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Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

Most "Pepsi places" do have Coke on hand if they have a bar - a rum and Pepsi just isn't right.

Do they? Pepsi has been making a big push into "rich people places" (air ports, ski resorts, conference venues, that sort of thing) and the usual result is not that I ask for a Diet Coke and one appears, it's that I ask and one fails to appear, and continues to fail to appear at every place I visit on the entire trip/vacation and I simply must go without. Which is fine, it's just a flavor, but this is noticeable and repeatable and annoying and almost exactly the opposite of the situation where a bar has a strategic reserve of the good stuff.

The ones I've seen do - and pretty expensive hotels, too.

If you're running a conference and ask them to get some coke from the bar, they usually have been able to get it (it's also possible they have a secret "guest happiness" stash) - and I've seen them pour it at the bar - Pepsi is from the spigot machine, Coke from a can.

Rules are different if you are at a bar and paying bar prices for bar products, I get that, but it's not what I'm looking for. I could also go out of my way to buy from an unaffiliated store and schlep the stuff, but I'm just not that much of an addict. My point is that I don't think it's reasonable to be dismissive of Pepsi's "accomplishment" here -- they have arranged a substantial enough barrier to corral the behavior of someone with a significant (though not mountain-scaling) preference to the contrary. Significant enough that my fallback is usually water. Like out the toilet.

Is that an actual preference or just spite-driven? Nope, sprite is a Coke product, we don't serve that here! But seriously, it's a real preference, it holds for the generics too. Most generic colas seem to be based on the Pepsi taste. Ugh. RC isn't, so RC Cola is fine, but too rare to ever be helpful. Caring about this is a curse!

I think they’d just make it with Pepsi and call it a “rum and coke” anyway. “Coke” is the generic word for all soda/pop, including Pepsi, in much of the US and world, and I think “rum and coke” also qualifies as a name in its own right.

>“Coke” is the generic word for all soda/pop, including Pepsi, in much of the US and world

I don't think this is even true for most of the USA, much less the world. I've never heard anyone refer to anything except a cola as "coke" although I heard that was the vernacular in some subset of the US... some southern US states?

A Fanta is a Coke.

not that there's anything wrong with that

It isn't that niche. Probably in second behind "soda" pop being in third place. Some areas have other names like "cold drink" that while seeming generic actually only refer to carbonated sweet beverages.

Edit: forgot map

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-prev...

Most bars have generic cola on their soda guns.

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