[Noisebridge-discuss] Vending Machine Minions Needed

[Jared Dunne]

Hi all-

In the past few months (until lately), I've been doing the bulk of the
vending machine restocking.  This wasn't too much trouble for me when I had
a car, but alas my car died recently.  Since I have no plans to replace it
any time soon, I'll have to pass the torch on vending machine restocking
duties on to someone else.

While a car isn't required to help, it's strongly recommended unless you
have a sweet bike trailer or something to that effect.  When fully stocked
(which I doubt it is now), the machine needs to be restocked about one every
two weeks or so.

The machine generates lots of revenue so the re-stocker should easily be
able to get reimbursed for the cost of the beverages that they stock using
the money in the machine.  There is some minor accounting and counting of
money/cans that goes with the task, but your system doesn't need to be as
anal as mine (see below).  Aside from restocking itself, we periodically
donate the "profits" (after restocking) to Noisebridge general funds.  In
the past this has been around $150-200/month (yay).

There's a lot of intel here:
https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Vending_machine

Here's a summary of what I did at restock time:

   - Do a count of what's in the machine inventory wise
   - Do a count of the money in the machine (including a rough count of the
   change in the changer on inside of door) before reimbursement
   - Buy what we need and keep a receipt.  General rule of thumb is buy at
   less than $0.50/ca so there is profit generated to buy more drinks or donate
   to NB.
   - Reimburse yourself from the money in the machine
   - Update the wiki page Money Log sections to reflect
      1. the amount of money in the machine before restock
      2. amount reimbursed and what it bought and
      3. the remaining amount of money left in machine.
   - Update the inventory totals based on what you stocked and update the
   inventory section of wiki page.
   - If there is enough (more than $100) to donate to NB then:
      - bundle that money in an envelope and label it as Vending Machine
      Donation
      - give it to a board member, officer, trusted hacker with access to NB
      Wells Fargo transfer, or just drop it in the donation box near entrance.
      - if the machine is not fully stocked, try to leave a little money
      ($20ish) in the machine so others than help with restocking will
be able to
      reimburse themselves too if they top off the machine after the
donation is
      made.
   - Note: I kept an envelope in the machine that has the already-counted
   Vending Machine funds so that I didn't have to recount EVERYTHING each time,
   but figure out what works for you!

If you are interested in helping out, then do it!  If you have questions,
feel free to ping me (or Nick).  I've not been able to keep up with nb-disc
lately so please CC me directly to grab my attention.

Thanks,
Jared-
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