Public spaces often bring together people with vastly different priorities.

As one man hobbled toward his long-awaited post-surgery appointment for his knee, he found himself mistaken for hospital staff by a furious woman feuding with a vending machine.

You’ll want to read on for this one.

The hospital vending machine

After doing six weeks of no weight bearing following a knee surgery that wasn’t wholly expected, I was finally crutching my way through the hospital to check in for the appointment where I’d be given my legs back.

However, my fiancée had to work, so I drove myself and had to park in the regular parking lot.

But when he arrived, he found someone there making a scene.

After getting up to the hospital entrance and heading toward the clinic where I was to check in, I heard her yelling at the vending machine.

Apparently, this vending machine, like 75% of the ones in this city, took her money and didn’t give her her drink.

She wasn’t handling it very well.

So, the appropriate course of action? To start yelling about it and screaming that the hospital owed her three dollars.

Somehow, I was caught in the middle of this with the poor nurse who happened to be walking past.

Someone was going to give her three dollars — she was sure of that.

One of us owed her three dollars for her drink; otherwise, she was going to sue the hospital.

The nurse, clearly with somewhere more important to be, looked at me apologetically and went on his way.

Then there was only him.

I, on my crutches, was hobbling at about a quarter of his pace, and I was now the target of her ire—as some form of representative for the hospital—despite wearing cargo shorts, an oversized Hawaiian shirt, and being drenched in sweat and panting heavily.

He finally managed to get rid of her.

She began to follow me, still yelling about her Pepsi, until I got to the clinic and sat down facing away from her.

With the rest of the patients staring at her, she finally left me alone.

No ma’am, I can’t help you get your three dollars back.

One more moment alone with the Pepsi lady and he might have needed surgery on his other knee.

What did Reddit have to say?

The hospital may actually have zero control over these rogue vending machines.

This story clearly brought back some memories for this commenter

This lady has given little reason for anyone to trust her or her intentions.

Most logical people would agree that suing probably isn’t the best idea here.

Nothing quite prepares you for a rogue vending machine crusader in the wild.

Apparently cargo shorts and crutches now count as a uniform.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.