From my pen---OFFICE VENDING MACHINES

Hi to all my readers. My never ending urge to serve my readers with something different and probably interesting to munch on has brought me back to blogging. For last couple of weeks a cute little invention of man kind, probably one of the most remarkable inventions for offices caught my attention. To witness and analyze the plight of this wonderful invention in this era of recession made my heart ache and cry with agony and pain.

So here I bring down the curtains. I am talking about the office vending machine which has rendered its relentless services to one and all directly or remotely related to the office.It has obliged every one in office by catering to their most erratic of demands at any time of the day. Be it coffee, tea, milk, complan, bournvita or any other drink, the vending machine has never let us down. But the recession time has done a lot of damage to the rare personified glory that the vending machine was privileged with. Its existence has been reduced to a beautiful white pigeon in a golden cage which could provide just hollow visual pleasure but could never bestow you with eternal bliss which our soul would have otherwise experienced seeing the beautiful pigeon fly freely in the open. Apologies, got little carried away in the rampant flow of emotions.


For ages vending machine has been corner stone of all office activities. For those freshers, just out of college and coming to terms with the complex corporate life vending machine is their only link between two worlds. It reminds them of the love square (shops near the college where guys and girls can be found roaming around) which is always bustling with life. And how can employees forget that great march of hunks and dudes leaving their critical work and hastily making their way towards the vending machine arranging their hair and clothes. What is worth noticing is the fact that this mass exodus is brought about because some of the beautiful ladies were spotted going to the vending machine. But in this recession time all these actives are incidents of past, and the beautiful lanes leading to vending machine are all deserted. The fear and ugly face of recession has so strongly obscured our visions that we have forgotten to look at the tiniest joy that beckons at us. And the greatness of METALLICA sums it all in his beautiful words “But the memory remains”.

The vending machine area has always been the ware house of all office gossips and politics. In the good olden days employees used to chuckle with each other with sip of their favorite drink that had obviously come out of vending machine. Just one sip of the divine beverage from vending machine would make them speak like experts on matters like politics, chicks, how managers should perform, which girl or guy to watch out for in the office. But now most of these employees are busy talking to the job consultant or updating their resumes or zipping through the slides on technical subjects that will help them get a good and stable job some where else. It must be a heart wrenching sight for the poor vending machine.

These days area around vending machines looks like a deserted village of any war stricken country. One more reason for such painful sight is the fact that for management of the company apart from the basic beverages (coffee and tea) coming out of magical vending machine all other beverages starts appearing as luxury and the such services are stopped in the noble quest to bring the operational cost to minimum. No respite from there too.

Apart from stopping the fancy beverages the basic drinks are also reduced by programming the vending machines to give out half cup at a time. The full cup option no more works. I wonder what if such astute creativity would have been shown towards any projects the company would have been in a different shape today.

The magical beverages that ooze out of vending machines have also been famous for solving complex of the coding issues or fixing the naughtiest bug in the code. In the good olden days if some one was stuck some where in the coding all u needed to do was to just take a break, sip the magical beverage that the selfless vending machine has to offer come back and the issue was resolved.

The examples are numerous, the vending machines have been an indispensable part of all small and big events of the office. To most of us these vending machines would appear as dumb piece of metal and plastic but if you try and ponder it signifies a lot. It shows how lively and satisfied people are in the office. This silent, innocent spectator has a lot to offer to us. In spite of all the cut backs and conspiracies to de-glorify the vending machine, it still serves you with same passion. Like most of us trying to cope up with the deadly blow of recession the vending machine is also working hard to avert these effects but at the same time unlike us it has not lost the essence of life. Because even today, amidst all the adversity that coffee still tastes the best.