Similar story at my last job.

I was a beer sales rep in Washington DC, a potentially VERY lucrative market that was already brimming with good product. However, I realized very quickly that the people above me in the organization had no idea what they were doing. It started with small things, like “sales reps have to deliver beer sometimes”, “sales reps need to help do QC at the brewhouse”, and “paper checks this week, payroll is broken”, then started escalating rapidly when they fired the head of sales, a long-time industry veteran, on July 3rd for trying to clean up some of the internal mismanagement.

After that, management started hounding us basically daily to increase sales numbers without actually offering any advice or help on how to do so. It was so bad that I basically ignored any email or text from them unless I had specifically messaged them first. I had one customer tell me that they couldn’t justify ordering anything at that time due to budget constraints, and my boss’s advice was “Sell them more so each case costs a dollar less!”, completely ignoring that that just made the problem worse for the customer. Just completely useless advice.

It was about 3 weeks in before the paperwork problems came to my attention; in DC, if you are importing alcohol or cannabis, and you don’t have a warehouse in DC to supply from, you need to supply a permit with each shipment. Several of my customers got their first orders and asked where the permits were, and I told them I had no idea what they meant. Turns out, management had done zero research into the import laws for DC, and these missing permits could lead to fines more expensive than the actual orders, to BOTH parties, if we didn’t get them filed. I hounded management for WEEKS about this, and they kept saying “We’re working on it, and they should be ready Soon™️!” A month and a half later, they finally started sending the out… is what I’d love to say, but they actually forced ME to write them and send them out. Needless to say, neither me nor my customers were happy.

Meanwhile, staff at the brewery proper were getting absolutely RATFUCKED. In my conversations with staff there, when I had to come up for samples or paychecks or meetings, I learned a shocking amount of things, including:

• They’d fired the delivery team, then tried to hire new drivers, none of which lasted more than a week or 2
• The drivers were working 15 hour days because the inventory system was nonexistent
• The brewers were getting massive orders dumped on them regularly, with zero notice, and incredibly short deadlines, forcing them to work split shifts 20 hours a day just to meet demands
• The brewers were also regularly getting accused of stealing 40% of the beer from each batch, somehow
• The admin staff were being forced to work 70 hour weeks for seemingly no reason
• The kitchen staff were cycling rapidly because the Head Chef “liked to fire people”
• QC issues were through the roof due to overwork, lack of staff, and horrendous space optimization
• Admin staff were regularly asked to “”“assist”“” on canning runs, despite knowing nothing about canning
• Management was trying to supply 5 states with beer at once, without actually having the capacity to do so
• All the equipment was bought at auctions, and none of it worked right
• All the other sales reps were being run ragged as delivery men, because they couldn’t keep drivers around

I could keep going. There were so many issues at the brewery.

Towards the end of my time there, I messaged management that I would be out of town on vacation for a week over Labor Day, and gave them 3 weeks notice for it. They didn’t respond to that message in any way, so I mentioned it in the next meeting, where they brushed it off as ok. THE DAY I LEAVE, I get a text asking when I’ll be back, and if I can call them. I don’t respond because I’m on vacation. They then email me a giant, wildly exaggerated list of complaints with my performance that they could’ve brought up before I left, and DEMAND to know how I was going to fix them. I don’t respond because, again, I’m on vacation. The next day, my boss texts me, demanding I call him later that day. I don’t. I’M ON VACATION MOTHERFUCKER. He texts me that night, saying he “doesn’t enjoy doing this” and then fires me with a text. I don’t bother responding.

So yeah, lots of crippling mismanagement and toxic bro culture, leading to a horrendous work environment and ultimately getting fired for not playing their petty power games. I’m happier now though, since I don’t have to deal with them breathing down my neck all the time, and I can pursue other interests in the alcohol industry.

Overall, what a fucking disaster of a business. I don’t see them lasting another year, now that everything is falling apart and the staff are leaving.