Don't Vend On Me

Here's an odd little warning found on the vending machine at work.

I have often half-joked that more people are killed each year by vending machines than by sharks, but the point of the joke is that both numbers are so small it feels like they should go together.   They're both the same order of magnitude (1 to 10), but where they don't compare is that for shark attacks you have a public health risk and can pull people out of the water to prevent further injuries, but the vending machine incidents are just one-off dumb accidents.  I guess you can put a sticker on there saying not to rattle the machine, but again, when someone gets angry they don't exactly stop to read warning labels.

Here is an excellent review of the history and numbers over at Slate.com.

The article comically mentions that warning labels were added, and ends up sounding like the problem went away after that.

There's a Wikipedia page for this very topic, even though it doesn't meet their standards of usefulness -- it shows a similar label.

Note that vending machines these days also have all kinds of stickers and notes giving all the types of payments they accept, from card swipes to phone apps.

Jan 12, 2023 update: We were staying at a hotel in Encinitas, CA and their vending machine did NOT have one of these official labels.  But they made their own little label, and there was a sign on the side saying we can also charge the snacks to our hotel key card.