u/Impressive-Eggplant4

So, I live near a vending machine. A few actually. Because of this scalpers have seemingly set up a route between machines to ruin everyone’s day. I will go by once maybe every 2-3 days one time (two if I am doing a real shopping trip) and check at the restock time. Every time, without fail, the same dude has been there to take whatever there is.

I decided if I couldn’t avoid this guy being at the machine at the time of a restock (I figured it out when shopping one day), I would simply show up sooner. I asked the staff at the place what’s an appropriate amount of time that wouldn’t make them uncomfortable and they said 15 mins. So that’s what I started doing. The first few times, the guy just looked pissed off and waited for me to get an item or pass and then come up. The last two times he’s done something super weird as I’m first in line:

- he has come up to the machine that I’m standing in front of (not touching to be fair) and just touched on it the minute before it changes over to the restock time, I’m not sure if it was to try to snipe the restock by cutting in front of me or just make me wait longer? I instantly called him out and said hey there’s a social etiquette of lines, and he played dumb.

- the next time, I decided to continually tap on the screen to show that I’m using it. He still came up, and went down to press the “checkout” button, and then go back at the minute before again. I think it was again to snipe stuff. I said “you good?” And he ignored me. It also noticeably took longer to let the machine go back to the screen to restart after this.

I am obviously overthinking this. I honestly just want to get an ETB for not scalper prices, I know I’m loitering for 15 mins before and not technically using the machine but I feel like if I’m standing literally in front of it, this guy is being a scumbag with what he’s done. I’m considering giving up and just buying market price to not deal with this anymore. Am I in the wrong? Any advice next time around?