contax

On this site I hear quite a few complaints about work, mostly about being treated like crap by your boss. So, as a self employed person I have no complaints about my boss (me) but plenty about customers, which I will save for a later date. After college (PSU Geology 1995) I had a string of dead end jobs that amounted to nothing, but are good story telling.

First was Widmer Brothers Brewing Company. There new slogan is Two Ordinary Brother, Extraordinary Beer. Well when I was there the two brothers were total assholes, who's only concern was their 250K salaries for doing nothing all day long. I worked in production and was what the Widmer Nazi's called a Cellar Man (note the sexist term, Widmer has never had a woman employed in production outside of the bottling line). It bears mention that this term Cellar Man, is not used anywhere outside of Widmer. At say Anhesier Bush, if you work in making beer you are a brewer, but then again they have a union. At Widmer, I got hired to work for 8 dollars an hour, with a promise to move up to 10 if things worked out after 90 days. From the first day I set foot on the production floor, I never worked less than 42 hours in a week with the average being 69 hours and the longest week being 86 hours. Most days I got a very generous 10 minute morning break, and a nice 20 minute lunch, during which I would still have to do whatever I was assigned. This really does not sound all that bad, but keep in mind most days I started work at 4am and left work around 6:30-7:00pm. Yes in Oregon, this is Illegal.

While I was employed there, they had a nice company Banquet, where amongst other things they gave out the employee of the year award. Did I think I would get it--no, but some of my co-workers were working more hours than me, and I thought they might get it. Nope, it went to Anne Widmer, Kurt Widmers wife. Her job was to pick the paint colors for Kurt and Robs offices! This trend was not a fluke, next year, it was Ray Widmer the brothers father, then they changed the name of the award to the "Widmer Spirit Award", and you guessed it, it went to Rob Widmer, Then Kirk! They finally stopped giving it out, because they determined it was lowering moral too much! What the Fuck?

One morning (day after the company banquet) I had a little accident; I burned my leg with steam, that gave me an 8 inch blister. Were the Brothers Concerned--nope. They suspended my fringe benefits for 3 months, as it raised the costs of their workmans comp insurance! So no safety keg of beer for me, no free tee shit, or cap, no pilsner glass and mostly no discount for food at their restaurant.

While I worked this off, I got moved to the weekends with split days off, Wednesday and Saturday. Believe me you needed the two days off in a row. While working one Sunday, I was forced to drive a fork lift across the loading dock to get empty Kegs to fill. Along the way there was a rather badly placed fire sprinkler head, that stuck out of a wall, near a door that lead to the front offices. You guessed it, someone (bean counter) that was working on Sunday, came out the door, I swerved to avoid them, and blam, knocked the sprinkler head off (since my accident it has been knocked off four more times, and was finally moved). Well the Nazi's showed up, along with the fire department, and I got sent home! Yes, two days off in a row. When I came back in on Monday, the safety officer was there, trying to get me to sign a written warning saying I was acting unsafely--well you can guess what happened I refused. For the next few hours the intercom went crazy with all the management stunods trying to figure out what to do with me. What they came up with was that I was banned from forklift duty for 90 days. That meant that my 8-10 hours of beer racking detail would be split between washing Mexican food from the tops of dirty kegs and palletizing full Kegs. Both jobs where only worthwhile if you got the Forklift in-between to break up the heavy lifting. So what was a very physical job for 10-16 hours a day became super physical for me, and a cake walk for my co-workers. This really did not bother me too much, because, most of the time I got off racking for tank cleaning, beer stirring, or centrifuge training, and Quality control duty. This went on for a few weeks until the Centrifuge broke and they got a loaner. So I was training a co-worker one day, on this "loaner", and the production manager walked up and left me 4 tanks to clean, CIP the centrifuge, and consolidate some half full kegs clean the CO2 hoses wash the floor and then I could go home. It was 4 PM when this nice little order came in, and I had arrived at work at 3 am. Me being the kind of guy I was I started in and got to the last tank to be cleaned at 9:45pm, and I hooked it up wrong. 45 minutes later, I found I had to re-do the whole job. I had--had it.

I went to my locker, dumped all my safety gear out on the floor. Wrote a note, that read: Effective March 19th 1996 10:33pm, I Quit! Tossed it to the top of the pile, and walked out.

I went home, slept until noon the next day and applied for unemployment. The Bastards at Widmer tried to deny my claim, and when the appeal was done, I got my unemployment, and they got fined 10K. The only thing I did wrong was not blowing the Whistle on them way sooner. One break and a half a lunch, in a 16 hour day, is a violation of state law. Oh, those early mornings and late nights--no management was on premise! So if you had a complaint, who would it go to? Widmerthe worst 6 months of my life!

Next time, my warehouse job!

Once I recovered from this, nasty burn