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BrewDog: yet another hip company using 'rebel' language to sell its stuff

nastyned said:
Annoyingly paywalled: BrewDog accountant sacked ‘after revealing father’s cancer’
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Formatting's a bit fucked, but is this it?

The Times and The Sunday Times e-paper

The Times and The Sunday Times e-paper
epaper.thetimes.co.uk epaper.thetimes.co.uk
After spending her first day sampling an array of craft beers at BrewDog’s flagship bar in Aberdeen, Janine Molineux felt like she had finally found the “most amazing job in the world”. She saw the self-styled “punk” brewery as a far cry from any company she had ever worked for and could not wait to join its “rock’n’roll” finance team and work under James Watt and Martin Dickie, the co-founders. But as Molineux settled into BrewDog’s head office in Ellon, Aberdeenshire, on her first day in November 2017, she claims she was issued with a stark warning: “If you see James Watt walk down those stairs, don’t make eye contact with him.” BrewDog has been mired in controversy after dozens of staff signed an open letter in June last year alleging a “culture of fear” and “toxic attitudes towards junior staff” at the company. Last month former employees told the BBC’s Disclosure programme that Watt abused his power in the workplace and behaved inappropriately with female employees and customers. The BBC made no allegations of criminal behaviour by Watt, 39, against women. He has denied wrongdoing or inappropriate behaviour. Molineux, 40, said she was sacked by BrewDog’s boss in January 2018, a day after telling him her father had terminal cancer. Following the publication of the last year’s open letter, she shared her experience with Dickie, who “profusely” apologised for the way she was “treated and exited by Brewdog”, adding that it was “not close to the standards we talk about and set ourselves”. The accountant said she told Watt about her father’s diagnosis in a replyall to an email he had sent which she felt was directed at her performance in a monthly sales meeting, in which she was berated after BrewDog failed to meet forecasts. She claims that the meeting was the “lowest point” in her professional life. She left it in tears after Watt said she had put the forecasts together and asked her a series of “random” questions. Her manager later told her: “That’s just James,” she said. Watt followed up the meeting with a group email a few days later, which suggested the company was more concerned with an employee’s performance on a “bad day” rather than a “good day”. She replied, informing him of her father’s diagnosis, and demonstrating her love for the company by attaching a photo of her celebrating the beer’s launch in Australia. She claims that Watt replied: “I hope your dad is OK.” Her contract was terminated the next day. She said the company “reluctantly” paid her threemonth notice period in March 2018 after she threatened legal action, leaving her without income for two months. Her father died in June 2018. She said: “James Watt is vile. He had zero empathy. If I knew someone [was] having a bit of a bad time and their dad was dying of cancer, I wouldn’t fire them.” A spokesman for BrewDog said: “Ms Molineux was on a fixed-term contract which was brought to an end early, a decision taken by her line manager due to performance issues, totally independent of our CEO, as emails and other records show. She was paid her full contractual entitlement on leaving.”
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Looks like the Scottish S*n's also picked up on it, but it's the Sun so fuck linking to them.
 
They are despicable. But, I am not surprised by this, it is in keeping with the way other employees have been treated.

James Watt is the problem, he's the root cause of all of the cultural issues the company has.
 
ElizabethofYork said:
Rather a disingenuous headline! It makes it sound as though she was sacked because of her father's cancer, rather than being sacked for incompetent forecasting.
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One, she was one a team of accountants, she was not solely responsible for the forecasting. And two, if it was sales forecasting in particular, why are the accountants being held responsible for sales team responsibilities?

Funny how performance issues suddenly appear when there's an abhorrent actual reason for dismissing someone.
 
equationgirl said:
One, she was one a team of accountants, she was not solely responsible for the forecasting. And two, if it was sales forecasting in particular, why are the accountants being held responsible for sales team responsibilities?

Funny how performance issues suddenly appear when there's an abhorrent actual reason for dismissing someone.
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Hang on, are you saying they did sack her because her dad had cancer? Seems unlikely really.

Sounds like they'd decided to sack her, she gave her dad's cancer diagnosis as mitigation, but they sacked her anyway. Which is still brutal, but they are fucks so there is is. Just not actually such fucks that they'd sack someone because a family member was dying, which would be really weird as well as bad.
 
equationgirl said:
One, she was one a team of accountants, she was not solely responsible for the forecasting. And two, if it was sales forecasting in particular, why are the accountants being held responsible for sales team responsibilities?

Funny how performance issues suddenly appear when there's an abhorrent actual reason for dismissing someone.
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Oh, they're bastards. But she wasn't sacked because her dad had cancer! As I said, that's a disingenuous headline.

(And of course accountants/financial planners are responsible for accurate forecasting!)
 
ElizabethofYork said:
Oh, they're bastards. But she wasn't sacked because her dad had cancer! As I said, that's a disingenuous headline.

