Across from my apartment room in the building Ondine ..

is an office building of no notable description, a typical 15-floor building, perhaps. One can never peer through the windows and see what is going on, which is a good thing. But, there are obvious meeting rooms in evidence.

There are two Coca-Cola machines visable from my room. One on floor #5 and the other on floor #6. The Coca-Cola machine on floor #5 is of a newer variety than the one on floor #5: the machine has that picture of an over-sized can of Coke that seems to have come from the cooler, in contrast to the older machine on floor #5, which simply has the Coca-Cola insignia logo on the machine. The one on the fifth floor is the cheapest Coke in the city: a mere 30 cents. The Cola machine on the sixth floor is oddly expensive: the same 12 fluid ounces cost ninety cents. Every day, at noon and five, office workers jam down from the sixth floor to the fifth floor for cola that costs less than half the more conveniently located Cola. There are some who take the convenience in favor of cheapness route, figuring 40 cents in spare change means absolutely nothing. But, it is hard to imagine how the 90 cent coca-cola machine stays in business. Perhaps it is simply restocked less often. Who knows?

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