/ck/ - Food & Cooking

I used to work at Coca Cola as a "route salesman", basically a truck delivery driver that makes a base wage $200 a week plus commission which was 68 cents a case. This was back in 1997.

There are three kinds of routes: Cold Drink (filling vending machines.¢ ), Bottle and Can (convenience stores, liquor, small retail stores. $$), and Bulk (Pallets of product to the big retail chains.$$$)

As a new driver, I was assigned to the most time and labor intensive type of route to make commission from, which was the Cold Drink Route.

The hours were however long it took you to complete your route, which on a quick seamless day from start to finish may take around 8-9 hours if you hustle. I averaged around 9-10 hours a day, but some days would be out as long as twelve, but not as often.

I would service an average of 100 machines a day for 5 days a week. From the single machines at a small business, to over a dozen per schools, tons at universities and dorms.

It was robotic, mindless, and tedious work day in and day out. I was starting to resent how much I was making in this dead end job, and started to get depressed as an young 19 year old guy facing the rest of his life...

(To be continued)