Beyond Cheapskate

When I was in college, I worked at a supermarket. It was not the best place to work, and the pay was shoddy, but it gave me spending money.

We had a staff canteen which also had a vending machine. One day, I came into the canteen to find a lot of hushed excitement. One of the staff members had discovered that when the machine had been refilled, they had done something wrong and now every single item in it was one penny (instead of sixty to eighty pence).

Of course, we all made full use of this, getting our snacks for next to nothing. This carried on all day. When I came in for my next shift a day later, there was an out-of-order sign and a note from management berating us.

I asked a colleague what had happened. It turned out that one staff member — you know the kind; they argue every point and go out of their way to make any shift as annoying as possible — had tried to buy something (for one penny!) and it had stuck on the way out.

Did he write it off as a loss or buy another thing for a penny to dislodge it? Of course not. He went to the canteen and demanded the supervisor come get it for him. Then, the supervisor noticed that the machine was almost empty and clocked that something was wrong.

So ended the brief but highest point of that job. So glad they got you your stuck one-penny chocolate bar.