Geek Snack Update
So the A-J has these vending machines — not just your typical modern snack apartment building, but the older, glass-topped manual models with a crank — sponsored by some charitable organization.
These machines have been here for decades and to my knowledge, no one has ever actually tried to eat anything from them.
Well…
I’m on a diet these days, and I needed something more substantial than a stick of gum but not quite as sinful as a candy bar. Those 25-cent blobs of dubious candy seemed like a perfect compromise.
I put my money in, turned the crank back and forth and came back to my chair with a generous handful of sweet red pebbles. I put one carefully in my mouth, judged it to be unique but edible, and dug in to the rest. As I was eating, one of the reporters came in and caught me mid-scarf.
She looked at me with a mixture of horror and admiration, like I was one of those guys on Fear Factor. “You’re eating candy from that machine? Do you know what it is?”
*munch* *munch* “No idea.”
“Are you sure it’s safe?”
*chew* *chew* “Nope.”
This was last week. Today the same reporter catches me headed to the break room and says, “Oh! Those things you were eating? They were Boston Baked Beans.”
This is why I love reporters. They can’t walk away from an unanswered question.
But she went on, “And that thing you thought was an FDA inspection sticker? It says ‘Go Cowboys, 1974.'”
P.S. Before anyone freaks out and calls the health department I should add that although our reporters maintain the highest standards of integrity in print, some of them have been known to exaggerate things here in the office, if only to make the online guy jump.
Michael B. Duff 
They were being held there in those glass things to prevent contaminating the city. The idea was brilliant–no one, they reasoned, would ever eat these faded brown things out of one of those ancient machines, so let’s put them in there.
But then, you had to go and turn that dial, and now you have unleashed a beastly biochemical weapon upon our fine, fine city.
Good job.
K
July 8, 2008 at 12:26
the folks in the break room unanimously agreed in a brief survey, they would never touch that “candy.”
K
July 8, 2008 at 12:32
Boston Baked Beans aren’t all that bad. I mean, compared to Peeps or Circus Peanuts, they’re ambrosia…
Scott
July 8, 2008 at 16:32
Yeah those little candy machines are so nasty, i watched some kids the other day crawl on the floor, then lick their hands and 5 seconds later stuck them in those kinds of machines looking for loose candy. I will never EVER!!!!!!!!!!! eat out of one of those things again i thought for a second “oh it’s just these kids” till I saw the same kind of behavior at the mall.
Topher
July 12, 2008 at 02:15