“It’s very American to have our identities completely driven by our professions,” says Julia Herz.
Herz is both familiar with the concept as well as representative of it. For over 16 years, she was an integral part of the Brewers Association, and for 13 of those years, she served as the face of its craft beer programming. Her responsibilities included writing and publishing content for CraftBeer.com, helping update bylaws and codes like the 2017 Marketing and Advertising Code, presenting at numerous BA events, working on the team that launched the Independent Craft Brewer Seal, and much more.
Herz describes her tenure as one of “mutual growth”: as the community and culture of craft beer changed, so did her job. “Over the years, the role became what I did and what I was proud to have accomplished … I wore my passion and care for the beverage and the brewers on my sleeve. I'm just that way—I’m raw and real and authentic and scrappy, just like the craft brewer.”
Despite what seemed to be a perfect career fit, COVID-19 had other plans. In June 2020, Herz, her team, and a total of 24 BA employees were laid off in a move she calls a surprise, especially in the wake of a previous round of layoffs that she’d survived. Rudderless, she withdrew.
“It was—it is—a process of grief, a process of loss of sleep and weight,” she says. “All of a sudden, you're not doing what you were doing for 10-plus years … nothing fit anymore.” Today, she describes her state as “liminal”: “The stage after grief where you're at the threshold of something new, [but] you're still in the feeling of the loss and the change of a pattern and habits … I'm glad to be in a new phase of grief that will take me to the other side.”
COVID-19 has irrevocably altered not just our personal lives, but also our interlinked notions of work and self-worth. The disruption to our livelihoods can, for many, translate into a loss of sense of self, in addition to income. If we’re struggling to situate or explain ourselves right now, it’s because we’re not ourselves—at least, not our “before” selves.
“In the U.S., the first thing we are asked on meeting someone new is, ‘What do you do?’” says Margaret J. King, Ph.D, director of the Philadelphia-based Center for Cultural Studies & Analysis, a research institute that interprets and predicts human behavior. “Since we have social mobility, not a fixed class system—as in [parts of] Asia, Europe, and South America—the answer is a solid clue to our aspirational identity. Who we are [and] where we are going around the social equity board.”
If, in contemporary American society, work equals social standing to such a degree, how does a person understand their value once separated from their profession? Voluntary departure from a job can diminish feelings of confusion and loss, but involuntarily expulsion from a position intricately tied to self-identity can be “devastating or confusing,” according to Justin Blaney, D.M., affiliate professor at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business and author of the upcoming book Relationshift: How You Became You and How to Change into Whoever You Want to Be. “100,000 years ago, if we weren't a part of a tribe, we died,” he says. “In the United States, its capitalistic system that we’re in is a filter or a lens that has taken our evolutionary instincts, on the subconscious level, and manifests them in a practical way that we all live in.”
Qualifying our identities through our labor remains an inescapable side effect of capitalism. “In this system, it’s all about success, so if we've been raised in that culture, in that satisfying our evolutionary instinct which we have a strong desire to satisfy, then when that gets taken away from us, we're going to be at a complete loss. We're not going to know who we are, because we've been raised in the system,” says Blaney. “This at least explains why we feel things. The question about what to do about them is another matter.”
The beer and hospitality industries have been some of the worst-affected in the pandemic, with plummeting numbers of job openings while unemployment skyrockets to historic levels. Add in the mental and financial tolls stemming from the yo-yo of closures and openings, an industry penchant for mixing personal and professional relationships, and social clout often dictated by one’s place of employment, and this pervasive splintering of community can translate easily into personal crisis.
By exploring stories of unemployment within the beer industry—some of which transpired due to COVID-19 and some not, some of which were voluntary and others compulsory—we can reexamine the universality of loss and rebirth. And just maybe, we can begin to entertain new ways of understanding our individual worth.
For Herz, the other side of loss is entrepreneurship. HerzMuses Enterprises is a consulting and educational firm that leverages her existing contacts in craft beer to continue to provide support to the industry in myriad ways. It’s not what she pictured herself doing in 2020, but it’s the “logical best step,” she says. “You get out of that grief phase and you move towards, ‘Am I going to be able to look back and say that I made the most of change that wasn’t planned?’”
Herz is transparent about the anxiety she still faces, navigating a solitary road after investing years of time and energy in an organization she’s no longer a part of. “The fear and uncertainty is there, and I’m keeping that in check,” she says. “I'm using this time to basically learn how to pause, to learn how to take time … [because] I know I have so much more to contribute.”
The role of brewery spokesperson—whether it’s established organically or strategically—often falls to owners, founders, or company higher-ups (think Greg Koch of Stone Brewing, Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery, or Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company). But certain people transcend their positions to become ubiquitously tied to their respective companies. In Jeremy Danner’s case, he was “the Boulevard guy.”
