The Coin Master

We all have one. You know, the little jar you keep in your closet, the place where you throw all your loose change from your pants’ pockets at the end of the day, saving for a rainy day and all that. My change jar is one of those big plastic jobbies, the industrial-sized Pretzel King from Costco that once held enough pretzels to feed a Boy Scout troop. I’d been saving up for two years or so, and by now it was half full, weighing in at around three-hundred pounds.

I figured it would be enough for a trip to Jamaica for me and the Nordic Warrior Queen.

So I grabbed my two-wheeler, hauled the Pretzel King out to the pickup truck, and headed for Basha’s, where they have one of those nifty change-eating machines. Of course, they charge you higher fees than a Payday loan, but what choice do we have? The only way the bank will take your change now is if you roll it for them, which means taking a week off work to sit on the living room floor and pack the shit into those little paper coin tubes.

So I wheeled in the Pretzel King, a little self-conscious to be carrying around enough loot to bail out a third-world country. The only reason I felt any safety at all was that you would need the strength of Superman to rob me. I parked my fortune before the Coin Master and started shoveling in quarters, dimes, and nickels at a furious pace. The place sounded like Las Vegas on double-payout night.

The trouble began a hundred bucks or so into the project. In the past, I’d traveled internationally for work, so I suspected there might be some foreign currency in the mix – a few Euros, a pocketful of Pesos, some Yuan from the People’s Republic of China, even some Realles (pronounced Hay-Eyes) from Brazil – but the machine should be designed to handle all this, right?

But as it turns out, the Coin Master didn’t much care for the Slovakian Korunas I’d mistakenly left in there and promptly went AWOL; red lights started flashing, a whooping sound came over the PA system, and everyone in the checkout lanes was looking at me funny as the store manager came over, introduced himself as Walter, and asked me what I’d done to his machine.

I stood there embarrassed as Walt opened the Coin Master and with a disgusted look pulled out a Slovakian Koruna, a dwarf coin perhaps half the size of a penny, from the metallic innards of the machine. I acted properly chagrined and pocketed the Koruna. Walt reassembled the machine, then leaned over and put his finger on my chest with a warning. “Don’t let it happen again, Sir.”

A little nervous now, I was extra vigilant for any foreign coins, even though I knew from the reject bucket at the bottom of the Coin Master that it was apparently capable of handling everything but Slovakian Korunas. But it wasn’t more than forty dollars later that the machine went Defcon Five once again and Walt, furious now, was taking the machine apart to clear the jam.

I guess the Coin Master didn’t much care for jumbo paper clips either. Not sure how that got in there, but Walter was really pissed. “One more time,” he said, his face red, and left me to resume my feeding of the machine. I considered packing it in, but I could see the scuffed, lint-filled bottom of the Pretzel King by now; I was almost home. But just a few coins from the end, the Coin Master emitted a weird buzzing sound, shrieked once, and went dark. Uh oh.

Preparing for a quick getaway, I checked to make sure the exits were clear as Walt strode over angrily, this time followed by a burly maintenance man with the name “Hector” stenciled in blood-red lettering across his Dickie’s work shirt. It took twenty minutes of intensive repair work to fix the Coin Master, Walt the Store Manager glaring at me all the while as Hector installed several fuses, a timing belt, and an “MLF module,” whatever that is.  

At last Hector flipped the switch and with a ratcheting noise the Coin Master came back to life. With a slight grimace Hector straightened up and handed me a tiny Eveready watch battery retrieved from the machine’s damaged inner workings and warned me “you oughtta take better care, Meester.”

Enough was enough. Walt ripped the tally sheet out of the Coin Master and I followed him to the Customer Service counter, a few lonely coins rattling in the bottom of the Pretzel King. Mumbling under his breath, his hands shaking, he counted out four-hundred-eighty-seven dollars and twenty-one cents. “Good day, Sir,” he said, turned and went back to his office.  

I stopped at the bank on the way home to pick up some of those little paper coin tubes. Maybe counting change on the living room floor isn’t so bad after all.