A number of years ago, my employer had a tradition of setting the pop machines to give out free pop for the couple of days before christmas. When I first heard about this, I thought “That’s nice.”

Before I finished that thought, between “That’s” and “nice”, I was interrupted with another thought: “Couldn’t that be abused?”

The answer’s “Yes.”

One tale discussed employees who filled bags and boxes with pop.

Here’s another. A coworker, Xerxes, told me this tale. Xerxes wanted to go upstairs, but a man was in front of the stairway door pushing a button on the pop machine. 

Xerxes saw that the man was pushing the button, and saw that the “sold out” light lit up. The man would then repeat this process with the same button. 

Xerxes quickly figured that the man could be there for a while. Xerxes asked if he could get past to use the stairs. 

The man said “No.” That’s not a typo, the man refused to let Xerxes go past him while he kept pushing a button that would only show “sold out”.

This is when Xerxes concluded that there was no hope for the human race.