Coffee
My coworkers (also new hires like me) and I were elated to recently find the secret location of the “real coffee” on our floor. Let me explain.
Since the company I work for offers free lunch, snacks, and beverages for all its employees, there’s a “coffee station” on each floor with a coffee machine, tea, and a refrigerator full of nearly every Coke and Pepsi product, in regular and diet varieties, all stocked daily for our convenience.
The coffee machine is not a typical coffee pot. It’s a machine that “brews” the coffee instantly, at the touch of a button. Not the type with the individual servings, or “pods”, though. I say “brews” because the machine actually mixes refrigerated liquid coffee concentrate with hot water to create the coffee instantly. There’s no actual brewing going on. The product is a very convenient way to offer coffee in bulk with no mess, no waste, and no employees stealing packets of coffee to take home. Sounds good. Unfortunately, the coffee isn’t all that tasty and upsets my stomach moreso than your average drip brew. Of course, not wanting to immediately give up on a good thing (read: a free thing), I’ve been trying to get used to this strange, coffee-like product.
But no more. This week, as we’ve been exploring the new floor, Joe and I found a regular automatic drip machine and a drawer full of ground coffee packs. Granted, our coffee breaks are a little longer because we have to wait for it to brew, but it’s a damn good excuse to stand around and talk about something other than work.
Soda
I’ve drunk diet soda since I got to college. Actually, I really started drinking it in high school, when I’d pilfer a few Diet Cokes from my parents’ stash in the fridge for my friend Scott and me to enjoy on the school bus. I’ve found the diet varieties much easier to drink than the sugary ones, and I don’t have to limit my consumption in fear of consuming all those calories or rotting out my teeth.
That said, the aspartame that sweetens most diet drinks is definitely an acquired taste. I looked into our beverage case and was surprised to see new packaging for Pepsi’s “alternative” diet cola, Pepsi One. They now sweeten Pepsi One with sucralose (Splenda), rather than aspartame; the former lacks the strikingly bitter taste that probably turns most drinkers away from the latter. I enjoyed the new Pepsi One, though their corny ad campaign and relaunched web site are somewhat blah.
I personally enjoyed the drink, though it won’t completely replace all ~3 cans of Diet Coke I drink daily. (I did read that Coca-Cola will introduce a Diet Coke sweetened with Splenda in the next few months as well; I’ll have to see how that turns out.) It certainly tastes sweeter and less chemical than the previous incarnation, though I didn’t really drink Pepsi One with any regularity. I bet it would taste pretty good from a fountain over ice.
Speaking of Pepsi’s silly web site for their relaunched product, I’m not sure it’s the right move for soft drink companies to try to make an event out of their new products. Coke’s C2 and Pepsi’s EDGE drinks were both launched with very hip, lifestyle ads that hailed their product as the second coming. Both are performing poorly in their respective drink portfolios. Diet Coke with Lemon and Coke with Lime, however, were not introduced as crazy, earthshattering new products, but rather extensions of the existing Diet Coke and Coke platforms. My bet is that they’ll do better, too. We can only wait and see what kind of crazy campaign they’ll pull out for Coke Zero.
