Snapshot of the Economy: A Thumbnail

I find it fascinating to see how the economy affects everyday things that one might not otherwise give a second thought to. I thought this was a neat snippet:

Beerzie Boy writes from Sacramento:

We have a soda machine at work that, like most soda machines, can be persnickety about taking bills when they are wrinkled. You have to smooth the bill and unfold the corners perfectly to get the bill to go into the machine. Last year about this time, I could not get the machine to take a dollar bill, no matter how flat and perfect it was, so I would always have to use change to get a soda. It was a real pain, because I often didn't have change and would have to pester my co-workers to get some. One day when I saw the vending machine guy filling the machine, I asked him why this was happening. He told me that when the machine gets full of bills, it refuses to take any more. Pretty simple.

Recently, the opposite started to happen: I would try to use change, and it would refuse to take it and dump it in the coin return. At first it only refused quarters, then it started to refuse dimes, then nickels. Now it will only take bills. When I saw the vending machine guy he said -- you have probably guessed it -- that the coin bins were filling faster than the bill bin. He also said this was becoming more common on the machines on his route. So I guess that people are digging deeper into their purses, piggy banks, and car ashtrays for the money to get their daily soda fix, and saving their bills for more important things.

Via Planet Money.