When the Buzzy Coke cooler conked out the other day I relocated its contents into one of the other coolers in the Store. After doing so, it occurred to me that I don’t really need the Coke cooler which is property of the Mid Atlantic Coke bubbas (see red tag inside cooler above.)
I recall Buzzy warning me to be careful stocking non-Coke products in the Coke cooler because the Coke folks would occasionally do inspections. He said that if they found non-Coke products in their cooler, they would inform you that only Coke products should be in the cooler and threaten to remove it if you did not comply.
When I asked him when was the last time that they had been in to inspect, he said a few years ago. He told me that when they warned him about having the non-Coke products in the cooler, he removed all of the other products while the Coke folks were still there. However, he then returned these items once the guys left. I asked what would happen if they came back and found the items in the cooler again. He said “Just hope it’s a different person coming around checking.”
The other day, when I called the Coke folks about picking the cooler up, their rep Germaine told me that while they did show Buzzy’s as having one of their coolers, their records did not show when this one was installed.
I then started thumbing through the stash of Buzzy photos to see if I could find the oldest photo of the cooler. I was surprised when I found several photos and noticed that 3 different coolers appeared in them as follows:
The overall discovery for me here is that I learned that this cooler had not been in Buzzy’s all this time. As you can see from the above photos, the current one is at least the third Coke upright cooler that has been in Buzzy’s through the years. My plans are to re-call their office sometime when I’m in the mood to do so and see if maybe another rep will dig a little deeper into their records and find just how many and when these Coke coolers were installed and replaced. (I’m thinking that my guy Germaine may have given me a quick answer just to make me go away.)
Every time I say or think “all this time” Sting’s song about the death of his father comes to mind. I have played this one a couple times previously here on the Buzzyblog and I guess being raised Catholic, as Sting was, all that Church-related death imagery stays with me somehow. Too, it reminds me of Buzzy’s funeral and how sad a time that was. (The line “If I had my way, I’d take a boat from the river and bury the old man at sea” resonates too.) Granted it is a great tune; but think I am going to look for a new “all this time” reference song.