Hanging Chad
A coworker tipped me off to a hanging treat in the vending machine, and being the
scavenger i am jumped quickly at the opportunity to leave my desk and get into some
mischief.
i walked swiftly to the community break room where they keep the junk food dispensers,
making sure to leave anyone who may have had a similar idea, eating nothing but dust!
i pushed open the door, and stood directly in front of the vending machine. there it was:
clinging ever so slightly to the anodized steel claw, the slight friction of the cellophane
wrapper the only thing keeping me from some sort of heaven.
but wait, hostess dunkin’ stix? what is a dunkin’ stix? where was the peanut m&m’s or the
spicy Andy Capp fries!? these things weren’t left here on accident…this was an intentionally
aborted snack attempt. nobody wants these old fashioned glazed donut ripoff sugar bricks.
they must have selected d-7 by mistake. they must have meant to press c-7, but their greasy
chubby pointer finger slipped right off the appropriate key. these sweet spawns of satan
were being held for the betterment of humanity. no-one, and i mean even criminals, should
never be subject to inserting anything like this into their body, willfully or otherwise.
i had to snap out of it. my job wasn’t to judge the food stuff i was going to snatch from
the jaws of that silver cyclone, my job was to RETRIEVE it. and so it began. a few stiff slams
to the corner should do it. *slam* *slam slam*
no luck.
this is going to be trickier than i thought.
i take up a position to the side of the vault and i begin to rock it back and forth, softly
at first like a small child being put to sleep – and then progressively more violent until
i hear that tell tale sound. that dense thud of success. i’ve won. the beast has released
it’s firm grip on my prize and success is mine. i walked out of the break room with a
strong sense of pride and accomplishment in what had just transpired.
i sat back down at my desk and tore open the clear cello wrapper to investigate my bounty.
as my teeth cut through the thin layer of glaze and sank into the tender flesh of the
dunkin’ stick – my mind wandered to that special place where it usually goes after putting
something absolutely terrible in my mouth and wondered:
‘what the fuck did i just do?’
