Trouble at 4393-15

by Jennifer Mills

Instead of giving me the sack, they gave me a referral, which is kind of like a reference in that it's a bit of paper and you show it, but also not, in that it says very different things about your character. They looked at each other, the boss and the doctor, and I felt like I was back at school, which I wasn't very good at, and being sent to the Hamster which is what we called the Headmaster by way of abbreviation, and because he was little and twitched.

The company, being enormous, has its own doctors so we can't scam the compo if we get injured, even though someone is always getting RSI from opening and closing the machines, or putting their back out from the lifting. Me, I'm not hurt at all. In fact I feel much better since it started, and I even smile when my mobile bleeps its evil alarm at my bedside in the mornings now, smile at a day starting, that's all.

I took the referral and thanked the boss and the doctor politely, because a bit of politeness doesn't hurt anyone, and I wandered out through the loading dock in the hope of seeing some of my fellow stockies. Stockmen, we call ourselves, even the women, cause it makes us feel vaguely cowboy-ish and ocker, and lends an air of dignity to the work which is not real dignified, only it's hard work and my dad used to say that was where dignity came from, so maybe dignity is a bit like RSI.

They were all out, though, except Carey who logs the trucks and has an even more boring time of it than the rest of us, cause he never leaves his desk, but in a year he'll be off his Ps and a stockie too. I waved at him, and he lifted his head but thought better of it and pretended he'd lost some very important bit of paper on his desk that he absolutely had to look for just at that instant. I didn't mind, not that much. I was shy of people at that age, especially if they were rumoured, as I am, to be a few sandwiches short.

I walked out past the row of shiny red machines by the office, which we still have to put money into because the company got to be enormous by looking after the pennies. If it were me I'd let the drivers have all the fizz they can drink. I guess that's why I'm a stockie and not the CEO.

That's how come I have the whole afternoon off. I didn't go to the bus stop where 4207-21 is, it's on my run, or was, I should say. I'm walking home, because I need to plan what I'm going to tell the specialist tomorrow, the lady with all the letters after her name. If my name had letters, they'd be HSD, VMS: High school dropout, vending machine stocker. Oh and GM now, for gone mad.

I suppose I should tell her from the start: they like that. Well it started, I'll say, because stories must, one afternoon on the railway station. 4393-06 through 18. It was getting on for afternoon and I was pretty tired, cause we start at the crack to beat the traffic. I was working with Emil, who's Israeli but we don't argue cause what would be the point, and besides that's all the way on the other side of the world and anyway my family's from Syria and we have more arguments with the English and the French and the Americans than the Jews.

But the doctor will not want to hear my opinions on the Middle East . I will carry on from: It was getting on for afternoon and this was the last lot of machines to get through. But there was trouble at 4393-15. A man was sticking his hand up the chute, cursing. He looked funny like that, like that TV vet guy inseminating a mare, only the machines are big and rectangular and not very mare-like. The man stood up as I was approaching and started on tactic #2. I should mention at this point that I have seen this little exchange between man and machine one thousand times without mishap, as the lady doctor will not know that vending machines are forever malfunctioning and men are forever getting angry with them. Tactic #2 is to tilt and shake the machine and bang your fist on its front in a little dance, like a cat attacking a boot with a mouse inside, safely snuggled into the toe. When I was a kid I used to have a cat that did just that, but she ran away. Oh, of course the doctor won't want to hear about the cat or she will start asking lots of awkward questions about my childhood. The dance (unlike the cat's) always ends with one or two kicks to the machine's flank, accompanied by much swearing.

When I got there, pushing my trolley laden with boxes, the man was up to the kicking part, and I cleared my throat. He looked around.

'Fucking thing took my fucking money,' he said, looking warily from me to the stack of boxes at my feet.

'Please don't kick the machine,' I said politely, indicating the sticker above the coin slot which warns that tilting the machine may cause it to fall over on top of you, and you can die, and there's a little picture of a stick-man being crushed by a big rectangle, though I have never known of such a thing happening in real life or even in the stories of the other stockies, the closest being a story that old Spiros tells who has been working there forever about a guy who got his arm stuck up the chute during tactic #1 and Spiros had to call the Fire Brigade and the man threatened to sue but it got settled out of court and now he lives in the Eastern Suburbs in a house with four bathrooms, and at the end of the story Spiros always says, 'What would anyone want with four bathrooms?' and puts up his hands and shakes his head sadly at all those bathrooms. It's his favourite part of the story, but if I go on like this the doctor will start writing in a little book about my mind wandering and I'll be sent for tests.

No, I will say, I pointed at the sticker and then I said 'Please write a letter to the company,' and I told him the address and the number of the machine, and he wrote them down. That seemed to make it better, and he calmed down until I opened up the machine and started restocking the cans. The man didn't go away but was watching me. I could feel him watching, like a ghost or a spirit of some cranky old relative, except there is no way I will say that to the doctor because it makes me sound very crazy indeed, but that's what it felt like. When I got to the last box the man very slowly began on tactic #3, which is arguing with me.

