Office employee says he got 2 sodas every time he used the vending machine. Three years later, he reveals what happened to the 600 extra cans: ‘truth is worse’

An office employee has claimed in a Reddit post that he discovered a vending machine glitch that gave him two sodas for the price of one, and he kept taking advantage of it for three years. According to the employee, the story began in 2023 when he bought a Coke Zero from a vending machine at work.

“There’s one vending machine on our floor, and it charges $4.25 for a can of Coke Zero,” he wrote. He selected the C4 button, expecting a single can, but the machine sent out two soda cans instead. At first, he assumed it was a one-off malfunction.

When the employee later returned to the machine and selected C4 again, he reportedly discovered that the same thing happened every time. The button consistently gave him two sodas, while the other buttons allegedly worked fine. And there was nothing weird with the extra soda either.

He took advantage

Rather than reporting the issue, he claimed to continue using the unusual vending machine. Since he didn’t need both drinks himself, he claimed he took the extra cans home for his children. Over the next three years, those additional sodas reportedly added up to around 600 cans. “I did the math once. Roughly 600 free cans, that’s about $2,500 at their prices,” he wrote.

However, keeping the glitch a secret apparently came with an unexpected complication. The employee claimed his wife had become upset about how much money he was spending on soda, leaving him in an awkward position. “My wife thinks I’m spending a fortune on pop. She’s furious. I can’t tell her the truth because the truth is worse,” he wrote in the original confession.

Though the original poster deleted his post, the comments remain. Some commenters argued that the company’s vending machine prices were already excessive, particularly because a single can reportedly cost him $4.25. “Your work has been charging you over four bucks for a can of soda, and you think you’re screwing them over by getting two?” one commenter wrote.

For comparison, buying Coke Zero in multipacks from retailers such as Walmart can bring the cost of an individual 12-ounce can below $1, depending on the pack size and price. That makes the workplace machine’s reported price considerably higher than the per-can cost of buying soda at a grocery store.

Others shared similar experiences in the comments. One user added to the story with their own account telling that, “Once found a soda vending machine that if you pressed the button repeatedly and quickly while it was dispensing it would give you two and sometimes even three cans of that soda.”