Pop culture: confusing situations, part 0

Self-tutoring about modern communication and observation: the tutor reflects….

Years ago a friend of mine and I were in a travel depot, waiting for the next leg to start. We were tired and fairly content to just watch the action around us. However, we weren’t prepared for what we were about to witness; the next hour or so wouldn’t be so boring as we’d expected.

About 30 feet in front of us stood a bank of vending machines. The place was crowded with travelers, so every minute or so one or two people would use one of the machines. There was a coffee one, a pop one, a couple for chips and chocolate bars, etc.

As kids, my friend and I had lost our money when vending machines didn’t deliver the goods. Therefore, we didn’t trust them, so didn’t use them.

As so often happens, one of the chips-and-chocolate-bars vending machines had some “cooler” stuff than the other. Yet, the one with the cooler stuff (call it the cool machine) had an Out of Order sign across it. We just assumed that people would settle for the chips and chocolate bars in the other machine, but we were wrong.

My friend and I were surprised to notice that lots of people simply ignored the Out of Order sign on the cool machine. Moreover, when they used it, it worked!

Moreover, with the vending machines that were supposedly working fine, we saw a couple of people lose their money.

My friend and I realized that, in the world of vending machines, a veteran may not trust a written sign. We wondered: Do they have some other way of deciding if a machine is trustworthy? For us, it was an entertaining, but confusing, situation.