'So why. can't you.' he said, emphasising the 'you' and talking as though it was very hard work for him to think up a whole sentence and then say it out loud, and he'd rather not if it was all the same with me, 'give me. one of those?' He emphasised the 'those' and pointed at the trolley with its last half-emptied box.

Now usually what I would do at this point is give the man a can of fizz out of the ones in the machine which are still cold, very politely, even though I have to pay for the can myself or it comes out of my wages. I will emphasise this part to the doctor because it shows I'm of good and generous character and also that the company is very stingy and counts every penny and this will make her sympathetic to my cause, if not my effect.

Anyway, that's not what I did. Either I'd had enough of buying fizz for angry strangers, or I no longer thought $1.50 was a fair price to pay for not being punched in the nose as these men were wont to punch you in the nose and Emil has never looked quite right since, even though his family sent him to the very best surgeon and not the company's doctors, but perhaps my doctor will be offended by this talk of not very good doctors, so instead I will say, That's not what I did. I was tired, I'd had enough. The man was clenching his fists.

'I can't, sir, now please write to the company and I am sure a complimentary drink will be sent to you.'

'But. the fucking. machine,' he said, widening his stance slightly as though he was about to punch me in the nose, which he most certainly was. And then I said it. I don't know why, it just sort of fell out of my mouth, like a parachutist.

'Perhaps a man quick to anger gets what he deserves.'

Then he hit me, obviously. It wasn't too hard, and in the jaw not the nose, so I was only a little bruised, and even then not that badly because Emil showed up to see why I was taking so long and cleverly put a cold can against my cheek. 'You're lucky it wasn't your nose, dude,' Emil said, and I agreed. 'Just wait right here and I'll go get him,' for the man had run away. But I stopped him, cause I didn't see the point in fighting, and we finished up for the day as usual, with me telling Emil the whole story in the truck on the way back and him telling it again in the office only much better with lots of embellishments and re-enacting the most important parts. I don't think the doctor will appreciate re-enactments, so I will refrain. After that, things went on as usual until the next time I came across an angry one. This fella was already well into tactic #2, with lots of kicking and shouting. I don't know why they shout at the machines, which can't hear a thing, but there you go, that's people. I didn't want to get it in the jaw again, or anywhere else for that matter, so I gave him a cold can from the belly of the machine and apologised for the inconvenient malfunction and said to have a nice day, and the man calmed down nicely and went away.

I looked into the hole where the can had been and I couldn't do it. I couldn't give another $1.50 to the bloody thing. I thought of the coins glinting in the machine's bowels. Someone else collects the money, in an armoured car, they don't trust us with that part. I stood there for ages, looking at the little space and holding open the door and thinking. Then I tore off a bit of cardboard from the box, wrote a little message on it, stuck it in an empty can I fished out of the bin and put that in there, quickly closing the door in case anyone saw me. What I wrote was just 'Be nice,' I was going to put a bit from the Qu'ran in there about looking after each other and not being arseholes, but I thought it might not go down too well in the current political climate, so I just put 'Be nice' in there and went about my work.

Now this is the hard part, because it's easy to tell all the bits of a story where things are happening and the scene is being set and you are introducing everyone to each other, but now nothing much happened except I started whistling. That's all, just whistling, and smiling, and walking along. Emil said, 'You're happy,' and I thought: yes, I am. How very strange. This part is also the hard part cause I do sound a bit loopy. I mean, what a thing to be happy about! But there it was, a sort of unbidden cheerfulness had landed on me like a bit of spacejunk out of the sky.

The next day, I did it again. There was no angry man, but I took one of the full cans out, put in an empty one out of the bin, and a little note, this time it just said 'Whistle.' I smuggled the full can home. I don't drink the fizz, it rots your teeth, but I didn't know what else to do with it.

The doctor will know the parts after this, cause of how they started writing it up in the paper. The message in a can stories kept coming in and people kept finding these little notes instead of fizzy drink, notes that gave generally quite good advice like 'Call your mother' and 'Take the day off,' and soon there was a big public interest angle and that turned into a public relations issue and the company sat us all down and asked us if we knew anything about it and I confessed, cause I didn't want Emil to have to decide whether he was going to dob me in or not. He'd noticed quite early on that I was smuggling full cans out cause I gave him some.

Well, I've got to my apartment, and I've almost finished planning the whole of what I'll say to the doctor. I wonder what she'll be like. I expect she'll be a middle-aged woman in some kind of cardigan who nods her head in a way that conveys just the right degree of understanding garnished with professional concern. But now, as I open the door of my little flat and push some of the boxes away with my foot, I'm up to the really hard part. This is the thing I have trouble explaining: the boxes at my feet, and beside them more boxes, and the hallway so full you have to go sideways, and the kitchen I used to have before it started which is now buried under boxes. You see, none of them have realised the extent of what I've done. I guess I got kind of carried away. I hope she's a thirsty doctor.

This poem is taken from Total Cardboard issue 5, and remains under copyright. For more information see www.totalcardboard.com