sales merchandiser

truck driver

packer

intern

sales account manager

Coke Florida

Part of doing this job well and getting it done quickly is knowing your stores. Not all stores are the same. The isles where the soda, water, and energy drinks are located are different in every store. The side and end display areas are different as well as cooler placement in each store. I walked the same store for two weeks and never noticed the 2 liter display in the deli.

I did train with someone for four weeks on their route. We were doing Wal-Mart and two grocery stores but when it came time to get my own route I was given a Publix, Winn Dixie and a list of Dollar Generals and convenient stores. I had worked the Winn Dixie in training but never any of these other stores. I was not given an opportunity to train in the stores on my route. I was just thrown into the route on my own and told "You will figure it out." I was doing things at Publix that I was shown to do at the locations I trained in only to have the grocery manager come to me and say "This is all wrong. It all needs redone." The way Publix did things was different than the way Winn Dixie did things and that is fine but no one at Coke ever told me that.

The allotted merchandising time for a bulk store, such as Publix, is three hours. It was taking me double that. At one point I was told by upper management "You can't be spending that much time in one store."

You start your day off showing up to your bulk stores (5 to 6 am). Those are high volume locations such as Wal-Mart or Publix. You are expected to, alone, pull and unload five to seven pallets (or more) of product, stock the shelves in the store and organize the back room area you are assigned by the location.A big part of the job that I disliked was the constant down stack and re stack of pallets. Often what you needed for the floor was at the bottom of a pallet so you would have to work that pallet down to get what you needed. Then often times the next thing you needed was buried by all the products you just moved (caused by working in a limited space). It just seemed like a lot of unnecessary double work to me. At Publix you are also supposed to make time to confer over the next delivery order. To me, it seemed like a lot of work for one person. Most mornings you have to search for a pallet jack to move your delivery and if you are merchandising a Publix you cannot pull pallets onto the floor past 7 am. Your product is supposed to be loaded onto a cart (U-boat) to be moved out to the floor. Good luck finding one! The Publix employees have them all and you end up working out of a grocery cart. No dolly or cart is provided by Coke.

Working in the back room at Publix is a nightmare! They have their shipments coming in early in the morning. This is the same time your delivery truck comes from Coke. There is no room to work on the loading dock outside nor in your assigned area inside. The pathway that runs the length of the store in the back room is only wide enough to let one person pulling a pallet or cart pass at a time. Many times while working my stock area I had to stop and move out of the way (with my cart) so that a pallet or cart could be pulled through by a Publix employee. You are kind of looked at as an outsider. Like you are in the way of them getting their job done.

Part of the job is keeping your area in the back room clean and organized. Stacking and sorting to utilize all the available space. I and agree with this do not have a problem with it but if the grocery manager looks at your area and decides its not up to his standards he will make you redo the whole area. This can be an hour of work in itself. The problem is on your days off, you have someone coming in who might not bother with cleaning and organizing the back area or even merchandising the store properly. So, you are left cleaning up someone else's mess. This is the big problem I see with this job and with Coke. They want people who can come in and unload pallets quickly and move on to the next store but that isn't what they teach. They tell you they want you to clean, stock, keep the back area organized, have relationships with managers and order product but in reality its a daily race to get the pallets unloaded and get out before the store manager comes along and gets you for all the stuff they want done. Its a game of "What can I get away with not doing today?"

It's a game I chose not to play. Others seem to do well with it but the job just wasn't for me.

This job is extremely difficult on your body. There’s a lot of unnecessary work. Say you go to a store to work, most grocery stores don’t allow you to bring a pallet of stuff out to the floor to work it. They want it on carts. So you have to lift the cases of stuff off of the pallet in the back room and onto a cart then take it to the aisles and lift it again to stock it, then if it doesn’t all fit on the shelf, you have to take it back to the back room and lift it again to put it in back stock area. So you end up lifting the same case of product 3 or 4 separate times. Then there’s rotating. There might be room for 50 cases of coke 12 packs and you filled it one day, then the next day let’s say 12 sold while you were gone and 12 more came in the next day from the warehouse. They want the oldest stuff sold first so those 38 packs left on shelf might have an expiration that’s like April 29 and the 12 new ones that came in might have an expiration of May 3 so they’re very close together in expiration and that expiration might be 9 months from now, but you still have to pull all 38 cases out, put the 12 new ones on the bottom and then put the 38 cases back on top of the new ones, so you end up doing even MORE LIFTING. There’s also coolers, displays, etc. tons of stooping all the way to the floor. It destroys your body.

