either beef jerky or i'd get like a

(08:17):
Snickers because I think, you know, those are like super
power kind of power bars if you're like low on
blood sugar. But they also had like denty more beef
stew that I could just you know, throw into the
microwave for sixty seconds and then I could eat. It's like, ah, yeah,
and I love that stuff. If you're low on sodium.
Oh yeah, it's good stuff. And so I would start

(08:37):
buying some of this stuff and it was on an app.
So I was like, Okay, that's fine, let me see
how much this stuff costs, and so i'd buy it.
You know, it would be like the denty more thing.
Thought felt it was a little overpriced, like three bucks,
and I was like, hey, you know, it's whatever. I'm hungry,
like I'm gonna eat this. And then I get paid
for it on the app. And then I noticed, all
of a sudden, a ten cent transaction fee every single
time I paid for it through the app. And you

(08:59):
couldn't like you wouldn't even take cash anymore. You had
to do it through the app. So every time I
paid for something, I got an additional ten cent tax
basically on me a fee for using the machine, and
then I noticed the stuff that I was buying that
needed to get restocked. All of a sudden, the price
kept increasing, so by the time I left, it was
four fifty for one of those denty more things. Wow,

(09:20):
like that, that's a like a fifty percent markup. So
I started throwing a fit, like maybe this is why
they were trying to get me out of there. They
were just like, yeah, let's find Hemory a better job
away from this building. And he just won't leave us
alone about the vending machine. I was getting extorted by
vending machine guy. You know, I had to get really
good about bringing my own stuff at four in the morning,
and sometimes you forget about things when you're you know,

(09:41):
half asleep wandering out of the house. I was getting
extorted by a vending machine guy, and I was like
on the air complaining about it too. I'd just like this,
I'd be like, I would love to eat something, but
you know, the vending machine guy here doesn't allow us
to put cash into the vending machine to buy anything,
and he charges me ten cents for buying anything anyway,
And everything I ever buy continuously gets marked up. It's

(10:05):
like by a computer. He's like changing the prices on me.
I was just like, how is this a thing? Why
is no one else complaining about this? I feel the
same way. I went to Fizzoli's a couple of months back.
I got a number seven accosted nineteen dollars. How is
that possible? You can't tell me. Inflation has hit us
that hard. And you know what, I got to drink
Sierra missed. It was like I was back in time,

(10:27):
but the prices were fifty years from now. You see
her missed R s and p s right, Oh gosh,
what are we doing? Four fifty? How big was the
beef stew? Dude? I'm telling you there were like five
like balls of beef in there. The rest were like
the broth, which I also like the carrots and the potatoes.

(10:49):
I mean, I could eat it in like three minutes.
The broth, I think is the best part. It's good,
especially when it's warm. Yeah. And I'd save the beef
balls to the end. And you know, like guzzling now
knows eat balls. Maybe save them for a loose meat sandwich. No, no,
because they get cold easy. Like there was one time
I had to put it in the microwave, but run

(11:09):
back because I was doing I was running the board
like you do now, yeah, and I was doing that,
and I was like, forgot that it was in the
microwave for like thirty minutes, and I went back and
it was ruined. Oh, even when I reheated it, it didn't
taste the same. Zap at once, that's all you get. Yeah,
I mean the radioactivity, I guess just makes it a
lot harder for that thing than you know, stay warm.
I don't know. It does the same thing. Like your
fried chicken. If you ever try to warm up fried

(11:32):
chicken with your skin on it, yeah, not good. It's
not good. Or French fries from like McDonald's. You throw
those in the microwave for like ten seconds, makes them
all soggy. I don't know what the science is behind that,
but it's not the right way to go about doing it,
that's for sure. Yeah, it's something about how the microwave
heats things up. Yeah, I mean it's convenient, but sometimes
you know, it's just like it doesn't make things taste
better anyway. This is all to say, if you have

(11:54):
a functional, affordable vending machine in your place of work,
as you listen to me right now. Congratulation. You are
one of the few. I had a very functional and
very high tech vending machine when I was working in
the Moine. I was just being extorted for using it.
We don't even have anybody monitoring this thing. The fact
that it takes American currency still at all, I'm actually
surprised by. I'm surprised he didn't ask me to put

(12:15):
in like a haypenny or something. Yeah. But then even
after that, you know, like all the food in there,
you can't have half of it, and when you do
get something, it's been inspired for over a year. So
I don't know who's in charge of something like that.
And maybe that's just that there's no demand, Like we've
weaned ourselves off of stuff like that because it just
doesn't like there's nothing good in there. But man, in
case of emergency, it'd be nice to have something there

(12:36):
to like save us in case of, you know, low
blood sugar attack or something.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
I'm sure the vending machine guy's like, yeah, I got
a job at Uber Eats. Like I've moved on, you
should too.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah. Probably speaking of moving on, if we're going to
talk to deb Fisher here in a moment the Senator
from Nebraska, eighteen days out from election day. But before
we do that, I want to give away two more
tickets to the Bruce Crawford Charities reading of an American
Werewolf in London, that is at the Omaha Community Playhouse
a week from today, next Friday at seven o'clock. Got

(13:07):
one more pair to give away, and all the proceeds.
If you know you're going there, you're spending money, You're
dropping off some stuff you want to donate to the cause,
going to the Omaha Parks Foundation, a very worthy cause,
so be sure to do that. I said, four fifty
How many? How many dimes? Is that? How many dimes
do you need to pay for a four dollars and
fifty cent Dentty Moore beef stew from my des moin

(13:28):
vending machine? Forty five? How about we take the forty
fifth collar here, forty fifth color right now, we'll open
the phones four oh two, five five eight eleven ten,
four oh two five five eight to eleven ten. The
forty fifth collar wins a pair of tickets to that
special charity screening of an American Werewolf in London at
the Omaha Community Playhouse next Friday at seven o'clock right
here on news Radio eleven ten kfab and raise songer