“When people thought of me, they thought of Boulevard,” Danner explains when discussing his former tenure at Kansas City’s Boulevard Brewing Company. “I’d planned on working at Boulevard for forever.”
Forever turned out to be just over 11 years. He’d started humbly on the packaging line, but eventually ascended to a brewing position and ultimately took on a hybrid marketing role as an ambassador brewer, a position that he describes as being “one of the more prominent faces of the brewery.” He laughs: “That’s such an awkward phrase to use, but that’s what it was.”
The brewery supported his evolution, he says, with a fluid job description that played to his strengths. But by June 2019, his role had evolved to a degree that was “hard to explain to people outside the brewery, [and] even internally,” Danner admits. “So we got to a point within the organization that it was determined that it was time to restructure that role as ambassador brewer, and that meant eliminating it.”
Extricating himself from the position that had defined him for over a decade, during which time he’d also gone through major life changes like getting married and having a child, left him rattled. “It's a weird thing. You sort of lose your sense of self away from that [career]. And I was like—not that I've ever been cool—but am I still cool if I don't work at Boulevard anymore? Will people still want to hang out with me, be associated with me, and will I still be able to accomplish the things I want to do in both work and play without Boulevard connected to me? That was scary.”
So Danner did what Danner does best: He turned to Twitter to announce his departure. As a prodigious user of the social network, he’s long had to navigate the squishy boundaries that come with publicly presenting his opinions as an individual versus as a representative of the brewery. But he’s also cultivated deeply meaningful relationships on the platform over the years. It came as no surprise that his Twitter statement led to 4 Hands Brewing Company in St. Louis offering him a position as an on-premise specialist and brand ambassador almost immediately, which he accepted. Still, recovering from the loss of what he’d anticipated would be his home for life took time. “Losing your job sucks,” says Danner. “I was in the dumps a little bit for sure.”
Still, he’s adamant that without Boulevard’s investment in his professional growth during an epochal time of personal evolution, his sense of self-identity would likely be quite different today. “I’m super grateful for all the opportunities Boulevard gave me … Apart from treasuring the time I had at Boulevard, I grew up a lot there.”
“When I was working at the brewery, it was all brewery, all the time,” says Caitlin Van Horn, referring to her time as Brooklyn Brewery’s marketing coordinator. “It was not only my work life, but my social life.” She laughs. “That was before there was a well-deserved backlash to calling your work your family.”
Blurring the lines between personal and professional relationships is pervasive across the hospitality industry. Craft beer is no exception, especially when status within the industry is often unevenly distributed depending on the perceived coolness or cachet of different establishments. People accept lower compensation to work in beer in exchange for social credibility, Van Horn says, something she faced when she decided to leave Brooklyn.
“Everyone thinks working at a brewery is a really cool job. And it was. I traveled everywhere. I was massively underpaid, but it seemed really cool.” She describes how it affected even her romantic relationships: She was dating someone who enjoyed the perks of the beer scene, and ultimately dumped her when she parted ways with the industry. “It felt really isolating,” she admits. “My whole world was Brooklyn Brewery—until it wasn’t.”
Leaving Brooklyn was seen “as a betrayal” by her colleagues in the industry, handing Van Horn an extra helping of adversity on top of having to restructure her entire life. “I basically didn’t drink beer for about a year,” she says, consciously avoiding certain bars where she ran the risk of running into former coworkers. It was then that she decided to diverge her profession from her passion. “It’s really important to me that my work is not number one, because it's not just your work that’s number one, it becomes your work that is everything,” she continues, explaining that her volunteer work in reproductive rights has helped shape her into a more whole being without having to risk a potential professional split.
“I'm lucky in that I'm a white woman, so the institutional barriers to succeeding and getting that kind of fulfillment out of a job are not particularly high for me,” says Van Horn. “But for other people, especially people who are marginalized in much more difficult ways, it's such a fucking scam to be like, ‘You should be happy because you're getting a dream job’ when you have to hop over so many hurdles to get there, and once you're there, you will probably get treated like scum … that's the thing that capitalism has taught you to do, and I think it's the thing that makes so many of us so unhappy.”
Today, in addition to her work as the marketing manager for a podcasting company, Van Horn strives to provide value to others, as well as herself, through volunteering, specifically as a safety escort at abortion clinics and as a fundraiser for reproductive rights. “Having these volunteer opportunities has really given me some perspective,” she says. “I concretely helped expand abortion access in New York State. Those are the things that feel really valuable to me, not that I sold some beer … where I work is, frankly, the least interesting part about me, and I like it that way.”
On Aug. 24, 2020, Alyssa Thorpe posed this question to her nearly 34,000 Instagram followers: “Who am I and how do I define myself as an individual?”