The schedule is also insane. You have to work every weekend. I had to be at my stores at 4am which means I had to get up at 2:30am or so. Which means you gotta get in bed at like 7pm to get a decent nights sleep. You have to work until you’re finished each day. So if it’s 8 hours or 14 hours you never know from day to day. Hard to have any kind of a life.

The vacation time is generous to start. Once you’re there a year, you get 3 weeks vacation. But then there’s a lot of problems with that too, first off, they black out all holiday weeks each year and the week before as well. All of them. Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, you name it. Plus there’s Super Bowl week, Halloween, etc. so with all these weeks blacked out, you have all these merchandisers trying to take vacation with what’s left and they are gonna let a bunch of merchandisers be off at the same time so there’s always conflict, you end up taking some random week in the middle of September off and your kids are in school so what can you really do or go? Vacations can also be canceled too even if you’ve had them approved for a long while, you might be a week or two away from taking it but they’ve lost people and they can’t afford for you to be off so you have to wait.

You also have to work all holidays, even Thanksgiving. They told me that they were off Christmas and they didn’t at all sound convincing on it either. I didn’t give them the chance to tell me I had to work on Christmas before I left.

Here’s another thing, there’s no dedicated time for merchandisers to take a lunch. They want those stores serviced quickly so you work work work from stop to stop to stop and before you know it boom you’ve worked 12 hours straight and haven’t eaten anything.

You’re stuck in the job for 12 months before you can apply for another position in the company.

For me, they weren’t up front with me in the interview process. They never told me about vacation blackouts, they told me I would work 4 days a week, it was 5-6 from the start. They also told me I would start at 6am and it was 4am. When it’s that early, the difference from 4am to 6am is huge. So I was rubbed the wrong way from that. Then during orientation this one guy who I won’t name but is high up in leadership there told us his story about how he advanced there and how he moved everywhere and how he sacrificed a lot to move up. Basically saying he had to give up his whole life to the company in order to advance. I was in no way prepared to do that so I knew it wasn’t going to work. There’s lifers in that company that live to work at Coca-Cola. I lived for my family and I worked there to live. I wasn’t wired like them. My family is my life, my faith is my life, my work is my work. Just wasn’t a good fit for me, so I left.

To recap:

- Massive physical toll on your body
- You have to work EVERY weekend
- Have to work EVERY holiday
- Can’t ever take vacation on a holiday week
- All to start at 15 an hour


Working as a sales merchandiser, your time will never be considered or respected by anyone. Not by the stores you work in, not by your teammates, and not by your supervisors. Your schedule for your days, while set weekly, will not actually be given to you on a daily breakdown until the night before, sometimes at 8PM when you need to be at your first location at 6AM or earlier if you choose to.

You will frequently see schedules where you are moving 2, 3, 4 times the cases on a particular day compared to the next highest # of cases during a day. Which to a certain degree is understandable because different routes have different schedules and priorities from day-to-day. However, rather than schedule efficiently and intelligently so that everyone will have a day of comparable length, having people with lighter days assist others, you will not receive help because other teammates will intentionally stretch their days out to not be available until the end of the day. Many people extend their days to work OT even when they have next to nothing to do that day. Which actually makes it so that if you work quickly and get your tasks done on time, you will look like the one cutting corners since everyone else always takes 9-10 hours+ to complete their days even when what they are actually doing is sandbagging.

In most of the stores and environments you work in, you will be treated as if you are an employee of theirs when you are not, but they won't do anything with your product, won't ever touch it, or help you. While simultaneously asking you to do whatever they want, regardless of the fact that you may have many more hours of work scheduled for other stops that day. They do this even though your products make them plenty of money.

You WILL work overtime. This is acceptable to a certain degree as it puts more money in your pocket, but your problem will be that you will never know exactly WHEN you will be working OT, how much, and for what reason. So if you have a personal life with a lot of responsibilities or other activities, you can consider those gone.

