Almost a year and a half ago I started this blog. I very honestly – and naively – thought it would be read by very few people. I understood that the internet is a public place, but so is a telephone pole in Salisaw, Oklahoma. In other words, just because something is publically posted for anyone to read doesn’t mean that any given person actually discovers it. I thought that if I posted it publically, but only told a select audience where to find it, no one who I didn’t want to see it would ever come across it. Boy, was I wrong.
I made my first post here on Wednesday October 24, 2007, the beginning of my weekend at the time. In the next 24 hours I made 3 more posts. By Friday, I was alerted that I was being linked and mentioned on Lew Bryson’s blog, another beer writer with a relatively large readership. I knew this was a problem. If anyone from work discovered the blog, I would be fired.
Because, believe it or not, I didn’t want this to happen, at least not in this way, I immediately went into damage control mode. I deleted the entire blog so hastily I didn’t even keep a record of what I wrote. It wasn’t until a few days later that I actually realized I might want the copy for one reason or another, and was lucky to discover that it survived in many places. I started an email conversation with Lew asking him to do me the favor of removing all mention of it from his blog, explaining why. He was extremely courteous and expedient, for which I have to thank him. It was too late, though. As I was to learn, it had already fallen into many of the wrong hands. While it may not have felt that way at the time, this ended up being a good thing.
Many people have wondered why I did what I did, and why I reacted in the way I did. The answer is far more complicated than the assertions that I was a disgruntled employee trying to smear the company, or that I was just a pussy who couldn’t take a tough job and wanted to bitch. What I’ve come to realize in the time since it happened, is that I really had two levels of motivation. Again, the question has been raised as to how I possibly could not have realized that I would be discovered. I think I truly didn’t know if I would be or not, and I was OK with either one happening.
Scenario 1: Only a few friends read the blog. On the one hand, this is really what I expected. I have always had an attitude of “who the hell am I?” that made it pretty difficult for me to imagine anyone actually paying attention to anything I said. I knew no one from work would just stumble across it, but I somehow never anticipated the possibility of someone like Lew linking to it, escalating the level of exposure monumentally. In many ways, this scenario was all I really wanted, or all I thought I wanted. It would become a comprehensive way to tell my stories to all the friends I had who are into beer. And, as I mentioned, it would be a way to vent. I obviously was frustrated on a daily basis and it would feel good to get my frustrations out, even if virtually no one was reading them. This way, I would be able to leave on my own terms and find a job that was better for me.
Scenario 2: The blog gets real attention. Over time, I’ve realized more and more that, despite not expecting it, I really did want this in many ways.
First of all, I really did want to be fired. I had mentally checked out of the job and was more and more miserable there by the day. You can call me a pussy all you want, but the truth is I worked my ass off and kept my mouth shut. The first month or more, I was even happy to perform every ugly task. I had no problem with my salary, my hours, or my responsibilities because I was doing something I loved: making beer. I saw my hard work as noble, because it was taking me somewhere. It wasn’t until I started to see that my hard work wasn’t accomplishing the two goals I had (making a product I believed in, and gaining experience to leverage into a job I truly wanted) that I became miserable.
I suspect that everyone there was pretty shocked when they learned about the blog, because I was never one to complain. I did what I was told, even if I didn’t like or agree with it. Ironically, as you’ll see, the “Why I Hate My Job” posts were a three part series, and I never got the chance to post the third part. That was where I was going to explain why there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with the job, it just wasn’t for me, and I knew I needed to move on because I wasn’t going to be personally satisfied there. I’m still asked by friends constantly if I ever think about getting back into brewing. They say that they understand why I didn’t like working where I did, but that maybe somewhere else it would be different. I always respond that I just don’t know that the job has what I’m looking for anymore. So, in a lot of ways, I was like a cheating spouse careless about covering their tracks, hoping to be caught and get out of the relationship I’m not happy in.
Secondly, I had grand aspirations of being an agent of change. As mentioned, many people viewed what I wrote as “smear.” I suppose it’s an issue of semantics, but for me to have been smearing the company, I would have had to be saying things that were untrue. To this day I stand behind everything I said. I believe in doing things differently than we did there. In fact, I have read people saying there are “inconsistencies” in what I wrote, but I challenge anyone to point one out.* While I didn’t like the way things were done sometimes, I was never treated poorly. I had no vendetta against the company or delusions of bringing them down. Hell, I had more friends there than I did adversaries. I knew that, even if it was widely read, my writing would have no impact on their success. I wished no harm on the brewery, only improvement. What I really wanted to do was give them a good hard look in the mirror. They knew about the criticism of the brewery from the beer geek community, but they shrugged it off. They thought that critics were just people who don’t enjoy their style of beer, and that they shouldn’t be listened to. I truly hoped that calling them out publically would help them see the difference between the mediocrity they were achieving and the greatness they could reach. I personally love well crafted English ales, and I think the brewery had good recipes and potential, but just lacked the commitment to quality required to make them great. In debates about “the big three” of Bud/Miller/Coors I often hear people defending them by saying they may not make the most exciting, best tasting beers, but they are great at what they do which is consistency and marketing. They are massively successful at these things. On the other extreme, there are truly great craft brewers that might not turn huge profits, but they make the best tasting beers in the world. My former employer is stuck somewhere in between don’t seem to realize it. They don’t make the best beer, and they don’t make the most money, but they apparently think they’re excelling at both.
*The only thing I might slightly retract in hindsight is the mention of fining the cask beer, which really was just poorly worded. I understand that we were making traditional English ales, and that the English tradition of cask ales calls for a perfectly clear brew. What I was trying to say was that, while this may be the heritage, this is not a priority to the modern American cask ale enthusiasts that I know. The raw, unprocessed feel suggested by the higher temperature, low carbonation and thick, creamy texture are reminiscent of the days long before large batch industrial brewing techniques. A cloudy appearance goes hand in hand with this experience, which makes fining a cask seem completely ludicrous to me. I understand that in this case it may not be a matter of right and wrong, but just entirely different sensibilities. To me, it was just another sign that we were focusing more on superficial distractions than what the beer actually tastes like. It was suggested to me by the brewmaster that my mention of this demonstrated that I “didn’t know what I was talking about” which I’m hoping you can all realize isn’t the case at all.
So, since I now know that I can’t change them, or the brewing industry, why am I back writing about it? There are plenty of people who will just look at me as the turd in the punch bowl. As I was asked on my way out the door, “why do people feel the need to say negative things about anyone?” All I can say to that is I love beer, and when you love something you want the best for it. Any critic, of beer, film, literature, politics or anything else, wants to see success. When I drink a beer, I don’t want to hate it so I can go on the internet and trash it, I want a great experience. When I see the potential for something better, I feel a responsibility to demand that potential be realized.
I am not sure exactly what direction this blog will head in the future, but I plan to have a lot of positive things to say about the great happenings in the beer world. The job of a journalist is to inform, not to sugarcoat. I’m reviving this blog because I just want to write about beer, and I know this is somewhere I will find an audience. I can’t expect everyone to like my opinions or even me (hell, I know some people already don’t like me all that much) but all I ask is that you read.
This is obviously a work in progress, and things might get moved around a bit, but somewhere on here you will be able to read the original posts that started it all, with only a few minor edits solely to correct typos and clarify the meaning of a couple sentences. I recognize that I was pretty hasty in my posting back then and the writing isn’t great at times, but I wanted to present it as is. I’m planning posts on my last day of work, what I’ve been up to since then, and the long overdue “Why I Hate My (Former) Job (Part 3 of 3).” After that, I’m not sure. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, even if it’s just to say you’re reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment