>I'm sure there was some kickback money given to people here to push it through.

Why? Is it that hard to imagine pepsi doing it in an above-board way, eg. giving a discount to the university directly?

james_marks a day ago | parent | next [-]

This was my first reaction, too.

The buyer at the university could just be doing their job, signing contracts to ensure (ideally) stable vendors and a good price by signing such a long contract term.

	▲	wahern 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Coca-Cola is sort of like the Apple of cola in that they're the upmarket brand almost everywhere around the globe. Unless Coke has a sales, marketing, or branding angle (see, e.g., Disney deal mentioned elsethread), they won't discount nearly as deeply as Pepsi, which is perennially in second-place at best (Mt. Dew notwithstanding). Pepsi is the obvious choice for any outlet where your customers are captive (e.g. sit-down restaurants) and you don't otherwise care about looking cheap for not offering Coca-Cola.

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newsclues a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I worked as a buyer in edu, oh the grease is built in to the system from the vendors who will frequently shower you with coffee and donuts to much friendlier offers to get sales.

Why is it so hard to imagine people who work in education would have flexible ethics for personal gain?

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gruez a day ago | parent | next [-]

>shower you with coffee and donuts to much friendlier offers to get sales.

If I was working a cushy admin job, I'd need way more bribery than $5 worth of coffee and doughnuts to intentionally select a worse vendor, especially if the decision would negatively impact my colleagues and get me flak.

>Why is it so hard to imagine people who work in education would have flexible ethics for personal gain?

Because if you read the other comments, there are perfectly reasonable explanations that don't involve graft. Jumping to "bribe" every time there's bad behavior is just lazy thinking and means you don't actually figure out what the root of the problem is.

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newsclues 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That’s you.

But a lot of people are poorly paid and free coffee is nice.

It might not be enough to select a worse vendor but if two are equal it’s easy to pick the one with the cute sales representative who knows how you like your coffee.

Then there is the leadership who plays golf together and use the company card to buy gifts (booze) for the deciders.

It’s not bribery it’s just subtle influence;)

And it’s everywhere, it’s the same at the various higher education colleges I worked at.

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venturecruelty a day ago | parent | prev [-]

>Because if you read the other comments, there are perfectly reasonable explanations that don't involve graft. Jumping to "bribe" every time there's bad behavior is just lazy thinking and means you don't actually figure out what the root of the problem is.

Right. I'm sure, in spite of this and the decades of overwhelming evidence, this was all just a silly coincidence, and they can lower food prices now.

Edit: I'm shitlimited to five posts per X number of hours, so I'm going to respond here: the evidence is in TFA, thanks.

	▲	gruez a day ago \| parent [-]
		>in spite of this and the decades of overwhelming evidence Where's all this "overwhelming evidence"? So far the only that's presented is "my university is pepsi only so there must be something shady going on" and "vendors buy me coffee so there must be administrators corrupting themselves and risking their 6 figure jobs for $5 worth of inducements" edit: >Edit: I'm shitlimited to five posts per X number of hours, so I'm going to respond here: the evidence is in TFA, thanks. Searches for "bribe" and "kickbacks" don't turn anything up. If you're talking about the unsealed FTC complaint, that's anti-competitive behavior, but not the "kickbacks" that OP was talking about (ie. some administrator abusing their position of trust to personally enrich themselves). Both are bad, but they're not remotely comparable. For one, in the case of kickbacks, the organization and its members are harmed (through worse contracts), whereas for whatever walmart and pepsi agreed to, both benefited.

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wyldfire a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> shower you with coffee and donuts to much friendlier offers to get sales.

By bringing this up in a thread talking about kickbacks, it sounds as if you're trying to equate the two. Please don't equate this to a "kickback." It's not what that is. There's real standards to what denotes bribes and kickbacks and that's not what those are.

> flexible ethics for personal gain?

If you let the donuts influence your judgment, that is an ethical problem -- I agree. But if you operate in your organization's best interest you can enjoy the coffee and donuts without remorse.

	▲	newsclues 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don’t drink coffee or eat donuts (allergies) so I wasn’t influenced by the sales people but I understood what was happening and saw it happen to more senior people in the organization who were influenced and cost the organization a lot of money because of “friendship” with a leader at a client who was very generous to the executive.