Comment on Why don't we have cool vending machines in the US?
Death_Equity@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Too much reliance on cars for transportation and commerce built around that. Compared to Japan; we don’t have the opportunity for vending machines except when we are contained to a location without the ability to go to a store that isn’t that “far”. We have a larger scale of living; a half hour drive is normal to us, but a half hour drive for other countries is at the tipping point of finding a place to stay for the night and a vending machine selling a common foodstuff makes sense.
If you were forced to walk everywhere and “corner stores” were infrequent, vending machines would be far more common and worthwhile for owners of those machines.
Skunk@jlai.lu 2 months ago
That is most likely the right answer.
I’m in Switzerland and we have vending machines (not as cool as the Japanese ones tho) because we walk past them everyday.
They are generally on the pavement near post offices, at train stations and other large public transportation places.
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 2 months ago
TBF I also felt Swiss people are much more trustworthy than most.
I even remember having going out for dinner and the person behind the counter asking what we ordered; seems like a lot of restaurant ordering systems don’t keep track of orders because you can trust people being honest when they re-state their order at the counter.
I’m from the Netherlands, also in a very walkable city (Utrecht), and students would vandalise vending machines if they existed!
Skunk@jlai.lu 2 months ago
Trust and respect are some of the core principles in Swiss education and society. There are those well known newspapers stands that always amaze tourists. They are not locked nor monitored but people still pay for the newspaper.
For the restaurants it can be true but most places will know what you had only because the cash register system works like that (like they take the order on a phone that automatically sends everything to the kitchen and till). It’s mostly because all the systems available on the market works like that.
But as everywhere, things are changing for the worse, there’s more and more violence, disrespect etc.
Fun fact, I once had French friends visiting and they saw a field where you can take fruits yourself, weight them and pay the according price. No human supervision, no cameras. They were amazed and told me “In France we wouldn’t pay for the fruits, steal the money box AND the weighting machine”
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 month ago
Hm, for what it’s worth countryside Netherlands (achterhoek, to be more exact) has (had?) farmers selling their potatoes, strawberries or other produce just by putting them all on a big table next to a road, and putting a sign saying how much they cost with a little plastic container to put your cash in.
Also no human supervision, whatsoever.
Though I haven’t seen them as much anymore, and quite some seem to have been replaced by vending machines or disappeared completely…
vovo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
!()[landfleischerei-koch.de/…/Wurstautomat_Landfleisc…]
Skunk@jlai.lu 2 months ago
lol, I only know the selecta ones but I’ll try the wurstaumat next time I’m in the german part of the ruesti.