I never thought that I would have a job in customer service. When I left college the idea that in five years time I would be sitting in a glass fronted office behind my own desk was a natural prediction. The last thing I thought I would be doing is serving students coffee from behind a glass fronted counter instead. Five years later my 'desk' is cluttered with selections of muffins and baguettes and I have but one chewed pencil.
In the most depressing moments I console myself with the fact that I must be helping the future of the country by providing students with food and drink. No one can come up with genius thoughts on an empty stomach can they? Of course if it wasn't me pacing behind the counter of overpriced sandwiches and fair trade coffee it would be someone else. You can easily be replaced in this line of work.
How To Maintenance Coffee Machines
As in almost everything in this world I am not entirely as I seem at a first glance. There is a task that I perform every Tuesday which I'm certain that no one could replace in quite the same way. Filling up the vending machine on Tuesday afternoon has become somewhat of a ritual, a methodical process I have become quite attached to. If anyone else tries to muscle in on my duties, perhaps in their attempt to avoid mopping or to offer respite for a cigarette break then I make sure to find an excuse they can't penetrate. I avoid training new employees like the plague.
No one can take care of the vending machine like I do. Although I will never meet many of the customers that benefit from my meticulous service, I like to think that they believe their instant coffee tastes better since I have been around. I have a relationship with the vending machine that no one else could understand; even I have trouble putting my finger on the exact reason why I have become so attached to this rectangular receptacle.
In doing my maintenance I have no contact with the outside world, it's just me and the machine yet I am inadvertently serving the customer every time I replenish a riveted plastic cup. I clean every inside corner and hinge as if it were the inside of my own kitchen and take my time polishing the finger marked front. As I therapeutically wipe the coin storage system I think about all sorts of things from what I am having for dinner that night to how many children I would one day like to have. It's my time for contemplation and reflection.
My girlfriend is constantly nagging me to get a 'proper' job where I can make use of my qualifications and I know that she is probably right. I have found a company looking for candidates for their IT department and I am going for an interview next Tuesday. I know I will have to work the rest of the week knowing that someone else has done an insufficient job of servicing the vendor but it is something I am just going to have to let go and pass on my duties to someone else. When the day comes for me to administer my last service I plan to spend a little longer than usual doing the fill up, after all whoever opens it next needs a standard to be set.
It will be like saying goodbye to an old friend...albeit a friend so old he has lost the ability to speak or see but it will nevertheless be a sad day for us both.
Diary of a Vending Machine ManFriends Link : Automatic espresso machine
