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Sunday, September 20, 2020

Snackwatch: when credit card readers land at the office

It turns out my "Snackwatch" idea from two years ago has some legs. Some people inside a "valley" (not really, it's up in SF) company are complaining because the snacks have been replaced with vending machines.

One big thing: unlike the infamous Google vending machine story from April Fools Day 2007, this one is not a prank pulled off by a bunch of snarky engineers (who then pulled off a great Spartacus prank). Nope, this one seems to be coming from the people who handle facilities.

So far, this is the only proof of it happening, courtesy of an anonymous post to one of those apps where you can post things to a "company hangout" if you have (or had...) a company e-mail address.

Fridge in a company break room with credit card reader, implying you now need to pay for snacks: 99 cents for a can of La Croix, $3.99 for some Oatly coffee drink and others, with a typical 2010s hashtag-ified label "#wellbeing@work"

...

Incidentally, if my vending machine story seems familiar but you can't find it in any of the posts here, that's because it's one of the "only found on the album" type things included in the second book. That's where that fuzzy memory comes from.