cool water...

I was running intervals this evening, so throughout my day at work, I kept meaning to go and buy a bottle of water to take with me... but I kept forgetting and I was busy so never seemed to quite get around to it.  When I finally remembered at around 1645, I was mildly irritated to discover that all of our catering outlets had shut.  This was irritating because they say they're all open until 5pm, but that seems to be based upon my foolish belief that the opening hours reflect when a customer can shop rather than the moment when the staff leave and pull down the shutters.

Not to be deterred, I set out to have a look at the various vending machines we have around the place. Hmm.  Unless I wanted a can of Coke, it looked like I was out of luck.

Oh... hang on a minute.  This machine has cartons of apple juice.  That'll do.  I scramble around for the loose change and the machine slowly dispenses me a carton.  I open the drawer and discover that the bloody thing doesn't have a straw.

Never mind.

I'll buy another one.  I'll drink that much anyway and I can just use the one straw on both cartons.  I put in my remaining change, but for some reason the machine won't dispense me another carton.  I seem to be 15p short and it won't take coppers and that's all the change I've got left.  I try and refund the money and now it won't come out of the machine at all.  OK.  Whatever.  I dash upstairs to borrow 20p and run come back to the machine only to find it has now swallowed my money (or someone has nipped in and used up my credit in the time I've been away).

Deep breath.

I take some money out of the cash machine round the corner and use the nearby change machine to turn a £10 note into ten £1 coins.  I now have a bulging wallet, but the funds needed to buy another carton of juice.

There are no further vending machine related incidents to report, so I head back to my desk with two cartons of juice, one straw and a funny story to tell my neighbour.

"Oh.  You need a bottle of water?  Well I've got one from my meal deal that you can have if you want.  It was free"

....... sigh.

I took my apple juice and IT WAS DELICIOUS.

I only needed one carton.