18. Mind the Gap and Keep the Gate
Please won't someone think of the strawmen?!?
A couple of years ago, I was interviewing for a sensory analyst position at a mid-size regional brewery.1 My first interview was with the human resources representative. The job posting did not list a salary range. Inevitably, the rep asked what my current salary was and where I would like to be.
“Well,” I responded jokingly, “I’m currently unemployed so my salary is zero. I’d like more than that, haha.”
“We can definitely do better than zero,” she laughed. “But what salary would you like?”
I inhaled, my heart started beating a little faster, and I stuck with the answer I had resolved to be brave about2: “Actually, in the spirit of equity and transparency, will you instead tell me what the salary range is?”
A brief pause.
“Actually, we don’t have a range yet. What salary are you looking for?” 👀
Hmmmm, okay, I thought internally, but you just told me that your company budgeted to add this position this year. So if there’s a budget, it seems like there is an allotted salary range.
“Oh! In that case, can I ask for a million dollars?” I laughed.
“Haha, no we can’t do a million dollars, unfortunately.” She laughed back.
Well, the contrarian in me thought, you said you could pay more than zero but less than one million dollars. So there is a range.
Later that day, I interviewed with the person who would be my manager, and he again told me that they had added this position to this year’s budget. They had originally budgeted for it the year before but decided to buy a GCMS instead. Which, fair. If I could have a choice between a GCMS and pretty much anything else, I would take the GCMS, too.
I never did find out what the salary range for that position was and they never found out what kind of salary I wanted (beyond somewhere between one dollar and one million dollars).
Pay transparency is the practice of making information about employee compensation readily available to employees, job applicants, and the public. In recent years, several states have made it a legal requirement for employers to meet certain pay transparency standards, such as listing the hourly rate or salary compensation, a general description of other forms of compensation (bonuses, commissions, etc.), and a general description of all employment benefits.3
Luckily, most of us are happy that we’re not expected to not care about salary anymore and pretend that money doesn’t matter when it comes to being employed. The overwhelming majority of people have to trade their bodies as capital to survive in the world. Money matters. Salary is a key factor when considering whether to apply for a job and we need to stop pretending that it isn’t.
There is a growing amount of research showing how pay transparency benefits both employers and employees. Anecdotally, I asked a friend who is a business owner with employees if she advertises her pay rates when posting a job. She responded yes, in large part because not doing so wastes her time and the time of the applicants.
Some benefits to employers include demonstrating credibility and transparency, which builds trust with not only employees and job candidates but also the wider industry. As my friend mentioned, it also saves employers time and money on recruitment.
And guess what? Listing pay ranges makes you a more equitable employer because you’re reducing potential discrimination and inequality.
I’ll confess that when I first started this newsletter research, I was going to discuss the importance of job candidates, especially women and people of color, negotiating for higher salaries. However, the more I researched, the more I learned that negotiating for more money can negatively impact historically excluded communities. For example, women are penalized more than men for trying to negotiate their pay.
I have two personal experiences with this, both with the same brewery. When I was interviewing for my position, my would-be manager told me the pay range for the job. I was disheartened to learn that it was significantly less than what I was expecting and was indeed below my current salary as a non-profit Executive Director. Still, for a variety of reasons, I saw this job as an opportunity and could swing the lower salary.4 When I was offered the position, they initially offered me a salary in the lower-middle range. I countered by asking for the highest salary in the range because 1. I was worth it and 2. I also exceeded the listed qualifications for the job and felt my starting salary should acknowledge that. My soon-to-be boss sighed and said, “Well, I did tell you that that was the upper range of the salary so I guess that’s fine.”5
A year and a half later, I was getting an annual review and asked for a promotion and a $10,000 raise. I didn’t just ask for a $10,000 raise, I came to my annual review meeting with a list I had been keeping on my phone of all the things I had done that I felt warranted that $10,000, including getting the brewery a $10,000 grant of free advertising in an industry publication, which is pretty huge. I also made a note on my personal review that I would like my pay to be commensurate with the other managers in the company (all men). I also showed up to my annual review meeting with a job description I had written for the role I was proposing the company create for me, complete with a one-year and five-year plan for how the role could expand. I was prepared.
My review took place with my immediate supervisor, our boss, and our human resources director. Toward the end of the meeting, our boss and human resources director signed off, leaving just me and my immediate supervisor. For reasons that will become apparent shortly, it is relevant to note that my supervisor was wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with PRACTICE RADICAL EMPATHY.
“Some people found your request to be paid the same as the men who are managers to be…terse.” He said, presumably practicing radical empathy with the fragile masculinity of the company leadership. Also, words like terse, brusque, shrill, abrasive, and hysterical are used against women and women alone. In fact, when I’ve related this story to men in the past, I have had several ask me what “terse” means because they had never heard it. MUST BE NICE.
