I worked at a brewery in my city for 5 years, I quit 3 years ago after the owner took away our discount on food, merchandise and every other incentive. We used to get “good job” gift cards all the time to use on the brewery’s merch and food from the restaurant (both the food and merch were super expensive, but I liked them both so I was okay with in-house gift cards – as an underpaid, overworked employee I relied on this cards to feed me during 10+ hour shifts). We were also often forced to sell expired beer and told not to tell anyone about it, which is probably the worst thing they ever made us do.
I was a valued employee, I was cross trained to work in pretty much every department and trained others as well, and I kept my mouth shut about the expired beer while I witnessed some other employees telling customers about it.
I worked as a “second” manager in the merch store for about 6 months. There was another “senior” manager who worked remotely because she was in university, her aunt was also head of accounting. She would make the schedule, give herself all long weekends off and call me and other staff in on days off all the time.
I was there 8am-9pm Monday-Saturday, and I began to realize that too much was expected of me. The last straw was when I found out the other manager was being paid more than me while only in-house once or twice a week. Instead of quitting entirely, I just demoted myself back to a regular employee… after that all of my bosses basically forgot my name and those good job gift cards stopped coming my way.
I went to school for graphic design but didn’t finish due to personal reasons. There was an opening in marketing for an internship (unpaid, by the way) so I went for it to gain experience. The head of marketing basically laughed me out of the door, told me unless I finished school I didn’t have a shot, and said he/the company didn’t trust me with all the social media account passwords(??) I was sad about it at the time because I had done some other side work for other local companies, and since this brewery is a huge attraction and gets a lot of eyes on their social media, I saw it as a huge opportunity for myself. It beat me up for a while, even after I had proven myself loyal and had worked there for over four years at the time. I quit shortly after that.
After I gave my notice, I no longer kept my mouth shut about the expired beer and told anyone who would listen and warned hundreds of customers not to buy it. Even encouraged the other employees to contact the labour board and the health inspectors, not sure if they ended up doing it or not though.
Fast forward to today – I found out from a current co worker that this brewery now has a “bring your own food” sign outside and a food truck parked outside 3 times a week because they can’t find servers and cooks who want to work for them. They literally don’t serve food four times a week because everyone in my city knows the owners are awful, the pay is bad, and the environment is toxic. I also saw the owner bussing tables and seating people the other day and he was sweating like you wouldn’t believe.
I now work for a government organization as a social media producer/graphic designer with full benefits and a $10/hr pay increase.
Don’t break your back and bust yourself for a company who doesn’t trust you to have their passwords, when another company will and pay you more for it.