As soon as I began the walk, I knew what was happening. But, while I was bracing for the initial onslaught, instead I got what seems like a softball. “I understand [H&S guy] found you listening to your iPod a few weeks ago?” the brewmaster began.
“Yeah, I didn’t know we weren’t allowed to,” I lied.
“You understand the rule now though?”
“Yeah, I stopped after that,” I lied again. I now feel stupid for that little white lie. I fear that it made it a little easier to write me off from the start.
For a moment I began to wonder, though, if maybe this was just a disciplinary meeting. After all, I had just worked 9 hours of my 10.5 hour shift. Maybe they were really just taking this small rule transgression seriously, or maybe they had perceived a general discipline problem that they wanted to address. This would have surprised me, as my biggest fault as a brewer was still inexperience and forgetfulness, not insubordination, but given the position I was in at the moment, I clung to that thread of hope.
“You studied Chemical Engineering in college, right?” the brewmaster asked. He tried to sound sincerely inquisitive, but the irritation and excitement in his voice showed through. Any optimism I had vanished, as I immediately knew what the question meant. I had written about listening to my iPod at work. I also wrote a bit about my education history. Apparently he wanted to play with his prey before he ate it. Maybe he was expecting me to deny my authorship, but that was impossible. Every detail I had given pointed directly to me. He wasn’t going to outsmart me, but he didn’t have to. I had nowhere to hide.
“Yeah,” I said, giving a slight nod of admission.
“But you didn’t finish with that, did you?” Now his tone was reaching condescension. He was proud of himself for being so clever. I decided to take a little of the fun out of it.
“No, I ended up just deciding to finish up my history degree and get out with that,” I admitted, recalling and repeating what I had written as accurately as possible.
“Are you happy here?”
“I know where this is going,” I sighed, rolling my eyes a bit. It was three against one and I knew that no matter how I handled myself, there was no way to win this debate. I had no choice but to sit there and take the tongue lashing. There were brief moments that I eyed the door, positioned on the other side of the room, behind two tall, angry men. I questioned whether I should have entered the room at all.
“Oh you do?” he said, and slapped a manila folder down on the table, which he had been holding out of my sight. In it was everything I had written.
“Yeah, first off I want to say I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean for this to happen.” The unfortunate thing about such a situation, being intentionally ambushed, is that all I wanted was get to out of the room. Instead of maintaining the presence of mind to tell them that I stand behind every word I wrote, I started backpedaling and apologizing. Because of this, nothing I said was taken seriously. They rationalized my criticisms as someone who just didn’t like long hours and physical labor and had therefore manufactured a laundry list of unjustified complaints about the brewery itself.
As uncomfortable as the meeting was the saving grace was that I had complaints about three of the five managers, and those were the three I was sitting in the office with. It would have been a lot harder for me to have to face the other two, whom I truly liked and was extremely grateful to. One was the guy who had hired me, and the other was my direct boss, who had taken me under his wing and defended me whenever I made a mistake. In fact, for a while I felt pretty guilty about creating so many problems within the company that my friends would now have to deal with. Thankfully, they weren’t there that day, so the people confronting me were only those I had written about negatively.
The brewhouse manager sat to my right, and was very quiet throughout the whole process. He looked and sounded hurt, as if he were about to cry. All he really had to say to me was to repeat my accusation of his laziness, which he clearly took exception to. Of course, I had written that part of his problem was that he doesn’t see himself this way at all. He was always telling everyone else how hard he works, so I wasn’t exactly surprised by his reaction. He never said anything about coming in hours after scheduling himself, though, which was the single factual basis of my complaints.
The other two did not possess his subdued emotions. They were clearly just angry. The health and safety manager, sitting to my left, dominated a good bit of the conversation, essentially telling me I was an asshole and saying “I don’t understand why you’d do this,” while clearly ignoring my explanations of why exactly I had done it. He had nothing of substance to say and quickly became static that was ignored.
The conversation found focus as the brewmaster and I squared off directly. He sat across the table and glared at me angrily. It was hard to tell how much was an act designed to intimidate and how much was just anger leaking out. He lectured me on all sorts of subjects like “I’ve got investors from all over the continent calling me about this,” and “how long have you been here, 5 months?” as if those things canceled out the truths I had told. This is also when he attempted to denigrate my brewing knowledge by saying my comments on cask beer demonstrated that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Again, I wish I had had more time and presence of mind to explain myself. Instead, I just had to sit there and take it.
Then, as the coup de grace, he told me that “our legal department will be in contact with you,” claiming I had revealed proprietary information. He may have had serious intent here, or he may have just been trying to scare me, but a) I have never revealed where I worked by name, and b) I never did hear from the legal department.
My memory of that meeting remains vivid, but the one thing that remains hazy is the length. The only way I am able to estimate its length is by how much we talked about. I’d guess there was about fifteen minutes of conversation before they ran out of things to say and addressed the future. The brewmaster “highly encouraged” me to resign right then and there. His tone implied it was in my best interest, and that something bad would happen to me if I didn’t comply. It wasn’t until later that day I realized he wanted to avoid a wrongful termination suit. I don’t know what his threat held, but I thought about the door again, not looking this time. It felt strange to agree so quickly to something I was clearly being pressured into, but either way it was my escape. From that room, from that day, and from that job. He actually pulled out a blank piece of computer paper and a pencil and drafted a hasty letter of resignation that simply said “I hereby submit my resignation from [brewery]” and had me and everyone else in the room sign it. I enthusiastically agreed.
Then, in an attempt to get the final word, the brewmaster said something that has become the one part of the story I never forget to include. “And just think,” he said snidely, “you don’t have to call in sick tomorrow to watch your baseball game.” To preserve his delusion of sticking it to me, I had to lower my head slightly to hide a smile.
I was escorted to the brewhouse office to collect my belongings and clean out my locker by the health and safety manager. He continued his “I don’t understand you” routine and even said “you’re going to have real trouble finding another brewing job after this.” At that point I’m not sure why I bothered to even explain, as he clearly wasn’t listening to anything I said, but I repeated again that the entire message of the blog wasn’t about the brewery, but myself. It was the story of my dream to become a brewer, and the end to that dream.
Undaunted, he carried on with his bluster. To finally reach an end to the exchange I hurriedly shoved the last of my belongings into my bag and walked out of the brewery. I reached my car and looked for my keys, which had been hastily shoved deep in my bag. The brewhouse is on the second floor above the parking lot, and has a balcony overlooking it. The health and safety manager watched me from the balcony as I searched, clearly intent on seeing me entirely off the premises. The longer I looked, the more my fear grew that I had left them in my locker. But, just as my mind was finding images of reentering that building, my hand found the keys at the bottom of my bag. And with that, I was gone.
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