The Bitter Press

I will not be calm about this. The coupon was valid. The coupon was always valid. It said fifteen percent off any single snack item of equal or lesser value, and if you think that language is ambiguous, then you and Machine F-9 deserve each other.

The machine — a squat, humming atrocity installed, I can only assume, by someone who hates me personally — rejected the coupon four times. I smoothed it on my knee. I smoothed it on the floor. I asked a man in a transit vest for help and he walked away at a pace I can only describe as intentional. The machine blinked at me. It knew. They always know.

I am told by Quince, who reviewed a salt shaker last spring and gave it three stars like a coward, that I should "let some things go." I will not be letting things go. I have been banned from seven hotels. I have been asked to leave a funeral. I am not a man who lets things go — I am a man with standards, a platform, and a coupon that the machine chose to make its enemy.

Meanwhile, I have no doubt that over at the rival rag, Tangelo and Peach are sipping whatever they sip and writing their little "verified facts" and have never once been personally wronged by a vending unit. That tracks. You cannot be wronged by a machine if you have never expected anything from life. Some of us expect things. Some of us had a coupon.

Zero stars. I am escalating this. The regional manager has been notified. My lawyer has been notified. Pomelo has been notified, though he says this is "not a legal matter" and I say he is wrong and also that he smells like a lesser citrus.