20. Retrospecticus
What matters is what you do with power.
Salary Transparency Update
In my April newsletter, I discussed pay transparency and its benefits to both employees and employers. I suggested that industry job boards start requiring job posters to include compensation information in their job posts. I also emailed the Brewers Association (BA), Pink Boots Society (PBS), the Master Brewers Association of America (MBAA), and the American Society of Brewing Chemists (ASBC) to ask that they consider requiring employers to disclose compensation information on their job boards.
All of the organizations responded to my email pretty quickly. PBS shared that they just launched a new website and added the salary field to their job post, but the field is not required. As of mid-May, eleven of the twelve jobs posted on their website included pay ranges. Which is great! And hopefully employers continue to include compensation information when posting on the PBS job board.
The Brewers Association responded that their forum is a “non-ideal technical solution” for jobs. According to the BA, its forum is a member benefit and not accessible to non-members, and a portion of it (i.e. the Jobs forum) can’t be put outside of the paywall. They may be moving away from the platform entirely in the future, meaning the BA likely will no longer have a job board going forward. The forum manager will be pinning a best practice template for job postings in the forum that strongly encourages posters to include salary ranges, although that message has not been added as of the writing of this newsletter.1
The MBAA and ASBC are both managed by Scientific Societies, which means that Scientific Societies acts as the associations’ headquarters, manages daily operations, and creates the public face of both organizations. The MBAA added the following statement: “MBAA promotes pay equity through transparent compensation disclosure for both current and prospective employees, and we urge all job postings to include this information.” They also shared that the ASBC will have a similar statement added to their job board.
The MBAA and ASBC have the ability to make compensation information required but have chosen not to. The reason they gave was that, because posting salaries is not a legal requirement in many states, they think employers will not post on their job boards if they are required to disclose their compensation information. Big yikes and a big missed opportunity to support the industry.
Overall, some progress was made, but not enough.
It’s frustrating to hear messaging from these orgs that they care about its membership and about equity, but when asked to walk the talk (a relatively easy walk, more of a stroll), they decline and instead counteroffer tepid responses that don’t move the needle enough because… deepest pockets, I suppose?
To paraphrase a joke, we’re saying “Abolish prisons!” and these orgs responded, “We hear what you’re saying so we’re hiring more women guards.”
This is a great time to remind you that, if you are a member of any of these organizations, you are also paying money to support them. You have the right as a member to push them for progress and change. And no, I’m not recommending you join subcommittees to “be the change” you want to see in the organization because that tactic is usually used to control and silence people advocating for change.
It’s also a great time to let you know that I found the people to email by visiting their Contact Us pages. Which means you can do it, too. You don’t have to rely on others to advocate for change. You can advocate, too.
November 2021
It was about six months in when I said out loud the thing I never wanted to say out loud. The statement I’ve never wanted other people to know that I said. The statement that I’ve struggled with whether I should ever share it in this newsletter or elsewhere.
“Maybe I should never have spoken up.”
The preceding six months had been a roller coaster of high highs and the lowest of lows. I resigned from my job at the height of the industry’s 2021 #MeToo movement. I had gotten another job shortly thereafter, only to be laid off three months later due to the fiscal irresponsibility of the CEO.
I had two potential jobs on the horizon and had multiple interviews with both jobs. I had just returned from a cross-country trip for an in-person interview. I interviewed with several people throughout the day, retelling the fascinating story of me (/s/) and providing thoughtful answers to all the stupid situational questions you get asked during an interview that are somehow supposed to predict your performance at a new job.
I mean, does anyone ever really answer a question like “Tell me about a time you had a disagreement with a co-worker and how you handled it” with an honest answer like, “I bitched about it to my work friends and crafted hypothetical ways to undermine their work without ever taking any action or addressing the issue”?
Throughout the day, I was repeatedly asked how I would handle a coworker who is “difficult,” how I would resolve an issue with a co-worker, and how I approached management with issues. The difficult coworker question was posed to me so many times that I finally asked a potential future coworker for the tea over lunch about who the difficult person was at the company with which it seemed everyone had issues.
A pause. “You,” they replied. “They’re worried about you being a difficult employee.”
They explained that they understood why I had left my previous job and that the team I would be working on understood, but that management was wary. I appreciated the honesty as well as the support.
But I still cried in my rental car driving back to the next round of afternoon interviews.
And I cried when I got back to my hotel.
And I cried the next morning.
And, to be honest, I cried as I wrote this.