If you are an excellent liar and manipulator, this job is for you! You will be able to convince your supervisors that you are the hardest working member of your team, and work all the OT you want, while never having to assist anyone else on your team because you take your lunches on the clock, take smoke breaks on the clock, work as slowly as possible when you want, or rush through your work, putting all of your product into backstock instead of on the floor,  and then spend the rest of your time at your stop pretending to look busy or hanging out in your car! Ideal! It will totally screw up your stores making tons of work for others on your days off, but forget them! They're not as important as you! You must take care of #1 first.

Weeks surrounding holidays are so-called block weeks. They are MANDATORY for everyone. You cannot take time off. The schedules will be organized so that you are working the maximum amount of days on and hours worked that they can legally allow. The only reasonable part about this is that everyone else will be in the same boat as you, but you won't ever get those holidays with your family.

If you don't have a diverse employment skill set and are willing to sacrifice an enormous amount of your own time, you can make a fairly decent amount working here as you can pretty much work as long as you want and you will never be told to go home. The work is much harder than you might think though, you move hundreds of cases of product daily, on your own, so consider that when weighing the potential monetary gain from all the OT.

After responding to the online job posting I was contacted several times by a very persistent recruiter who seemed to paint a picture of a very promising position with the company. I was initially offered a position as a Merchandiser at the Daytona Beach location. After submitting my background and UA which both were clear, I attempted to contact the recruiter whom would not return my calls or emails for well over two weeks. Probably not just me as her voicemail was "full" for the entire time and office # would forward all calls to yet another full voicemail. Finally I attempted to contact the location directly and once again took another week to recieve a call back. When I asked for an anticipated start date, which I was originally told February 1st, I was told it would be at least another month. This is all after being offered a job which I accepted and put in notice with my current employer. After explaining this to the Manager, very professionally and trying to understand their intentions I was told "due diligence"...please wait and we will contact you soon. I said ok and thank you and proceeded to wait another week before being contacted this morning only to be told that my background/driving record was not up to par, which is a flat out lie. I was told she could not tell me the exact reason that my background/driving check was rejected but I can say with 100% truth that there is nothing on either. Also the initial hourly salary that was posted on the job listing was $19.40/hr and when I was at the actual interview, I was offered only $14/hr. When I inquired why that was, they put all responsibility back on the recruiters. After reading other reviews I came to realize this to be a recurring theme with this DC. To say the least I am very disappointed to know that their recruiting staff (another side note, was very young and quite unprofessional in how she spoke to me. In the first phone call she asked me "What's the 'dealio'" which I can't imagine is part of Coca Cola's preferred lingo.). All in all I would say it was a blessing in disguise as I feel it would have been a waste of energy and time to invest 1 day with this company. With all that being said, if you like to be lied to and falsely led into an almost guaranteed dead end job (based on many reviews from former employees and after watching several videos from people like myself) then I think you would fit right in. If you value honesty and integrity like I do, I would suggest looking elsewhere. Thanks for reading.

Company is one of the worst I’ve ever been apart of. Was told I would be in an area close to home and was instead driving an hour or more one way to start at the first location. The “mileage checks” received every two weeks wouldn’t even cover one tank of gas even before they lowered the pay amount per mile. On top of it, the places they send you are beyond rude and treat everything as if it’s your fault, disgusting, and extremely sketchy.
They say get used to working 12+ hours a day and they’re not kidding. I didn’t see anyone I lived with. I didn’t even have time to eat, not even during work, which if you do stop to eat, you’re encouraged to grab something quick to snack on from stop to stop. And make sure it’s a place that supports coke or store brand item because if it’s not and you’re caught you can be severely in trouble.
As far as I know, there was no gas allowance, or at least I was never told of one.
This job puts a strain on your relationships with the people you know or love. It puts a strain on your mentality. It damages your body and can quickly do irreversible damage.
The workload you have in major accounts really should be done by two merchandisers working together. Most of the merchandisers will milk the clock so they don’t have to go help others finish in decent time. Some work slow while some take naps in their cars. Some merchandisers purposefully order larger trucks for their days off for the relief person to do and then complain to management when you miss a thing or two. They also don’t always work their stores the day before their day off which puts you overworking to get extra done. Even with all the issues and extra stuff to do, mostly all you hear is “how much longer will you be at that store? We need you to do a few more stores to help someone else when you get done with your long list of stores for today.” And on top of all that they want you to “find opportunities to push more product” meaning doing the sales rep’s job too.
The CEO and a lot of higher ups are a joke. The management is okay but not the best.
When you get vacation time they treat it as a Fantasy Football draft picks and will not hesitate to change your vacation time or cancel it. Scheduling it is super difficult between the amount of people on the team and the amount of black out dates they have.
Just heed my warning and the other warnings I read here but didn’t listen to: keep looking for something else. Anything else. You basically run yourself into an early grave for little pay out. 

