Office employee pays $4.25 for a Coke Zero every day. 3 years later, he reveals the secret behind button C4 and the 600 extra cans he’s taken home

An employee at an unnamed company took to Reddit’s confessions community to share that he’s been using a glitch that he discovered was affecting a specific vending machine at work. While the user seems to have since privated the post describing how he used this glitch, Daily Dot goes over and quotes the original confession from when it was available to see.

In 2023, the employee decided to get a Coke Zero from one of the vending machines at his work, selecting C4. To his surprise, the vending machine allegedly gave him two sodas. Naturally, he believed that this was a one-time glitch, which happens occasionally with vending machines of all types.

The C4 button continued giving him two sodas

Without any reason not to try again, the employee returned to the same vending machine and purchased another Coke Zero from the C4 slot. At this point, he realized that it wasn’t a one-time glitch. The vending machine gave him two sodas every time he used the C4 button on it, but never any other buttons.

Since he didn’t need both sodas, he would take the second home for his children, which meant he got about 600 extra cans in the three years since discovering the glitch, and hopefully he washed the tops of the cans before drinking them. In his post, he said, “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.”

Commenters supported the employee using the glitch

Rather than the judgment he might’ve been expecting, this employee was met with comments that told similar stories and encouraged his use of the vending machine glitch. With the price for one can being $4.25, they felt that the unnamed company was scamming employees by marking up soda so high.

As a reference, the average cost of a single can of 12-ounce Coke Zero tends to be less than a dollar in the United States if you break down the cost for a pack of soda from retailers like Walmart. With that average, the employee was already paying a markup of about 100% when getting two sodas from the machine, and he’d pay much more than that if he was getting the single soda the machine was meant to dispense.

Since the story relies on the account of the poster and the post itself has been made private or deleted, it’s difficult to tell how much truth is in it.

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]