The Coke Machine

The picture at right is not the actual coke machine, it is a stock photo. The coke machine refused to be photographed as well as comment for this story.

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I like Coca Cola, a lot. I think it stems from a love of sugar, a hatred for coffee, and my inability as a child not to down my soda the second it was put in front of me. These factors of course were all amplified when I met Katy because her love of Coke knows no bounds, but I digress.

The issue at hand is the Coke machine that is located directly a floor above my cubicle at my Co-Op job. We have been at odds for about a month now, ever since the orange "Sold Out" light began to shine and the machine stopped dispensing coke to me. Don't get me wrong this was a great relationship from the get go, the day I found this machine (about a month in to the internship), was possibly the greatest day of my internship. I mean really 75 cent cans (by far my favorite conduit for Coke) of coke within seconds of my desk, I mean I couldn't ask for much better. Granted there were times where the Coke was old, or the batch was a little less than desirable but we worked through those times. Then came that fateful day. The day the Coke Machine died.

At first I thought it was a simple sold out process and in a couple of days it would all be back to normal, I gave it a week. In the meantime I went on a recruitment for a new Coke supplier (take that out of context), which turned out to be somewhat of an Odyssey. Little did I know that Pepsi had a monopoly on soda sales in the Marine Industrial Park, and my machine was the Saigon of vending machines (Yes Pepsi is equatable to Communism, if you drink it you are a Communist).

Quick rant: I despise Pepsi, it tastes nothing like Coke, and I think it's sad that people can ever confuse the two (Sammy Sosa and your Pepsi challenge, yes I am looking directly at you). I have no problem with people who like Pepsi (besides being pinkos) but I do have a problem with people thinking because I drink Coke I can then drink Pepsi. I have news for you, I can not.

Anyway back to our hero on his quest for the Holy Coke. First stop was the guy outside my building who sells Hot Dogs and Sausages, Pepsi supplier. Next stop ABP, Pepsi supplier. Then I tried looking through the surrounding office buildings for coke machines, no dice (but I do think I will be confronted by security if I walk in there again). Dunkin Donuts, Pepsi. The Cruise Terminal, all Pepsi Machines. Finally I get fed up and walk in to a restaurant that I occasionally frequent and just ask for a bottle of Coke (awkward). Though satisfying it may have been I was not going to go and do that 6 times a day at $1.50 a pop, and the Seven 11 is something like a 30 min commitment, so you can see my anguish with the downing of the Coke Machine over Communist territory.

Regardless of my quest for Coke and my embarrassing way I was forced to get it, I thought this was to last for only a week. Well as it turns out that was not the case. The machine appears to have been left behind with little hope of a refill.

At this point I took matters into my own hands. I can only defend myself for what I have done by saying that I have little hope of this being resolved without my intrusion into the situation. That being said I have regularly stooped to unplugging the machine from the outlet in hopes that someone will take notice and refill it (none such luck but it does keep getting plugged back in), as well as I have called the distributor for the machine (all the info is located on the machine) and have gone as far as ordering the coke but when they ask for a contact I hang up (I mean as large as my love of Coke is I can not get fired over it, I mean I draw the line somewhere).

So it has gotten to the point where the situation probably will not be resolved in the final month of my internship and I have prepared myself to never use that machine again. All I can do is pray that the next Co-Op is a Pepsi person.