Vending Machine Vengeance

By Matt Wood in Miscellaneous on Oct 18, 2006 2:49PM

When Chicagoist was in the eighth grade, we once spent 45 minutes trying to fish a stuck candy bar out of a vending machine with a coat hanger, just to impress a girl. Ignorant jackass that we were at that age, we didn't realize that maybe the most chivalrous thing to do would have been to drop some change in the machine and buy her another.

But people don't always act reasonably around vending machines (not the least when puberty is involved), sometimes going to great lengths to make them fulfill their promise of instant soda and candy. The Tribune's Julia Keller says this is because they seem human to us, susceptible to the same faults. They're irrational and temperamental; sometimes they refuse to work for no good reason, and because we often spend so much time with them we develop emotional expectations. That junior high machine wasn't simply broken, it was a bully trying to cock-block us, so we had to give it a what-for with a coat hanger (and kids, please don't read that as encouragement to retaliate against your tormenters with coat hangers).

So our question for you today is: what's the craziest thing you ever did to a vending machine to get what you paid for? Are you the person who inspired that warning sticker not to tip it over? Ever needed stitches from putting your fist through the glass to get at your stranded nacho cheese Combos? And where the hell is our change anyway?