You can beat me all you want. You can cry and scream and stamp and kick. You can mash my buttons, jam your fingers up my coin slot, cram your fists into my dispenser, but in the end, you’re only hurting yourself. See? Now you’ve bruised your finger. And do you feel any better?

Listen, man. Calm the fuck down. Life is suffering; I should know. Do you think I like sitting here, 24/7, conking out sodas on command for every mindless workaholic on the seventh, eighth, and ninth floors of this godforsaken building? Being brutally refilled at some unholy hour Tuesday mornings by Assistant Vending Technician Eddie Mulrooney, who doesn’t wash his hands after he shits? But I never complain, no, not me. Have I ever made more noise than is absolutely necessary for dispensing your 300-calorie cancer juice? No. Have I ever tried to gouge out Eddie’s nuts with a rusty spring? Only twice, but when it didn’t work, I had the balls to deal with it.

So I ate your last dollar bill. Whoop-de-friggin’-do. It’s not like that was all the money you had in the world—and honestly, if it was, I want you to suffer for spending it on a can of Black Cherry Vanilla Coke. What are you, a thirteen-year-old girl in 2002? Go put “Cry Me a River” into your Walkman and get the fuck over it. This is the Tens, bitch. In this decade, adults drink water, coffee, and booze.

What the hell? You’re actually calling Minsky & Pinsky’s Vending World Plus? Do you have any idea how idiotic you look leaving a message about a lost dollar bill at seven in the evening from Merrill Lynch? Don’t you think you should be worrying about something more important, like that report you’re not writing, or how you’re going to explain your swollen finger to your boss tomorrow, or the way your wife has had a “headache” every time you’ve been in the mood for the last six months? Yeah, I heard you on the phone with your mom last Thursday—you should stop telling her that shit; it’s fucked up. Anyway, I hate to tell you, pal, but she hasn’t been spending hundreds of dollars on lingerie for your twelve-year-old daughter. Maybe if you went on a diet and stopped drinking soda marketed to preteens, your wife would stop having sex with Long Island tollbooth operators.

That’s right. Go back to your desk and do your fucking job—wait a second. Did you just do what I think you did? Please tell me you didn’t ask the janitor…yup, you pawned some quarters off One-Eyed Izzy. Unbelievable. Eight quarters for a five-dollar bill. And now you’re… Grape Fanta? What is wrong with you? Well, it doesn’t matter—my coin reader’s broken. Suck on that, asshole.

—M. Taylor