Since the dawn of man, all humans have known someone who had a friend who was a flight attendant. Here, now, I am that friend.What Do I Have To Do To Get A Drink Around Here?
This is how my life works.
We get to LAX at around nine PM. What you have to know is that the van driver for the hotel in which we stay here is legally stupid. Instead of oh, I don't know, stopping at the hotel shuttle stop (which, by the way, is called a STOP), he just slows down and looks the wrong way to see when he can get back into traffic. This, while you're waving at him to pick you the hell up. I have had to chase this guy more than once. I love throwing a few rapid-fire right hooks at the glass van door while he's going fifteen MPHs, because he's never really expecting someone to knock on the door while he's moving. I guess we're not supposed to do anything other than just stand there confused while he drives off to smoke weed with all of his other van-driving buddies. You should really see the look on this jackhole's face when I do that. And then while he pushes us over trying to get to our suitcases, hoping for a tip so he can buy more weed, he explains (in an accent that derives from no country anywhere) that he's not supposed to stop wherever we happened to be standing that time.
DUMB: No you see, no you see, I canna stahp dah. I canna stahp dah. No leega.
ME: You mean, the Hotel Shuttle Stop?
It's always this game in LA. Call the hotel, they say they a van is already there. You call them on that, and they say, oh no, I'm sorry, Mr. McFly, I meant, I meant a shuttle will be there in fifteen minutes, and we're just starting on the second coat. An hour later, Jackhole the Van Driver blasts by ignoring you. And if you're new to this game, it can last all day. That's the fun, you see.
So you know what kind of mood I was already in at ten fifteen when I finally got to the hotel and my fifth floor room. All I wanted was a drink. That's all. Not even a real drink; a Sprite, for crying out loud. I gather some non-Canadian change and go out to the vending machine. I press the Sprite button to make sure it's not sold out, and it shows a price. Great. I toss some money in. SOLD OUT, it says after I've pumped in several hundred nickels. Holding back a roundhouse kick, I get my change back and head down to the fourth floor. This mother says SOLD OUT already. I hike up to the sixth floor. SOLD OUT.
Seventh floor, SOLD OUT.
Eight floor, SOLD OUT.
Ninth... floor... SOLD... OUT.
Tenth... floor...
And so the tour de hotel went, until the twelfth floor machine finally coughed up a Sprite. At this point, I was boiling mad, because my personal philosophy is that any machine that does not perform its function should be destroyed, publicly and immediately. Remote doesn't work? Burn it. Cell phone doesn't get reception? Shatter it. Printer doesn't work? Stomp it. I mean, you got one thing to do in life, and you don't do it. Like, say, a van driver that doesn't pick up people. So I let loose with that roundhouse kick. It makes an extremely satisfying THUCKA-thucka-thucka up and down the hall. And then... THEN... there's someone there to attend to the machine.
WELL MUSCLED HOTEL CLERK: Everything all right, sir?
ME: ..................
It was evident to me that no one had been to service these machines in a long while. And as soon as I kick one, there's a guy there to defend it. Never mind that I shouldn't be kicking things in public. ALSO never mind that this was the one machine that had actually worked. Actually, maybe it was just karma for being dumb in public. Never mind. Pretend I didn't write this.
We get to LAX at around nine PM. What you have to know is that the van driver for the hotel in which we stay here is legally stupid. Instead of oh, I don't know, stopping at the hotel shuttle stop (which, by the way, is called a STOP), he just slows down and looks the wrong way to see when he can get back into traffic. This, while you're waving at him to pick you the hell up. I have had to chase this guy more than once. I love throwing a few rapid-fire right hooks at the glass van door while he's going fifteen MPHs, because he's never really expecting someone to knock on the door while he's moving. I guess we're not supposed to do anything other than just stand there confused while he drives off to smoke weed with all of his other van-driving buddies. You should really see the look on this jackhole's face when I do that. And then while he pushes us over trying to get to our suitcases, hoping for a tip so he can buy more weed, he explains (in an accent that derives from no country anywhere) that he's not supposed to stop wherever we happened to be standing that time.
DUMB: No you see, no you see, I canna stahp dah. I canna stahp dah. No leega.
ME: You mean, the Hotel Shuttle Stop?
It's always this game in LA. Call the hotel, they say they a van is already there. You call them on that, and they say, oh no, I'm sorry, Mr. McFly, I meant, I meant a shuttle will be there in fifteen minutes, and we're just starting on the second coat. An hour later, Jackhole the Van Driver blasts by ignoring you. And if you're new to this game, it can last all day. That's the fun, you see.
So you know what kind of mood I was already in at ten fifteen when I finally got to the hotel and my fifth floor room. All I wanted was a drink. That's all. Not even a real drink; a Sprite, for crying out loud. I gather some non-Canadian change and go out to the vending machine. I press the Sprite button to make sure it's not sold out, and it shows a price. Great. I toss some money in. SOLD OUT, it says after I've pumped in several hundred nickels. Holding back a roundhouse kick, I get my change back and head down to the fourth floor. This mother says SOLD OUT already. I hike up to the sixth floor. SOLD OUT.
Seventh floor, SOLD OUT.
Eight floor, SOLD OUT.
Ninth... floor... SOLD... OUT.
Tenth... floor...
And so the tour de hotel went, until the twelfth floor machine finally coughed up a Sprite. At this point, I was boiling mad, because my personal philosophy is that any machine that does not perform its function should be destroyed, publicly and immediately. Remote doesn't work? Burn it. Cell phone doesn't get reception? Shatter it. Printer doesn't work? Stomp it. I mean, you got one thing to do in life, and you don't do it. Like, say, a van driver that doesn't pick up people. So I let loose with that roundhouse kick. It makes an extremely satisfying THUCKA-thucka-thucka up and down the hall. And then... THEN... there's someone there to attend to the machine.
WELL MUSCLED HOTEL CLERK: Everything all right, sir?
ME: ..................
It was evident to me that no one had been to service these machines in a long while. And as soon as I kick one, there's a guy there to defend it. Never mind that I shouldn't be kicking things in public. ALSO never mind that this was the one machine that had actually worked. Actually, maybe it was just karma for being dumb in public. Never mind. Pretend I didn't write this.
posted by Phil at 12:13 AM
5 Comments:
I sympathize about LA. As a passenger I've been through LAX on overnight stops twice. The first time we had booked this dive of a hotel in Inglewood. Bars on the windows, drugs deals and drive-bys down the street, the works. The next time, we booked a well-known hotel, thinking "It can't be worse!" After waiting an hour for the shuttle and arguing for two hours with management, we found out they'd cancelled our rooms even though we prepaid. Then they renegged on letting us crash in their empty ballroom and kicked us out, so all twenty of us slept on the floor of the ticketing lobby at the airport.
So much for "glamour profession"!
L.M.
Have you had the pleasure of an ice machine that: 1. Requires your keycard to work and 2. Drops one cube at a time? I have never spent too much effort on finding a working drink machine, as they never seem to work.
Until you actually nuke a vending machine or other type of INOP machinery, maybe watching this might help maintain sanity? Alternatively, you could of course also enter some combination of the words "fun", "microwave", "bang" and "explosion" into the search thing.
Next time try this. :)
Coke Machine Hacking
Or for the reading impared here is a video:
Coke Machine Hacking Video
Caveat, "For Educational Purposes only"!
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