I worked here since it was CCR and it’s unbelievable how much CCBF has turned the work environment into what it is now. People use to have fun coming to work and it was like a family. Now everyone is looking for a new job and leaving the first chance they get because this company DOES NOT CARE about the employees. They treat you like they hate you. They pay terrible compared to competition beverage companies and work you harder and want results no matter what. Even though they don’t have enough trucks or drivers to deliver all of the orders that get placed. They don’t want to hire the right amount of people they just want everybody to do more work and be on call 7 days a week. If you are in sales you don’t have a day off so kids your weekends goodbye and forget about seeing your kids. They took away pension, they have the cheapest kind of health insurance, no vacations during blacked out weeks, terrible micro managers, the cheapest computers that you can barely see anything, the worst training of anywhere you can go, no car allowance all they pay is the minimum for mileage that the government allows even though you will drive more than 2000 miles every month, no free samples or even discounts on coke products, you even have to pay for a drink when you are at the office for meetings because they have a lock on the cooler most of the time lol!!!!! I can go on and on and on but I would be here all day lol this place is the worst. So many really good people have left this year and more people are planning to leave. We only lose good people because other companies take them so easy. The only thing this company will have is anybody that can’t find nothing else. It’s bad and they don’t care they just let people leave and either replace them with somebody that makes less money and don’t know what they doing or they don’t replace them at all and just give everyone else more work. Then they act like it’s good that people leave cause we don’t need them.  Welcome to the worst place to work in Florida it’s called CCBF!!!! THEY PRETEND TO BE SO NICE AND GOOD CHRISTIAN PEOPLE BUT THIS IS WHAT TRUE EVIL LOOKS LIKE!!!!!! THEY ARE THE BIGGEST HIPOCITES YOU WILL EVER KNOW!! ALL THEY CARE ABOUT IS HOW MUCH MONEY YOU CAN BRING IN FOR THEM AND HOW LITTLE YOU WILL LET THEM PAY YOU! AVOID THIS COMPANY YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!!!!! CHECK THE RATINGS!!!!!!

I recently left a management position and I have to say this is the most poorly run organization I have ever been a part of. Upper Management in the Hollywood Facility has preconceived opinions about its current Account Managers and other employees and uses them to prevent advancement opportunities. I had a gentlemen who was the top Account Manager trainer and a High Performance Award recipient (recognition for achieving great metrics) and he was not selected for a position in their new Route to Market Format. There is a clique among upper management and they will only look out for themselves. They will not hold distribution or warehouse accountable for their mistakes and problems  that significantly impact business operations but will complain about an item penetration in an outlet where it doesn’t belong. When you inform them of a problem with distribution, they will come out and nit-pick your market; so you have to ask yourself “the feedback is great and all but how does this solve my distribution problem?”. In essence, you can’t hold other stakeholders in the organization accountable; they want you to turn a blind eye because there not intelligent enough to come up with a solution to those problems. For this reason, no matter how effective you are at your position you are marked as a beacon and will never promote. They will always focus on the negative or that one thing you did like 5 years ago; no reinforcement for strong behaviors. Oh, and no Safety Culture whatsoever. 

The reviews you see on here from entry level employees are not just gripes; they are legitimate issues. The leadership is so bad. Strong leaders know how to effectively communicate priorities and can answer challenging questions; these people just spray a shotgun blast of information where the priority will change from day to day. You get no consistency in their approach or responses. 

If you are looking for a job and you are desperate, do your time here and get out. If you have other options stay so far away from this plague of a business. The “pamphlet hire” will always go further than you regardless if you are smarter, better educated or harder working. They want Yes Men and Women here. If this is you, then maybe you’ll do well here.

