The problem with corporations is that they never think of you. They get you hooked on their damn products, desperate for their damn products, and then — poof! — in the most nefarious of fashions, they make it difficult to get their product.
Such is the case with Diet Coke and its new imposter, regular Coca-Cola Classic.
I would die without Diet Coke. I’ve cut back. I used to drink nine or ten glasses or cans a day — that is separate from my coffee — until my neurologist, who treats me for epilepsy, found out about that. “How much caffeine do you drink?” she asked me, and then slowly lowered my paperwork to her desk, put her head in her hands, and just repeated my name over and over and over again. “No,” she said. “just…no.”
But when you often get up at four in the morning for work, you need caffeine. It’s either that or heroin.
Imagine my shock when I read about the mass confusion being experienced by Diet Coke heads because Coca-Cola had changed the holiday design of their cans. Surely, this would not affect me, I thought. I am an informed consumer.
I just hit the vending machine at work. I popped in my three quarters, hit the diet coke button, and what did I get? A fucking can of REGULAR Coke, which I cannot drink. I’m out seventy-five cents, I’m out a shot of caffeine, I’m out my serene peace and joy, and I’m out my innocence, my sweet, precious, American innocence, which led me to presume that I would get what I paid for when I hit a button on a machine.
Oh, it’s a cute can, said a co-worker.
It is not! I cried. That’s a what a lie looks like! That’s what a filthy, disgusting, hoax looks like!
She backed away.
Coca-Cola says it’s fixing the problem. But how will they fix me?