Existential questions of this nature have dogged humans for eons, but COVID-19 has exacerbated these musings. For social media influencers like Thorpe, identity is so inextricably bound up in outside validation that it can prove arduous to even the most self-confident participants to define themselves without it. In her case, the craft beer community has helped her embrace her own definition of self, even as the pandemic forced her into a two-month furlough from her role as head brewer at Denver’s Jagged Mountain Craft Brewery earlier this year.
“It was one of those things where I've been working for this moment in my career for five years, and for it to come to a complete stop … was initially pretty devastating to me. It almost felt like a part of myself had died a little bit, because I wasn’t doing something that I loved,” Thorpe says. “So I started, like my post said, looking inward.”
It’s not the first time Thorpe had altered her career trajectory, but it was the first time it had changed due to circumstances outside her control. In the past, she’d worked as a veterinary technician and gone to school for nursing, but it wasn’t until she started homebrewing that she began working towards what would ultimately become her professional brewing career.
“Obviously it's just a job at the end of the day. This doesn't make me who I am,” says Thorpe. But she recognizes the additional pressure women brewers face, and aspires to use her position to inspire other less-represented communities to feel confident to pursue their own careers in beer. The uncertainty of being furloughed removed her from the position she had worked towards for years, something she—like so many others whose careers were interrupted or cut short by COVID-19—has had to grapple with.
It took time, she admits, but that time granted her the clarity to reevaluate her priorities. “It forced me to slow down a little bit, and spend time with the people who are most important to me … I realized how much I’d missed out on because I was working all the time,” Thorpe says. “Stepping away from Instagram a little bit more, and just doing that when I'm at work, or setting aside time during the day instead of always focusing on that has really helped too. But just honestly focusing more on myself as a person and not as a worker.” But one thing is certain to remain the same: She’ll always make her career in beer. “Beer has definitely changed me for the better,” she says.
For many in the beer industry, the prospect of losing a job means more than just vanished income and an uncertain professional future. Given the social nature of the industry, it can also mean the disruption of key relationships.
Ari Sanders started working when she was 12 years old, but it wasn’t until she landed at Mystery Brewing Company in Hillsborough, North Carolina that she felt like she’d found her people. “It became kind of my family,” she says, reflecting on her five-year tenure at the now-shuttered brewery. As a front-of-house manager and bartender, Sanders spent much of her time interacting directly with customers. To many, she was the face of the brewery. When Mystery closed in late 2018, she says, “I was just lost. What do you do when you don’t have anything to do?”
Sanders credits both her upbringing as well as the current American economic system for her fierce—and sometimes debilitating—work ethic. “Capitalism has trained us that we are what we produce. People won’t even remember your name, but they’ll remember your career, which is kind of crappy,” she says. “We have a really hard time defining our accomplishments outside of work and productivity.” And, she admits, it felt good to work hard. “I grew up in a very blue-collar, ‘rest on Sunday, be busy, an idle mind is the devil’s playground’ kind of upbringing. I never knew how to just sit and relax.”
After 15 years of working virtually non-stop, her dedication to her profession took a toll on her relationships, mental health, and self-identity. When Mystery closed, it forced Sanders to reevaluate her entire life—and what her commitment to her career had cost her. “I felt like a failure, because I couldn’t keep the place going. I dealt with the failure part, but not having direction … I felt like I had no direction without it for a very long time.”
It took a call with a job offer from her former boss, Erik Myers, who had moved to Fullsteam Brewery in the wake of Mystery’s closure, to get her back on the brewery floor, where she now works as the director of tavern operations. “It was one of those things where I was like, ‘I can't not take it,’ but I still wasn't sure I was ready,” says Sanders. Would it just be Mystery 2.0? Once she decided to make the leap to Fullsteam, she quickly wondered why she’d hesitated. “I realized I was afraid of loss. I didn't want to feel those feelings again.”
Despite her skepticism of second chances, Sanders is adamant that her initial loss has been a long-term gain. “Losing Mystery was good for me because it reminded me that I’m more than my work,” she says. “I recognize how unhealthy my relationship with work has been my whole life … you can just bury yourself in work and it’s going to become who you are.”
[Content warning: Discussions of suicide and self-harm.]
Working for someone else was never Danii Oliver’s destiny. “My identity is very much tied to my career, to my business. It's my life,” she explains. “I chose [self-employment] because I don't feel like it's a risk. I feel like leaving my career, my life in someone else's hands—that is the true risk.” For years, people have asked her when she “turns business off.” It’s never off, Oliver says. “That means dying.”
As the owner and brewer at Island to Island Brewery in Fort Worth, Texas, as well as the founder of the House of Juice brand, Oliver has worked for herself much of her adult life. Every day, every moment was an investment towards the future, she says—a bounty she had every reason to anticipate harvesting in 2020. “This was the year that I was going to feel like I'm 100% Danii Oliver, living for a reason. And now that I can't do that—what do you do now? And I got to the point where it was a depression, and then that depression turned into the battle with suicide,” she says. “I'm talking about the real tussle of, ‘Why am I alive?’ And if I don't have a purpose to serve, there's no point in taking up space.”
