Friday, December 12, 2008

Employees and Products


This is the Marietta Coca-Cola Bottling Company years ago before my time.
After it outgrew itself it moved to Roswell Road on a hill overlooking downtown Marietta. My uncle-in-law-to-be Bill Mc, after his Army hitch got a job at the Coca-Cola company.

One of the benefits of the job was that employees were welcome to drink Cokes all day long, free. It turned my uncle into a diabetic. He had to shoot himself with insulin the rest of his life.

He changed jobs to W.T. Anderson Chevrolet dealer in the parts department. There, if he chose to own a vehicle, it had to be a General Motors product.

That doesn’t seem right does it? – for your employer to have the right to dictate what you do with your money.

Which doesn’t not fit my image of W.T. Anderson, who I always thought was fair and just….. but it does fit the image a of a business man, which he was a very successful one.

I wonder if today’s auto-worker has to purchase a vehicle made by the company he worked for? If so, it might help, to bail one out from within… pull one’s feet up by their own bootstraps, so to speak.

9 comments:

kenju said...

It does sound like a good plan....LOL

When I first saw the photo, my thought was...'Boy, they are an exciting lot, aren't they?"

Eddie said...

Judy,
Maybe all that Coke syrup made them hyper.

Si's blog said...

One of our daughters works for a banking and investment enterprise. She is not allowed to do any banking or investment business except through the one she works for. Allegedly for security reasons but ....

Anonymous said...

In the summer of 1965 after graduation from MHS, I rode shotgun on a Coke delivery truck(summer job)from the Roswell Street location. Our route was Hwy. 92 to Acworth and Hwy. 5 to South Canton, Lake Allatoona, etc.

What an experience picking up bottles for deposit and delivering replacement cases. In that area there were some real "countryfied" little stores and filling stations.

Skip

Eddie said...

A,
Yes they were plenty of little stores of a back -road influence up in that area. We used to make many trips to Victoria Landing between 1957 and 1962 and ran into some interesting characters - which a good portion of them were probably my distant Tyson relatives... they infested that area from Acworth to Woodstock.
You didn't ride the Coke truck with a Mr. Davenport did you?

Anonymous said...

No, it was a young guy and I don't remember his name. One day he left his money pouch out in the locker room and someone swiped it.

Since he did not make a lot of money delivering Coke, it was a financial drain when he had to pay it back.

I also worked after school at the Dr. Pepper Warehouse on Hwy. 41. Cut my teeth on driving a forklift there.

Skip

Eddie said...

Skip,
Two siblings, boy and girl, named Davenport, went to MHS - their father drove a Coke truck. I guess he route was south of Atlanta, one time I saw him loading up a store in Forest Park
Dr. Pepper on the 41? That rings a bell but I can't quiet place it. Where on the 41?

Anonymous said...

ET,

Heading North on 41, I think Dr. Pepper was on the left side just north of Allgood intersection. Seems like there was a small "no-tell motel" to the right of it.

They did not bottle there. Just stored 7up, DP, etc. which we loaded on trucks each evening.

Skip

Eddie said...

Skip,
I remember those no-tells. Not from changing money or anything with them but they were there... I think one was the Blue Top Motel and one Trio-something, which tried to make a comeback in the past several years as a good home-cooking place.
And one of those motels became sort of a half-way house.