He should have been drinking Mountain Dew and popping vitamin supplements.
What, like one guy drinking a Pepsi is going to completely ruin Pepsi’s market share?
Then again, I remember the looks of stunned astonishment when, while I worked at Apple, I admitted to not owning a Mac – in fact, I’d never owned one since my first computer ~15 years ago.
“Wow,” they’d say. “I’ve never TOUCHED one of those.”
No wonder I got laid off eventually…
I think you mean Coca-Cola’s market share.
And so what? Just because the employee’s action fails to cause the ultimate destruction of the company doesn’t mean the employer isn’t justified in terminating the employee. The driver’s act could have aided a competitor, and the driver should have been aware of that fact. That alone is reasonable grounds for termination.
A lot of places do not let you bring in food or drink from outside.
We occassionally have Coke drivers come in to where I work, they ask for water. We serve only Pepsi products. I usually give them a plain ( no logo ) glass.
'Cept that Mountain Dew is made by Pepsi. 
I read a Russian folk tale as a child, in which the protagonist bet his friends a big dinner that he could stay outside all night, one wintry night, without any source of heat.
So he’s out there in the wee hours, bundled up, but still freezing and shivering. Then, across the way, he sees a candle in a window. Heartened by the sight of its tiny glow, he holds on and (he thinks) wins his bet.
Later, with his friends, he tells of his night, and of how the candle heartened him. “A candle gives off heat,” his friends reply. “You owe us the dinner.” When it becomes clear that they’re serious and aren’t backing down, he agrees to cook the dinner.
On the appointed night, they gather at his house. Every now and then, he pops out of the kitchen to explain that dinner is taking longer than hoped. Hours go by. Finally, they barge into the kitchen. He’s on a ladder, stirring a pot hanging just under the ceiling beams. On the floor, way underneath the pot, is a candle. “It’ll be done sooner or later,” he tells his friends. “A candle gives off heat. You said so.”
When I pop a Mountain Dew in the afternoon, I’m sure that to some modest extent, I’m ‘aiding’ PepsiCo if another person should see what I’m drinking. But it’s an exceedingly modest extent.
The question in my mind is, are we talking about a job here, or a religion?? The trucker’s job is to move Coca-Cola products from Point A to Point B. His job isn’t “Coca-Cola products taster”. That a corporation in America even thinks it can tell its employees what to eat or drink is indicative that they’re too damned powerful.
FWIW, the story suggested they’re hanging this one on the hook of employees being terminable (if that’s the right word) for ‘slandering’ Coca-Cola products. IANAL, so you tell me: does drinking a Pepsi constitute slander of Coke, DCU?
If it was taken for granted that corporations had no business telling their employees what brands of products they could or couldn’t eat, drink, wear, drive, or whatever, it would become commonplace and cease to be an advantage for anybody.
Ok, I’ve changed my mind a bit.
I agree that you shouldn’t drink the competition’s soda on company time. It makes sense.
ESPECIALLY since numerous people here have stated that they were told specifically when they were hired not to drink the other soda products while representing their company.
Think of it this way: What if GBP and the Raiders were playing, and Brett Favre showed up wearing a black Raiders jersey?
~J
That’s silly. Of course it’s advantageous to have a snapshot of a Coca-Cola worker sipping a Pepsi, even absent such rules. The implication is that your competitor’s product is so inferior, even its employees prefer yours. Any way you slice it, that is NOT the kind of public face a company wants to put forward.
Hell, up in these parts there’s a commercial for DirectTV that plays on exactly this theme. DirectTV installer shows up to install the product. He asks customer routine questions. Customer looks very nervous, and finally asks installer if he could park around back. Punchline: “You work for the cable company, don’t you?” “Yeah.”
I’d be willing to bet DirectTV would mercilessly flog actual videotape of such an interaction with a cable employee if it had it, regardless of whether the cable company had an explicit rule on its employees using its product. It’s effective advertising.
Poysyn,
I also worked in a Coca-Cola warehouse/distributer for my Senior HS/college years. Of course you would be let go drinking a competitors product while working. One person actually was fired for this.
They also forbad eating at any Pepsi-serving restaurant though they changed it after two years to not being able to wear anything Coke related while eating there. It was still frowned upon though.
I loved (and still love) Mountain Dew, which is a Pepsi product.
The Pepsi driver who worked opposite in a store that I stocked hated Pepsi but just adored Coke. We would do hidden swaps of a case of Coke for a case of Mountain Dew. We had to be very careful though.
We have a Ford plant here in town, and the story goes that it used to be policy that you had to drive a Ford vehicle if you worked there. Then it changed that if you wanted to park in their parking lot you had to drive a Ford.
Now the story (and I have no independent verification of this) is that you can drive any car you want, but the Ford vehicles get to park up front. And you still risk having your car vandalized if you drive a non-Ford vehicle and most especially a foreign vehicle.
The company I work for was having a meeting with Pepsi people being held at our company and of course I ordered soda and coffee for our person who was hosting the meeting. Unfortunately, neither of us thought of the implications of not specifying what products would be put in the conference room. Our employee gets a call
My associate calls me and and I go down and remove the cans and apologize.
