An exchange with a vending machine

by Steven Garrity in

Human: Puts $2 coin1 in machine – requests item that costs $1.25.

Machine: “EXACT CHANGE ONLY”

Human: With no $1 coin on hand, puts in a quarter.

Machine: “EXACT CHANGE ONLY”

Machine: Stares silently.

Human: Presses the button to return change.

Machine: Returns $2.25 in the form of two $1 coins2 and a quarter.

Human: With newly denominations, puts $1.25 in machine – requests item that costs $1.25.

Machine: Dispenses item.

1. Sadly, $2 coins are called ‘toonies’ here in Canada
2. Sadly, $1 coins are called ‘loonies’ here in Canada
 

15 thoughts on “An exchange with a vending machine”

  1. “but this machine can only swallow money.
    You can’t lay a patch by computer design.
    It’s just a lot of stupid, stupid signs.”
                                                                             -REM

  2. nice, I remember doing this before. One machine does not take ‘toonies’ so I find one that does and get it to return 8 quarters. Have also done this for the smaller vending machines that only take quarters.

  3. A machine in town a week+ ago was spitting out toonies when it should have been spitting out loonies. Hilarity Ensues.

  4. I had a payphone downtown spit out $13.50 in quaters one time… What a great day it was… All I did was put in 25 cents, call a number, got to answer, hung up and bang! It was like winning a slot machine!

  5. In college there was a Coke vending machine in one of the freshmen dorms that would always give you all of your money back after purchasing a soda, so long as you pushed the button and then released it and then pushed it again as the soda came out. It would only do this twice in a row, though, and then it seemed to know it was getting ripped off and, like a cat whose tail has just been stepped on, would pout for a short time until it forgot all about you and you could do it again.

  7. How about just calling our coins by their values? For example: “Hey do you have a dollar?” instead of “Hey do you have a loonie?” Seems to work for the British pound and New Zealand one and two dollar coins which don’t need silly names to accompany them…

  8. Because you often need a way of differentiating between the different meanings of dollar: the amount and the coin. You’d have to say “dollar coin” if you were refering to the coin. This would be similar to the way Americans refer to the “dollar bill”.

    I don’t really mind the names since they have are used widely and consistently. In fact I’m impressed that an entire country was able to informally agree on names for the coins without any form of official process.

  12. Actually if I said ten bob to anyone they would know what I meant but is is a pre-decimalization term. In the UK they do call pence “pee” rather than our “pennies”. Surely there are other nicknames for UK coins…not be be argumentative but if there were bob, crowns, farthings and such they habit can’t have ended automatically.

    Best Canadian example was the dieffenbuck – the $2.00 bill. Again, historical so of no interest to Nick, ,THE ART HISTORY STUDENT!

  13. As a fellow Canadian, I’m pretty happy with the loonie/toonie naming convention. It beats some of the other suggestions that were floating around at the time of the toonie’s release. Doubloonie was my un-favorite.

  14. Imagine the fun and games when they start installing the machines that you can dial up with your cell phone and it will charge the item to your credit card.

    Yes, folks, you will be tracked by Big Brother from where you buy that innocent bag of Corn Chips.
    Not too mention all the credit card fraud.

    Mon dieu, what next?

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