(And of course accountants/financial planners are responsible for accurate forecasting!)
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Certainly the one who compiled the forecasts. Apparently that was her.
 
ElizabethofYork said:
Oh, they're bastards. But she wasn't sacked because her dad had cancer! As I said, that's a disingenuous headline.

(And of course accountants/financial planners are responsible for accurate forecasting!)
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Whatever the situation here regarding her father, I would image that is very difficult to do accurate forecasting in a accounts role in any company that is so sales and marketing orientated and sales and marketing are feeding you bullshit figures.

In companies I have worked for it is never the sales team who are are fault it either 'the product is not good enough' or 'the economy is wrong' but do well and the sales team are amazing.
 
Financial planning and forecasting is the responsibility of the finance/accounting team.

Sales forecasting is the responsibility of the sales team.

Likewise I have been responsible for forecasting the spend profile of patent portfolios. Whilst I gave that information to the accountants so it could be included in the financial forecasting, they were not responsible for producing the figures because it required specialist knowledge their team did not have.
 
equationgirl said:
Financial planning and forecasting is the responsibility of the finance/accounting team.

Sales forecasting is the responsibility of the sales team.

Likewise I have been responsible for forecasting the spend profile of patent portfolios. Whilst I gave that information to the accountants so it could be included in the financial forecasting, they were not responsible for producing the figures because it required specialist knowledge their team did not have.
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OK thanks for clarifying :) , for my support and testing roles I normally have more to do with sales and their normally over optimistic forecasts and I have few dealings with accounts and planning.
 
Also, as you have pointed out the sales forecast can be overinflated Storm Fox so I daresay she wouldn't be the first accountant to take one look at the figures and say 'um, aren't these a bit on the high side?' and for managers above her to kick off about it.

She always wouldn't be the first person to be pushed out of a team for not being a yes person or just going along with whatever James wanted.

The disingenuous part is them claiming performance issues.
 
equationgirl said:
Also, as you have pointed out the sales forecast can be overinflated Storm Fox so I daresay she wouldn't be the first accountant to take one look at the figures and say 'um, aren't these a bit on the high side?' and for managers above her to kick off about it.

She always wouldn't be the first person to be pushed out of a team for not being a yes person or just going along with whatever James wanted.

The disingenuous part is them claiming performance issues.
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So nothing to do with her dad having cancer.
 
It's entirely appropriate and totally useful that we all offer our opinions on the specifics of the case and the tasks that the employee concerned should or should not have been carrying out, based on what we can read in a C&P'd extract from an article in the Sun or the Times.
 
ElizabethofYork said:
Oh, they're bastards. But she wasn't sacked because her dad had cancer! As I said, that's a disingenuous headline.
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If she was sacked because of (previously unmentioned) incompetence and said incompetence was caused by stress from her dads cancer, then yes they did sack her because of it. Of course there is no evidence that she was actually incompetent, just a comment from Watt. And as it was only her second month in the job, the idea that she was responsible for the failure to hit targets is risible.

Sounds exactly like she was sacked because Watt thought she was going to be too stressed.
 
equationgirl said:
Also, as you have pointed out the sales forecast can be overinflated Storm Fox so I daresay she wouldn't be the first accountant to take one look at the figures and say 'um, aren't these a bit on the high side?' and for managers above her to kick off about it.
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I think you have this the wrong way around.

The way it reads to me is that she compiled a financial forecast which was then not met by the sales performance. Now it could be that sales underperformed, or it could be that her forecasting was incompetent, which seems to be what she's been blamed for.

What we DO know is that she isn't denying that her performance was sub-standard. Her complaint is about the way Watt treated her in the meeting and subsequently.
 
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ElizabethofYork said:
So nothing to do with her dad having cancer.
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No, you don't know that. And to be honest, if she thinks it was because of that, she's best placed to know. Brewdog is not going to come out and say 'yeah, we let her go because her dad had cancer and that meant her mind wasn't on the job all the time'. Performance issues is the standard catch-all in this kind of situation, because it's easier to blame the employee for not fitting in or being productive than admit the company culture prioritises being an arsehole.
 
equationgirl said:
And to be honest, if she thinks it was because of that, she's best placed to know. Brewdog is not going to come out and say 'yeah, we let her go because her dad had cancer and that meant her mind wasn't on the job all the time'
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SHE isn't saying that though.

As Killer b said, she's just saying that she was fired after she responded to the email with her mitigation for her performance (her dad's cancer), which was ignored.

She doesn't suggest anywhere in that article that she was sacked because of her father's cancer. You and others are imputing that.
 
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editor said:
The absolute fucking state of people here defending Brewdog and their anti-union, shitty, toxic workplace practices.

It's like tuning into the Daily Mail comments at times.
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Pointing out that the headline about her being sacked because her dad had cancer was disingenuous, is NOT defending anything.

The employee herself didn't claim that.
 
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