When I retire, and other vending machine logic.

When I retire... you will be attending my funeral. Yes, it's true. Congress is working to extend the retirement age of people under 40 to 77 or something like that. Roughly, if I live longer than any male, except Grandpa Kendall, ever has, I can retire. Great! I will just have to hit the lotto.

Actually, I plan to have two careers in my life. This one, which hopefully will pay the bills until they are gone, and the one after, which will give me something to do and asome pocket money until I can retire, by that time at 105.

What will I do in my second career? I thought about being a shop teacher at the vo-tech or local high school. Maybe I will deliver flowers, or work at the co-op. Who knows. That is, if any of those things are still around by then. Oh, there will always be flowers and schools, but by then we may have robots to do that stuff, and manual machining may be a thing of the past.

If you put a dollar in a coke machine and press a selection that is sold out, the machine will not refund your money. They force you to chose something else they have. Let's be glad stores don't work that way. Give them $50 when you walk in looking for a new outfit or a fishing rod, then go look for it. Can't find anything you want... too bad, find something else cause we are not giving you your money back!

Another good one is when you buy your bag of chips or pack of doughnuts, and they get hung. No one is there to give you a refund, although we already established that they wouldn't, or to help you get them out. Unless you are a brute who shakes the machine, you have two choices... put in more money and pay double for one item (if the next one gets hung too) or get to items, one of which you probably don't want. Or, walk away and loss your money and remain hungry.
Again, if that worked in stores the doors would be terribly small... Oh, sorry man, it didn't fit through the door, it'll have to stay here, thanks for shopping S-Mart! Remember, shop smart, shop S-Mart!!!

See, standard fair trade practices seem not to apply to vending machines. So, in my next career I am going to run a vending company. I won't bother putting product in the machines, I will just put them in busy locations with lots of hungry thirsty people and collect their money. Wait, Bush is already doing that!