4 Times Square, 20th Floor. (No phone)—It has been written that a dining experience is not a series of snapshots so much as a film—that the entire process, from conceiving of the meal to remembering it, has its own internal narrative filled with idiosyncratic rhythms. Whoever wrote that never ate from the vending machine, since the quote dates from long before the discovery of electricity, and yet the point is well-taken.
The vending machine on the twentieth floor is situated just to the right of the microwave, and across the hall from the women’s restroom. Can a more felicitous location be imagined? Perhaps that is why it has been there for years. And yet, everything in it is new, with the possible exception of the Juicy Fruit, which dates from the Eisenhower Administration. The shifting menu, achieved through a process known as “restocking,” makes for constant surprise, and also for the mix of pleasure and frustration that invariably accompanies surprise. Two weeks ago, there were no barbecued Fritos; last week, there were five bags. And the Kit-Kat that occupied the second row has given way to a newer relative called, perhaps too alliteratively, “Kit-Kat Krackle.”
Of all the variables at work in the vending machine—the Byzantine pricing structure alone is worthy of a Freakonomics column—you might think that service is the one constant. This could not be further from the truth. A recent customer, a man, fed in a dollar bill and a quarter and punched the code for peanut M&M’s, only to watch in horror as his selection spiralled to the end of its coil and dangled precariously from the dewlap of its packaging. “Damn it,” he said, and put all his weight against the machine, but to no avail. He left with disappointment in his eyes and nothing in his hands. The next diner, a young woman, approached sheepishly, uncertain if she should re-up the peanut M&M purchase, thus acquiring two bags, or opt for something else. She bought mustard-flavored pretzels and seemed satisfied until a cleaning woman materialized from around the corner. “I thought you don’t eat food from machine,” she said. The woman considered the savory. “The office cleaning lady knows all my secrets,” she said, and was gone.
Additional reporting by Silvia Killingsworth.
Photograph by Maria Lokke.
