Union’s Cola Company Confrontation Heated Enough to Work Up a Thirst
It sounds like one of those commercials on a Super Bowl broadcast.
The Teamsters union says Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Southern California fired a driver at its Sylmar facility for drinking a Pepsi on the job.
The union, which filed unfair labor practice charges, said Coca-Cola is “attempting to use a company rule that prohibits slander of the product.”
A spokesman for the bottling firm would not comment on the firing, but he said company representatives planned to meet with the Teamsters and predicted “a good resolution” of the case.
Guess this is sort of an updated version of the old Pepsi Challenge taste test.
The customer is always wrong: Brydon Baker noticed some pretty stern instructions on a pedometer (see accompanying).
Sometimes the merchant is wrong: Terrence Hartwell came upon a store owner in need of some quality sign work (see photo).
Leave your briefcase at home: I hadn’t realized that office space was so tight until I received a snapshot from Yvonne Keh (see photo).
As for living quarters...: I don’t imagine the apartment spotted by Sal Lombardo of West L.A. had much space either (see photo).
Nothing, reinterpreted: The photo here of Temecula’s Nada Lane brought a note from Carol Tensen of Burbank, who said, “Twenty-plus years ago, when I was teaching English as a foreign language in Japan, I lived in a section of Kobe called Nada.” Tensen said nada means “open sea” in Japanese, and she wondered whether Temecula had “any good sushi restaurants on Nada Lane.”
Sister Mary Sevilla, meanwhile, wrote: “I know from my Spanish heritage that nada means nothing. Imagine my surprise when I went to Croatia to meet some cousins and found one named Nada! In Croatian, it means ‘hope.’ So there’s still hope for Nada Lane!” Even if there isn’t any good sushi.
SpokeAlert: The Pasadena Freeway will be closed to vehicular traffic between 6 and 10 a.m. Sunday so bicyclists and walkers can frolic on the asphalt.
Another example of things coming full circle.
A little over a century ago, Pasadena was the home of the Dobbins Elevated Cycleway, a short-lived, 1 1/2-mile wooden track. Its backers wanted to extend it all the way to L.A. but ran out of funding and it was dismantled.
Many years later, however, the route was revived -- for the Pasadena Freeway.
miscelLAny: The Aliso Viejo News crime log said authorities received repeated calls from someone “saying her neighbor’s lizard, which only comes out at night, is somehow sneaking into her house and chewing off all her hair. The lizard leaves at sunrise.”
Thanks for tuning in to Only in L.A. You give us 2.2 minutes, and we’ll give you the weird.
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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.
