The Coca-Cola Conspiracy

4 Pages 980 Words

Machines line our schools, workplaces, and stores, silently watching passers by. Huge fortresses stand as strongholds enforcing your choice in beverage. It comes into our homes via satellite to spread its propaganda with advertisement, which offers the American dream yet only delivers disease and bad taste. The enemy has gone unnoticed for too long, and the time to make our stand is now! Down with the Coca Cola Empire!
Often when I go out to family restaurants, and a server asks for the first round of drink orders, my response is automatic. I’ll be in the middle of conversation and then it’s my turn to order a drink, then without thinking the words “doctor pepper” emerge. Through a process of conditioning that began when I was very young, with input mainly from my family, Dr. Pepper became my standard drink. There was little choice to make in the matter. Of course other name brand drinks were available, and I tried them all, but each visit to a restaurant proved again and again that Pepper and myself were meant to be.
I was working at a movie theatre when I was sixteen years old. It was a dollar theatre that catered to lower income patrons than our five and six dollar counterparts. For my time behind the concession stand, I witnessed some interlinked phenomena, and it was from these phenomena from which sprang my hatred for coke. Often times when a Latino family approached me, the only English-speaking member was a child enrolled in elementary school. They always did a very good job placing orders except when it was time to select a beverage. A close 95% of the time, a child such as this would say, “Three large drinks.” And thus began the problem, because there were many drinks available.
“What kind of drinks?” Was my automated response to such a request, but I already knew the answer. After a three second period of discussion in Spanish, one word emerges from the fray… “Coke,” and this is the answer in 99% o...