vending machines

When did vending machine become so accepting of our wrinkled bills?

Remember back in the day when you had to go directly to the treasury and wait in line for freshly-printed ones, singly place them between pages of a "condensced" one-volume version of the Oxford English dictionary and transfer them to your desired vending machine via humidor within Brinks truck. And then, only then, the vending machine would accept your hard-earned cash? Of course, back then everything was 2 bits so you didn't have to worry about dollars so much.

But now you can put a snotty rag in that thing and it'll take it. It's amazing. It doesn't have to be perfectly smooth. You don't have to run your cash over the edge of a sharp corner to "iron" it pre-purchase. This is perhaps on of the most unheralded triumphs of technology in the past 100 years. A more accepting vending machine. It's glorious.

Of course, we wouldn't have this problem if we were more Canadian. We don't have loony and toonies or Lenny and Squiggys or whatever they're called. I'm not sure why. I would welcome a widely-used dollar coin with open palms. But alas, more folks prefer greenbacks and the stoic George Washington staring back at them.