The power of defaults

The snack machine in my office building gets a steady flow of patronage throughout the day. Last week I used a dollar bill to buy a 50 cent pack of gum and noticed that the 50 cents I was owed wasn’t returned automagically. I then hit the coin return button and the machine coughed up my change. Somewhere out there, there’s a genius that revolutionized the vending machine industry by changing this default. I’ve left at least an extra dollar in the machine since I first noticed this change last week. Brilliant.

Edit:  So it turns out I was totally wrong about this.  My dreams of a revolutionized snack vending machine industry have been shattered.  Thanks to bostonwolf’s comment I realized had assumed the machine retained change.  I was wrong.  If there is change owed after a transaction, the machine spits up the change in the coin slot ~2 minutes after the purchase.  Too bad.