Office work - don't you love it? It's been a while since I had the pleasure myself, but nevertheless the fond memories remain - of the vending machines. Seriously, nothing else. Just the
vending machines. In each and every office I worked (apart from the ones without them, and what grim places they were) their contents represented the sole ray of light in my working day - if you didn't count lunch or going home, obviously.
I honestly don't know how I'd have coped without them.
Now, clearly, I'd be lying if I were to say that the rest of office "life" was Hell - it wasn't. Not by any means. No, Purgatory would be the more accurate comparison: seemingly endless days spent hoping to soon be somewhere nicer - Hell might at least have been more eventful; or so I would often wistfully imagine.
You see, what you would never think to describe any of my former jobs as would be eventful. In fact, the most exciting thing I ever had to do was to phone someone called Mr Bastard - nomen est omen? In this instance, no. You couldn't have hoped to speak to anyone more pleasant.
See what I mean? Even that was an anticlimax.
And that was why I was grateful for whatever vending machine happened to brighten each of these arenas of tedium - if nothing else, they at least represented some small way to break up the day - drinks dispenser, snack machine, over-priced crisps, under-strong coffee: it didn't matter. What mattered was having an excuse - any excuse - to leave your desk. And boy did I take those excuses! Yep, office life makes you fat.
Or perhaps, like a goldfish moved to a larger tank, I just grew to the dimensions of my ever expanding boredom?
Sadly, the truth is more prosaic than that: it was simply this: the prospect of snacks, both sweet and savoury, promised to myself as reward for getting through the next few hours, was all that got me through most days. Another couple of hours without succumbing to narcolepsy, I'd think, and you can have some Hula-Hoops. But you can't go on like that, can you?
Thankfully, I was soon sacked, and the next office I found myself in boasted only hot drinks vending (there was something wrong with the cold drinks part). Even better, the machine wasn't even on my floor - I could waste a whole extra two minutes every time I went for a coffee. Bliss.
Why everyone else used it, though, I dread to think. Since its only offering fit for human consumption (though only if, like me, you're the kind of human who's able to tolerate oversweet froth) was an oversweet Espresso, either their desperation for distraction outstripped even my own, or their taste buds were even more horribly warped. Truly, neither one bears thinking about.
Thank God, as I look back now, from the happier vantage point of self-employment, that all seems a world away. But it's left its mark: sometimes, even now, I can still taste that awful Espresso.