I haven’t told a lot of this story before and I’m feeling strong enough to share some of the most vulnerable moments of my life with an audience.
It still hurts, even after almost three years. Workaholism runs in both sides of my family, particularly with my parents. Although they are both retired now, I think if asked to describe themselves, both would start with describing their careers. Like a good capitalist drone, I learned that your career and your productivity within that career are the most important things in your life, aside from your credit score.
I have always prided myself on being a Good Employee. I’m punctual, reliable, and rarely miss work. I’m still friends with coworkers I haven’t worked with in 10-20 years. I’ve done some major work in unlearning the “rise and grind” mindset and resolved years ago to not let my career define me. However, like most people, I still want to do a good job at work and be liked by the people I work with. To have a potential employer ask me, “How do I know that you’re not going to have a bad day at work and blast us on social media?” was devastating and damn near made me leave the industry altogether.
To be clear, I understand why employers would be on the qui vive about me. Here is someone who resigned from a job without notice and shared it publicly. Employers absolutely should ask me about it during the interview process. In fact, when an employer didn’t, I found it odd because either 1) they thought they understood the situation and, as the above story illustrates, they often did not or 2) they didn’t know that I had resigned and was pretty publicly advocating within the industry. Honestly, I’m not sure which is worse - that you presume you know the story or that you hadn’t paid attention to what was happening in the industry because you didn’t think you needed to.
Also, to be fair,2 it hadn’t occurred to me that a potential employer would see my resignation as anything but taking a stance on sexism in the industry. I assumed that an employer who would see my resume come across their desk knew what my expectations were for being treated as an employee (pretty simple - please don’t discriminate against me on the basis of my gender) and that scheduling a job interview with me implied we were on the same page.3
May 21, 2021
Multiple people knew I was resigning from my job before it happened. I worked on my resignation letter and sent it to a handful of trusted friends for their feedback. I was so nervous about overlooking some detail of my resignation - such as writing “please see my resignation letter attached” and forgetting the attachment - that I made an infinitesimally detailed list of steps to take.
The day before I planned to resign, I fucked up at work. Big time. Like an all-hands-on-deck kind of crisis that required a bunch of leadership and vendors on multiple phone calls. It was not on purpose or malicious, it was an innocent mistake made with incomplete information that had big consequences.4
I knew that if I resigned the next day, it wouldn’t matter what I said or what was going on in the industry or what I had been advocating for during my employment - leadership was going to insist I had quit because of the mistake I had made.5
I stayed up late writing a list of all of my ongoing projects, their status, and, when relevant, who the contact person was or who internally could take over the project. I tried to sleep, which lasted for maybe an hour before I got back up and checked and double-checked my project list and felt my stomach churn. I obsessively refreshed Instagram to see if other stories had been shared. I felt a knot deep in my stomach every time I saw the notification that Brienne had shared another story. Three years later, I still recall that visceral feeling of dread but also validation but also rage but also sadness.
As night turned into morning, I started drinking (too much) coffee, which only made my jitters worse. We had a 9:00 a.m. call with the app vendor to make sure my mistake from the day before had been rectified.
Yes, I am such a Good Employee that I attended a meeting minutes before I resigned to make sure the problem I caused was taken care of, so I didn’t leave anyone in the lurch. One of the web contractors said he and I would meet back in an hour to confirm the issue was solved. I agreed, knowing full well that an hour later, the company and I would look quite different.
Shaking, I followed my detailed list. I meticulously checked that my resignation email in fact had both my resignation letter and project list attached. I pressed send, slammed my laptop shut, and went downstairs. My husband was out on our deck and, when I came outside, he asked if I had done it. Crying and shaking, I nodded my head and he swept me up in a big comforting hug, telling me he was proud of me.6
I waited a few hours before saying anything publicly because the leadership at that brewery is well known for not only being very quick to threaten to sue employees who spoke out critically of them but also liked to brag about the wealth and basically limitless resources of themselves and their investor. I had discreetly asked a local attorney friend for referrals to employment lawyers in case I needed it. I stated in my resignation email that I had every intention of completing the necessary offboarding but said that I would be taking a few days away from my computer. No one threatened legal action, although there were several nefarious actions taken to silence others from coming forward.7
When the year anniversary of my resignation was approaching, I wondered how I would feel about it. By that point, I had (still have) a job that I really love and was continuing to do advocacy work within the industry. The day came and passed and I was surprised by the lack of emotion I felt. I observed the day somewhat indifferently like I was in a doctor’s waiting room watching HGTV. Two years later, I actually had a little more emotion about it, which surprised me. But it was more so “Wow, look at what I’ve accomplished since then. Look at what I went through and came out stronger.”