Later my associate told me that the Pepsi woman told her that she looked into our refrigerators and found Coke products.
My associate responded:
Imagine expecting that everyone who does anything for you MUST drink **only **Pepsi. (Not to mention the gall of looking in someone else’s refrigerator.):eek:
A friend of mine worked for Meguire’s car products for a while, and it was openly stated that if you wanted to park in the front lot, you had better have a good shine on the jalopy.
They weren’t about to have a wash and wax company’s employees looking like they didn’t care enough to use their own products.
I once worked for an Anheuser-Busch distributor, and it was company policy that ALL employees should drink Budweiser (not even Bud Light) in public. The policy was overturned when a new Marketing Director took over, and she was a non-drinker, so she preferred O’Doul’s. A soft drink still violated company policy (the distributor, not A-B). I always felt sorry for those employees who didn’t like beer in the first place…
We weren’t supposed to go to any restaurants that served Pepsi because, as I mentioned, we were the promotions team. It doesn’t look good when the people who are promoting your product buy the competitor. 
At one local spot The Forks there were only three restaurants that served Coke, so guess where we ate? I could drink anything, as long as Coke bottled it (so Minute maid juice was allowed).
As for venues, Pepsi used to throw us out if they caught us there. Contracts are big money.
When I worked at the arena (Pepsi owned a suite) and Coke would rent one for the night, we had to clear out all Pepsi products, and yes, they would check. Same as if Moosehead Beer came in when we had a contract with Labatts.
Hey, I worked for some architects who were designing a new U.S. Post Office & there was a big huge stink when the receptionist sent them drawings via UPS. Maybe she wanted them to get there on time!
I worked for both Coke and Pepsi (as a temp) within the last few years & both groups are rabid. You don’t dare bring in anything resembling the other - no McDonald’s at Pepsi, no Frito-Lay at Coke. Subway was a real toss-up b/c what they pour (industry term) varies by location.
And if we planned to go to out as a group it had to be a restaurant that poured Coke. Word was that someone got fired for having a non-Coke restaurant on their expense report. And yes, the pregnant receptionist there got chewed out for drinking Tropicana at her desk - it had to be Minute Maid.
They also had possession of a picture of a Pepsi driver drinking a Coke (not the same one in your link - this van was white). It was much beloved - as was the picture of Britney Spears in a Coke restaurant.
Just before I left Coke I mentioned in conversation that I drink Pepsi at home all the time & they were furious - I wasn’t allowed to even say it out loud. Is it my fault Coke doesn’t taste right since they switched to high-fructose corn syrup? Gives me a headache.
Both places did provide free beverages, although Coke did a better job of it than Pepsi - at Coke it was all the canned/fountain you could want for free (and they had non-carbs, too; sometimes juice). At the Pepsi bottler it depended on what floor you were on - the proletariats had to pay for their pop (like $.25/can) but the executives had not only free pop but free vending, and fresh fruit in the lounge. Of course, that same executive lounge had a real doctor’s scale and a height/weight chart on the wall above it - I guess you weren’t really supposed to eat the chips. Kind of an acknowledgement of the danger of their product, seems to me.
Just to recap - you think that an employer should be able to fire an employee because they’re consuming a rival brand?
I’ve driven past the Corvette in Bowling Green, KY a number of times and you can see all kinds of cars parked out there. The majority are GM cars, but there’s various other makes as well. Strangely, you don’t see too many Corvettes.
On company time, yes.
I work for an office furniture distributor. I would be insane to try to order furniture from one of our competitors for my office.
If I worked for a large law firm, I would be legally certifiable if I didn’t use the lawyers there to draw up my will, or handle my divorce.
If I was an employee of, say, the Boston Red Sox, I would have several screws loose if I showed up to work on casual day (or, worse, attended a game) wearing a New York Yankees jersey.
How is the driver’s action any different?
As has been noted, employers usually give employees massive discounts on their products, or provide them for free. To consume or use a competitor’s product in public, while on the job, goes beyond personal taste and edges into the realm of political posturing, in my opinion.
Yes.
Actually, an employer should be able (and is able) to fire an employee for any reason not proscribed by law (e.g., race, gender, etc), even silly or irrational reasons, subject only to the terms of the employee’s employment contract, if any, or the union contract, if any. That’s part of a free market for labor.
What you really mean to ask is “is it a good idea for an employer to fire an employee for consuming a rival brand?”
Well, the answer to that depends on a variety of factors. It basically boils down to balancing employee morale against the risk of corporate embarrasment due to an employee being seen using a competitor’s product. I suspect most companies would come down on the side of what Sauron notes: on company time, or while in company uniform, you must only use company products.
This obviously varies from industry to industry. Sauron is wrong about law firms, for example. Large law firms don’t generally care if their employees elect to use other firms for their personal legal work, especially for low-cost legal work such as drafting basic wills, uncontested divorces, etc. It’s understood that, say, a secretary at such a firm simply doesn’t need the resources of a big firm to meet her needs, and that they are served more cost-effectively by a smaller law firm. But then, law firms aren’t “branded” the same way consumer products are – it isn’t immediately visible to the outside world as to what law firm a particular individual has hired for a given matter.