I was shocked and speechless that this was actually happening. Like, I’ve heard of this happening, but it was kind of like an urban legend or something that happened to my ancestors, not something that happened in real life. Not something that was happening to me, right now.
“It’s not my job to manage the emotions of the men who run this company,” I was finally able to get out.
“No one is saying that it is,” he snapped, “but you should know that saying things like that will harm your ability to move up in this company.”
So what do we do here? We’re told to always ask for more, to negotiate, and, if higher pay isn’t an option, try to get more PTO or other benefits. This presumes that women and men are treated equally, that people of color and white people are treated equally, that people with disabilities and people without disabilities are treated equally, the list goes on. We know that’s not true. What’s also untrue is that being able to negotiate your pay is an indicator of how well you will do your job.
Pay transparency is not a panacea. But it levels the playing field in a major way. Employers can post a range or explicitly state the posted salary is take-it-or-leave-it and remove any need to negotiate.
An attainable, tangible, and relatively painless way to encourage pay transparency in the beer industry is for organizations like the Brewers Association, Pink Boots Society, ASBC, MBAA, Brewbound, and any other company that has a job board to require that job postings contain salary information as well as disclosure of other compensation and benefits. For the Brewers Association and Brewbound specifically, this is a pretty easy lift because they are both located in states that already legally require pay transparency - if the BA wants to post an internal position, they have to disclose the pay range, so why not make it a blanket policy for anyone wanting to use their job forum?
Say, there just so happens to be a conference happening at the end of this month where reps from ALL of the above will be! I won’t be attending this year for obvious reasons, but I know some of you will.
The BA famously wrings its hands and declares that it’s unaware of inequity in the brewing industry because disenfranchised people haven’t jumped through the very specific and time-consuming hoops the BA has demanded people follow before they’ll listen.
However, Lady Justice Brewing recently posted about a February meeting they had with BA representatives wherein Bob Pease, the BA CEO, said that the Voting Members Meeting is a place where the (almost entirely white) Board “truly listens” (I guess they don’t listen other times?) and encourages members to attend. Suppose you’ll be in attendance and agree that requiring a stated salary on all job posts is beneficial to the industry. In that case, I highly encourage you to bring this up not only at the member meeting (which is Tuesday, April 23 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. in the Galileo 1001 room) but also with the other aforementioned organizations.6
I’m a Flavorama Mama
The TL;DR of it all: Go get Flavorama: A Guide to Unlocking The Art and Science of Flavor by Dr. Arielle Johnson.
This. Book. Is. Everything. I am a huge fan of Arielle Johnson and preordered this book as soon as I could, which made for an excruciating six-month wait. The book arrived on a Friday preceding a weekend I had purposely kept clear so I could read this book for the entire weekend. I apologized in advance to one of my friends who also received the book the same day for spamming her with love notes about this book. We both had the idea that we should be reading it at the same time in the same room or at least over the phone.
Dr. Johnson explains complicated concepts in a way that is educational, demystifying, and hilarious. Describing taste receptors as monogamous and smell receptors as polyamorous? Are you kidding me?!? That’s gold, baby.
In February’s newsletter, I wrote about in-group affinity and knowing you belong to a group. Most sensory literature tends to be in textbook form, staid and dry, with scientific terms and concepts thrown around like it’s universal knowledge. This book is my humor, with pop culture references I not only understand (rare when you’re over 40) but that demonstrate complicated concepts in a lighthearted and approachable way.
I’m currently about halfway through the book because I get overexcited about the information within it and start researching some of the stuff she talks about and/or rapid-fire texting people or talking at them about whatever I just read.
Seriously, get this book.
And finally…
Before we leave each other, here are a few more things that I am up to these days:
Preparing for the two presentations I will be giving at Crafted for Action. One presentation will be virtual and the topic is how to build a beer recipe. The other presentation will be in-person and I will be co-presenting with LaTreace Harris, aka The Beery Godmother. LaTreace and I will be doing a beer style “exploder” session (a similar concept to Song Exploder) wherein we’ll break a handful of beer styles down into their components and you’ll be able to taste malt steeps, smell hop teas, and much more!
Reading Flavorama: A Guide to Unlocking The Art and Science of Flavor by Dr. Arielle Johnson and Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes by Christine Yu. Women are not small men and science needs to stop treating us as such.
Listening to Black History, For Real by Conscious Lee and Franchesca Ramsey. This is a new podcast as of January 2024, so catch up on all 8 released episodes.
Not in the Southeast US.
When I talk about embracing the “shaky hands of advocacy” this is an example of what I’m talking about.
As of March 2024, these states include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, and Washington. Other states considering salary transparency requirements include Alaska, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
I am also part of a two-income household and my spouse earns more than I do, which enabled me to take a lower-paying job. I recognize that this is a huge privilege that is not available to many people.
Yes, as I have previously acknowledged, I ignored a lot of red flags with this job.
Ask them all for an update on the BRU Coalition, too. Remember that? Do they?