This year, I didn’t think about it at all until I opened Facebook and saw that my resignation letter was in that day’s memories. That evening, as my husband and I were sitting on the same deck where he had given me that big hug three years ago, I said in passing that it had been three years since I had left. He said that it seemed really long ago but not that long ago at the same time and I agreed.
So much has changed in the past three years, but so much hasn’t. I’m not sorry I spoke up, but I’m also not sorry that at one point I was sorry.
To pay attention without expecting marginalized people to bare their wounds for consumption as trauma porn, for entertainment purposes only, just to declare themselves satiated and push their chairs away from the table.
True advocacy means that you are uncomfortable. If you are not uncomfortable, you are performative. I’m still learning what it means to be an advocate and show up for others and I don’t plan on reaching a point where I feel like I’ve learned everything there is to learn. I still commit white feminism from time to time but resolve to sit with the discomfort and learn from it. It has gotten easier to have difficult conversations and push back against unsatisfactory actions. It’s not all wins, which sometimes makes continuing hard. Sometimes it causes me to wonder if I should have spoken up. Sometimes it feels hopeless.
But sometimes I meet someone who asks if they can give me a hug and thank me for the advocacy I have done. Sometimes, I’ve had people randomly message me to let me know that they applied for a job or a scholarship or some other opportunity and got it, that they wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t for something I did or said that resonated with them. Thankfully and fortuitously, many of those times came during the darkest days when I found it hard to get out of bed, let alone advocate for myself and others. When I felt lost and misunderstood and like everything I stood for was a waste of time, someone would unknowingly pull me out of it by reaching out.
It seems like this year, a lot more people are being retrospective about the 2021 #MeToo movement in the industry, which makes me happy because we’ve been here this whole time, working in the background and sometimes the foreground to push the industry to improve.
We’ve wished people would pay attention again. Pay attention without expecting marginalized people to bare their wounds for consumption as trauma porn, for entertainment purposes only, just to declare themselves satiated and push their chairs away from the table. We’re also trying to do this in a world where there are genocides and other atrocities happening right now that demand that we not look away.
I had been working on another topic for this month’s newsletter, but decided to share my story instead because I haven’t told a lot of this story before and I’m feeling strong enough to share some of the most vulnerable moments of my life with an audience. It’s important to me that you all know that advocacy, for yourself and others, is not a linear process and there will be setbacks. At the risk of sounding like a class valedictorian graduation speech, how we respond to the setbacks is the thing, not the setbacks themselves.
Stay strong, but it’s okay to feel weak sometimes. Keep pushing forward, even when you feel like you’re not making progress. But also, be aware of the sunk cost fallacy as well as toxic positivity. Know that you can quit at any time to protect yourself and that’s okay. Wear sunscreen.8
I last checked the forum on May 30, 2024. It’s possible I missed where this statement is located, although I looked pretty thoroughly. If the statement has been posted, please let me know and I will update my subscribers next month.
Please read this in your best Letterkenny voice.
Also to be fair, I’m not villanizing this company or the employees who work there. I think many of them are awesome and I’m happy to have met them in person and have stayed in contact.
Among other things I did at that job, I created the brewery’s mobile app. I was trying to get everything set up before I resigned and accidentally sent discount coupons to about 30,000 people for a location we hadn’t even officially announced was open. Not the end of the world, to be sure, but a crisis to me nonetheless.
By the by, the CSMO insisted I quit “for the attention” because I had lost a Board seat in a women’s organization. To this day, I do not know where he got this idea, or what Board seat he thought I lost, or what organization he was talking about. So, thanks for proving my point that leadership ignored blatant sexism by being blatantly sexist!
I acknowledge that being able to quit a job on principle without another job lined up is an enormous privilege. If I were not part of a dual-income household where my partner earns almost twice as much as I do, I would not have been able to take this step. This is also why I have no patience for people who say things like, “If it’s so bad, just leave and get another job.” It’s not that easy, particularly in the hospitality industry.
I’ll save this story for another time, but if any investigative journalists want to get in touch, HMU.
I’m guessing a lot of you bbs don’t understand this reference, so here is a link.
Thank you for sharing and doing the difficult work for others ♥️