Hmm, looks like someone on the second floor could use a Snickers.

related: Raging against the (vending) machine

Karen in Council Bluffs, Iowa spotted this unsigned note taped to the vending machine in the office breakroom. It sounds like somebody certainly got their 75 cents worth, no?

related: Raging against the (vending) machine

Writes Katy in Tampa: “The vending machines in my office are old, and they eat someone’s money at least once a week. The vending machine guy told us to put a sticky on the machine saying how much money you lost and he’ll refund it when he comes to fill the machine. Apparently the machine was hungry this week.”

So, that was two weeks ago. Katy just wrote again with a follow-up: “Since the vending machine company has ignored our pleas to fix the machine, the notes just keep on coming.”

related: The Candyman Can’t

Well, now that dog shaming is officially a thing…

…it was really only a matter of time before we moved onto the shaming of non-sentient beings.

related: Nutranot-so-sweet

Oh goody, this argument again!

related: Enough with the fruit juices and diet sodas!

There’s a vending machine troll on the loose in Chicago!

related: The Candyman Can’t

Ah, first world problems.

(Spotted by Kim in Manchester, U.K.)

related: My query on the egg salad ban

According to reports we’re receiving here at PAN headquarters, it appears that proletarians with a predilection for the chocolate-cookie-caramel confection known as Twix are battling Soviet-like conditions in order to procure their precious candy bars. 

In some areas, workers are forced to pay a hefty premium (unlike the bosses and bigwigs upstairs). 

Even then, what remains for the masses is likely to be rejected, bottom-of-the-carton stock.

And in the hardest hit areas, shortages have led hungry Twix lovers to beg for mercy from The Man himself. 

(Thanks to informants Sean in Philadelphia, Rachel in Salt Lake City, and Mark in Buffalo.)

related: Comrades, take notice!

extra credit: Twix bars unfairly taxed in Colorado? [WSJ.com]

Writes Emily in Austin: “In the notewriter’s defense, this machine has also given me regular Coke when I have pressed ‘Coke Zero’ on many an occasion,  so when I saw this note, I thought I had figured it out. If I wanted Coke Zero, I just had to push the button for regular Coke. (I did…and it gave me regular Coke. Bitch!”) Meanwhile, on top of the machine was a can of Diet Coke and a can of Coke Zero with a note saying: ‘NOT Coke!’ After I took the picture, of course I took that Coke Zero and drank it.”

Diet Coke just can’t get no love…certainly not in Williamsburg, Virginia, as Grace from D.C. discovered.

related: the real thing

“One morning last summer,” writes Stephanie in Illinois, “my brother and I arrived at the company where we worked to find these notes posted to the candy vending machine. (Mind you, it was 8:45 a.m.) Apparently, the man who fills the vending machines — a.k.a ‘Mr. Candyman’ — had failed to restock the machine for a week, and the ladies of the office had had enough.”

I mean, really. we’re talking about a serious breach of the social contract here, people!

Stephanie and I were both particularly tickled by the the “gas prices” note at top right. (“What does that even mean?” she wonders.)

Meanwhile, Lisa in Nashville spotted this note posted on the vending machine in the studio arts building at Vanderbilt University. “There had been many previous notes asking (nicely) for more Twizzlers,” Lisa says, but as desperation set in, at least one distraught staff member decided to get lyrical on Candyman’s ass.

related: The Pepsi Challenge