ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 10, 1996 TAG: 9611110081
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-23 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: MARK CLOTHIER STAFF WRITER
Carter Rose stands 5 foot 6 inches tall and weighs 102 pounds soaking wet; which he is, sometimes. At least on fall Saturdays.
The 14-year-old sells sodas at Virginia Tech home football games, which is not as simple as it might sound.
Taco Bell, this ain't.
On seven Saturdays this fall - Tech's 1996 football home games - a small army of 80 to 100 teen-age vendors sell from 5,000 to 12,000 Pepsis and Diet Pepsis per game at $1.75 a pop. The warmer and drier it is, the more they sell.
Hokie fans have been guzzling thousands of gallons of Pepsi at Lane Stadium for five years. Before that, they drank Coke.
The vendors - whose average age is 16 - earn $3 for every tray of 20 they sell. On a good day, they go through 10 to 12 trays.
Including tips, a vendor can pull down $50 for about three hours work, toting trays of 20-ounce plastic cups sealed, with varying degrees of certainty, by a round sheet of cellophane. (During the school year, 14-and 15-year-olds can work with a permit up to three hours a day, no more than 18 hours a week and not later than 7 p.m., according to federal law.)
Rose estimates a tray weighs 50 pounds. Other, bigger vendors say it's closer to 15 pounds, but it's likely relative: with 102 pounds of ballast, 15 pounds probably feels like 50.
The metal rack hangs from the vendor's neck with a seatbelt-type strap that Pepsi officials recommend the vendor soften with a rolled-up towel around the neck.
Then there's Lane Stadium's soda-spilling stairs - 233 of them from top to bottom on Lane's taller, east side.
The mode of cola transfer - hand to hand along the stadium rows - tends to knock its share of Pepsi onto vendor clothes as well. Until the vendors work out a system, they tend to wear their share of soft drink.
"Yeah," he said. "And you're sore for a couple days after, usually."
Carter prowls the underside of the east-end stands before the game and during halftime.
When he sells off a rack, he heads to one of Lane Stadium's four filling rooms under the stands, where a machine called a speed filler can fill and seal two racks of 20 sodas in 60 seconds.
In the stands, the system works like this: Someone catches the vendor's eye, then passes $2 down in exchange for a soda.
The business end is the vendor's, who must pocket or at least safely stow the money while handing off the product.
Often, there's change to be made. This is done with one hand clutching the original bill or bills, the other balancing the tray strung from the neck.
All in all, a precarious balance, made more dicey in that it's typically conducted with each foot on different steps, amid hundreds of fans - some of them irate because their view is blocked by your presence or because they haven't yet caught your eye.
This last group is the bane of Kevin Bishop.
He and fellow Christiansburg High sophomore Jonathan Bradley, 15, work in tandem. Oct. 26's Pitt game was their third.
They already have a horror story.
"Well, there was That Dude With The Ice," Bradley said.
The Ice Dude was a patron who did not take well the news that the pair didn't sell cups of ice.
Instead, Bishop sold him two Pepsis.
"Then he said I'd better bring back some ice next time," Bishop, 15, said. "And I did. I brought him back two cups. Then he said 'You better keep bringing me ice.'"
"Then he told us he was going to push us down the steps and make us go down backwards," Bradley said. "Man, there's some mean people out there."
Both doubt they'll be back next year. Mike Meadows, territorial coordinator for Pepsi, said about 50 percent of new vendors come back for a second year.
"No," Bishop said. "It's a killer. I didn't want to come today. The worst part is the student section. They're so crazy. They must be drunk or something."
But the experience hasn't been a total bust. Sales taper by the end of the third quarter. By the fourth, they're usually able to snag a seat vacated by a less-than-zealous Hokie and watch the game.
It's also the pair's first job, and they've learned the cardinal rule of those who serve.
"Drinkers are the best tippers," Bishop said.
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: LORA GORDON Special to The Roanoke Times. Carter Roseby CNBmakes change for a customer during a recent home game.