As a CDL Class A driver you are given the oldest and possibly worse trucks to drive. They have trucks from 1998 with no AC as part of their fleet. Most of the equipments that are designed to help a driver perform the jobs are inoperable or defective and makes the job even harder. This job requires at least 2 people per truck due to work load. You get to push 600+ pound up ramps into customers (stores) establishment with no help and stacked more than 6ft high which caused merchandise to fall 60% of the time in which driver has to spend the time to pick up 30+ cases off the ground and re-stack them. Almost every client are disappointed with Coke and their services. Orders are always wrong and or upset at drivers for not doing the job right. As a driver you must merchandise (load coolers and shelves) at smaller stores but the time given and the amount of stops (12-18) makes it nearly impossible to do the job efficiently. You must rush through every stops and even then not enough time. You start at 4am and finish by 4 or 5pm. Top management claims the routes were design for 1 driver. I guess since he never drove, he would never know what drivers experience especially with these horrible equipment provided. The possibility of getting hurt in this job is 120% likely due to physicality and bad equipment. You are not provided an assign truck so every day you're in a different truck which can cause issues since not all drivers takes care of the trucks. Coca Cola Beverages claims to be part of the #3 brand in the world but they behave as a company that is struggling and cannot afford proper equipment so workers can do their jobs properly. There is much more issues so do yourself a favor and stay away from this company unless you really don't have any other options. If you do choose to work there rest assure that you will be paid on time and lots of overtime to make extra money but you will be over worked and stressed

During orientation I was told I would ride along for 2 weeks with a current merchandiser however it ended up being a 4 weeks and not because i needed the extra 2 weeks it’s cause the guy training me needed the help. After starting on my own I can truly say I understand why my trainer didn’t want to let me go.You are worked like a dog.you will have 3 to 4 stores on your route usually starting at a Walmart.the amount of work you do at Walmart is almost enough for an entires days worth of work.However as tired as you are after puting 6 pallets of product on carts and pushing out on floor then filling coolers working as fast and hard as you can your lucky to be out of your first store after 5 hours. However your next store is already calling you or your manager asking why you haven’t made it to there store yet.Finally arriving at your second store which is usually a Publix takes another 5 hours so here we are 10 hours into your day exhausted and hungry as heck you don’t have time to take a break or lunch cause your third store is already getting impatient.third store usually being a windixe her goes another 3 hours of working your tail off. So after your 13 hour day tired hungry your finally headed home just for your whip cracking Supervisor to call you and talk to you like your 10 years old asking why one of the coolers at your first Walmart is empty ...oh that’s right it’s cause after your done they expect you to always return to Walmart after you finish your route P.s. also don’t for get to fill the liquor store at Walmart.Its always something management will find and complain about at one of your stores it’s never a good job or I’m sorry we’re working like a mule hound.

Let me put it this way:

The route I cover takes my 18 year old son and Myself working together hard as we can go at least 9 hours To finish. However Coca Cola Florida expects one person to do it in 9 hours. After doing it by your self 5 days a week straight week after week your ready to walk off the job each and every day cause your so exhausted and stressed.

The absurd turnover rate consistently forces merchandisers to work six days a week, up to 12 or more hours a day. Management will have new candidates ready as additions to the team, but they usually end up replacing a merchandiser that has had enough and quit.

For a brand that sells happiness in a bottle, the employees are expected to put off family plans and personal endeavors and give their livelihood to the company for a pat on the back.

The pay is subpar. Other beverage vendors know that a good Coke merchandiser is undervalued and will likely thrive with their company. It is flattering to listen to their offers, but also embarrassing in the sense that Coca-Cola is the most recognized drink brand in the world and bottlers such as Coke Florida pay their employees so poorly.

There are good supervisors and account managers that have their hands tied and will do what they can to help you. Some of the drivers and merchandisers are exceptional people and teammates. The main problem is top level management, and The Coca-Cola Company should be ashamed of this bottling venture fumbling around as much as it does.

The company values are a paint-by-number approach to provide the illusion that corporate cares about its people, but they need to support the frontline workers with $20/hour base pay and limited overtime, and hire part time workers at $15/hour.

Let us go home to our families feeling accomplished and happy and not worn out and wondering if things will ever improve.

Without the Coca-Cola name, this company would be in big trouble. The CEO needs to step up and admit that he and his team can be better leaders and provide us with a more humane work experience.

Coca-Cola is happiness. We are not happy.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Sales merchandiser 5 salaries reported	$17.65 per hour
Truck driver 1 salary reported	$1,115 per week
Packer 4 salaries reported	$19.79 per hour
Intern 4 salaries reported	$15.00 per hour
Sales account manager 3 salaries reported	$48,167 per year

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