A vending machine logs every sale, because the man who fills it is paid on what it sells. Ours logs one sale a night, cash, between two and three in the morning, in a locked foyer. The coin box, when he opens it, has the coins in it. The item is gone from the coil. It was the same item for a year. Last month it changed.
I manage a leisure centre and the vending machine in the foyer is on a contract, which means it is not mine, which is the only reason I have been able to leave it alone.
How it is logged.
Every sale, time, coil, price, and whether it was card or cash. The man who fills it reads the log and restocks the coils that have sold and counts the coin box against the cash sales, and he is paid on the difference.
One sale a night, cash, between two and three, in a foyer that is locked and dark and alarmed.
For about a year it was the same coil. Coil B4, which is a bag of salted peanuts, eighty pence. Eighty pence in the box every morning, in a fifty, a twenty and a ten, which is the same three coins every time, and a bag of peanuts gone.
The man who fills it, when I first asked, said that the machine was probably vending on a timer fault and dropping a bag into the tray, and that somebody was picking it up and paying for it in the morning, which is not a thing anybody has ever done, and which does not explain the coins being in the box before we open.
What has been checked.
The foyer camera. At about half past two, the machine's display lights up the way it does when a coin goes in. Then again. Then again. The coil turns. The bag drops. The flap at the bottom opens, the way it opens when a hand pushes it, and closes. There is nobody in front of the machine.
The bag is not in the tray in the morning.
The machine. Swapped for a different one by the company at my insistence. The different one sold a bag of peanuts at half past two the first night, for the same three coins.
Last month it changed.
Not B4. C2, which is a chocolate bar, a pound. A pound coin in the box. Then two nights later C2 again. Then B4 again for a week. Then D1, a can of drink, a pound twenty, and the can is gone, and the coins are right.
It is choosing. Whatever it is stood at the machine for a year and bought peanuts, and now it stands at the machine and looks at what there is and picks.
The man who fills it.
He stopped coming himself. He sends a lad now. The lad does not know about the night sale and I have not told him. He counts the box and it is right and he restocks the coil and it is the coil that sold.
The man who used to come, I rang him, to ask why he had stopped, and he said he had been doing the machine one morning early, before we opened, with the front open, restocking, and he had felt somebody standing behind him waiting, as you can feel a queue at your back, and he had said sorry, won't be a minute, and finished, and shut the front, and turned round, and the foyer was empty, and he had heard, from behind him, from inside the shut machine, the sound of three coins going in.
What is done about it.
It is on a contract, so it is not mine, and the company's log has a line a night that their system flags as unattended, and the flag has never been looked at by anybody, and the box is always right.
What I do.
I manage the building.
Last week D1 sold out in the day, a hot day, cans go, and the lad was not due until the Monday. At half past two the machine lit up, three coins, and the coil turned on D1, and it was empty, and the machine gave the coins back, the way it does, into the return cup.
On the camera the return cup flap moved, the coins were taken, and the machine was pushed. Once. The whole machine, half a ton, rocked on its feet and settled. The flap closed.
I have told the lad to come twice a week now, and I have told him not to let the cans run out, and I have not told him why, and he thinks I am being particular.