Oliver has never been shy about radical honesty or her dedication to self-sufficiency. She’s candid about her daily challenges as an Arawak Indigenous American with Irish and Hispanic heritage, and as a working parent and entrepreneur, despite a relative dearth of discussions around mental health in the beer industry. As is true for so many—especially mothers in the United States—the myriad challenges of COVID-19 have pushed her to the brink, and she admits she’s still fighting her battle.
“Fear and suicide are my best friends. They walk with me and we have conversations, and they help me to remember my true north,” she says, explaining that she has gone to therapy and is not currently struggling with thoughts of self-harm. “It's just acknowledging that that's a real conversation that I have to tussle with. It is a real possibility that without purpose, one can get careless or reckless.” She continues: “My true north is creating a space in which people like me can exist in any industry they want to … and the only way that it can be accomplished is if I’m here.”
Realizing her worth led Oliver to pursue another career accomplishment: running for—and winning—a seat on the Pink Boots Society’s board of directors. Without the struggle she went through during COVID-19, she says she might not have pursued the position. “I don't want people to vote for me because of the color of my skin that they see on the ballot. I want people to ask me questions. I want to tell my story. I want to show people who I am.”
If you are experiencing thoughts of suicide or self-harm, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. Help is available 24 hours a day.
“I was very, very discriminated against,” starts Ruvani De Silva. “I worked very, very hard to get into the industry. It's an incredibly competitive industry to get into … it's very elitist, there's not that many jobs, they don't pay well, because the way they culturally gatekeep is by keeping salaries low. Only people who are already really rich can afford to do it. So it’s a real nightmare of an industry.”
She’s not talking about beer, but she could be. The publishing industry reflects craft beer in a number of ways: It can be hard to break into, privileged insiders with outside financial support artificially deflate wages, and there’s pressure to let the community and culture become your entire network and identity. But passion often trumps sensibility when it comes to employment, leading to intense feelings of loss when separation occurs.
In De Silva’s case, she made the choice to leave the publishing industry after seven years. “It was very, very painful to lose the sense of doing something that I really loved and getting paid for it, and knowing that you're making a difference,” she says. “[Publishing] is what I lived and breathed … I very much felt an inner sort of wilderness of not really knowing who I was after I left the publishing industry. And beer has been very, very instrumental in sort of filling that gap for me.”
De Silva was first attracted to beer not for the people, but for the flavors. “When I got into cask beer [in the U.K.], it was a time before cask beer was trendy and popular. I was the youngest person in the room, always, and always the only brown person,” she chuckles. “But they never made me feel uncomfortable. Sometimes they will be a bit curious as to why I was there, but I was very lucky … it was both fun and empowering to be the youngest, the brownest, and the most out-of-place person in that scene.”
The dichotomy of De Silva’s reception in beer versus her career in publishing was stark, she says, feeding her desire to dive into craft beer headfirst. “People say, ‘Oh, beer, how can that replace something with that much value?’ And it is different, I think, about the beer industry, it’s a place that’s trying—at least a lot of people in it—are actually trying to make a difference socially. There are a lot of great, progressive initiatives within beer that make me feel good about being a part of it.” But after her painful parting from the publishing world, De Silva is resolute in her goal of keeping beer and beer writing as a dedicated hobby rather than a profession. “If I depended on [beer] for my income, I think my story would be very different,” she says.
While she’s aware and open with the knowledge that beer is still far from the idealized version of itself many optimists espouse, De Silva credits the community as instrumental in helping her find her feet and future. “I have been really, really lucky,” she says. “Obviously we know that the industry has a lot of issues, has a lot of prejudice, it has a lot of bias, it has a lot of complete assholes in it. But there are so many people who aren’t.”
Unlike in generations past, few people today spend their entire careers in one place. The present average is just over four years in one position, according to a report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the long-tail of the pandemic is sure to bring additional professional upheaval for millions. But even now, beer continues to blur the line between being a job and a passion in a unique—and potentially harmful—way. Concepts like the “craft beer community” make it difficult to untangle oneself from one’s so-called “work family,” especially after said work comes to an end.
If this global pandemic has taught the beer industry anything, it’s the values of work we hold so dear can be, and should be, secondary to our own lives and pursuits. We are not what we do. Our value cannot be weighed in billable hours or by the brewery names emblazoned on our T-shirts. It is, unquestionably, our innate and infinitely faceted individuality that brings the most value to the collective table. Perhaps after this era of forced self-redefining, the beer industry’s obsession with quantifying worth through work will face its own moment of reckoning.
Words, Beth DemmonIllustrations, Tim Green
