BrewDog Waterloo & sexism - 'working here scarred me'
BrewDog Waterloo's female staff speak about how they were treated at the London pub
This article on BrewDog Waterloo took a lot of research to put together. Please donate as much as you can to my Ko-Fi here to support it! If you’ve not done so already please buy Desi Pubs - A guide to British-Indian Pubs, Food & Culture here - hailed as “the most important volume on pubs in 50 years”.
If you’re looking for all the previous information on BrewDog Waterloo this link will help. You’ll find the original report as well as the open letter and other information.
Disclaimer: this newsletter often mentions beer and pubs. You do not have to read this if your life has been affected by substance abuse.
I am a journalist who covers race issues for BBC Culture, Pellicle and Vittles. I was named Beer Writer of the Year in 2023 by the British Guild of Beer Writers.
PLEASE NOTE: BrewDog denies all the BrewDog Waterloo allegations when asked to comment through a third-party. They deny that they were aware of any sexist comments and said ‘it is ridiculous to state misogynist practices exist (or are condoned)’.
It’s been another thoroughly dispiriting week for workers at BrewDog Waterloo. The management were warned seven days before an EDL/Lads’ Football Alliance meet-up was due to take place on St George’s Day at BrewDog Waterloo. The management assured the source giving the information that extra security staff would be deployed.
Instead, no additional security were present and floor staff weren’t warned that 200 far-right hooligans were descending on BrewDog Waterloo. When the management were complained to after the event they answered obtusely that the tip off was unverified, the ‘EDL didn’t book in advance’ and staff members who ‘felt uncomfortable’ could leave.
My message to BrewDog Waterloo management is this: anyone who feels comfortable serving a fascist is not someone who should work in a modern, inclusive space. I suspect that none of the staff were comfortable and to avoid a public safety issue, BrewDog Waterloo should’ve been closed for a couple of hours or at the very least put on extra security.
It’s my opinion that BrewDog Waterloo management kept the pub open because they wanted to serve 200 customers regardless of their character. It always feels like its profits before people and today’s focus on the working practices affecting female staff members at BrewDog Waterloo certainly mirrors that.
Today, three brave women finally get to tell their stories of what their life at BrewDog Waterloo was like.
Rebecca McIlroy
I started working at BrewDog Waterloo in November 2022, I had just turned 19 and I thought the place looked really cool with the slide and everything. I was collecting trays and this guy who also worked there would say things to me like “I want to wake up to those eyes.” He would say weird shit about being in bed together - he looked a lot older than me.
I didn’t know if anyone heard, I just put my head down.
There was another guy working at BrewDog Waterloo who was about 38-40 years old - the same age as my stepmom - who was quite nice to me when I first started there. He would talk to me a lot during breaks, he didn’t do anything improper but I could sense he was trying to butter me up or something.
He was quite flirty, quite hand on shoulder. It was quite weird - if I was a 40-year-old man I wouldn't act like that towards someone so much younger. He invited me to his house a couple of times and kept asking for my phone number. He would cover it up by saying ‘we’ll just hang out at my house’.
But then he said: ‘We can do drugs at my house without anyone there. It will be fine.’ I felt like someone could’ve really been taken advantage of in that situation. I told some co-workers that I felt nervous around him and asked them how I was supposed to reject him without it feeling awkward.
A woman who had been working at BrewDog Waterloo from the start reported him to management and I had to speak to them about it. I told them it was a bit awkward but I was afraid to say anything to him at the time and they were like ‘don’t worry we’ll sort it’. It was just a two-minute conversation.
I thought this was going to be sorted but he denied it. I thought it would be a positive change, but it felt like they brushed it under the carpet and they told me to get on with my work.
Instead [of reprimanding him] the management I think told him what I had said which is not appropriate at all. He then came up to me the next shift and I already felt awkward from what went before.
I was frozen with fear. It was very, very, uncomfortable. I tried to talk to him but he seemed so annoyed and angry. He didn’t say sorry and I had to walk away and say it didn’t matter.
I asked the management if they could at least put us on different shifts - I pleaded and they said ‘yes’. I didn’t even go to the Christmas party because of this. But then I went downstairs and I saw him - I thought ‘why did they tell me he’ll be on different shifts?’. They lied to me.
After a couple of weeks I felt the management acted like nothing had happened - I think they didn’t care. They started putting us on the same floor, then the same bits. They acted like ‘she’ll forget about it’. Then there was a day I came in, I saw him - he kept trying to talk to me normally afterwards - and I just felt so awkward.
Because of this there were two occasions where I had panic attacks - one colleague calmed me down but the management seemed like they didn’t care. I was hyperventilating, crying and I said ‘I had to leave’ but the management made me stay.
I didn’t explicitly say ‘can I go home’ but I was really hinting heavily. I felt like if I had asked outright that I wanted to go home they would say ‘no’ because they wouldn’t take me seriously because they never took me seriously.
I didn’t feel comfortable staying for a drink after my shift but I stayed once and the guys were telling me: ‘we do talk about the girls’ looks, haha, and there’s a list we rank them out of 10. You’re on there!’ I thought ‘what the fuck?’ Why were they saying this and why were they comfortable enough to say this?
It was weird and very uncomfortable. It also felt like they only hired very good looking female managers - and the older male managers would be there for two weeks and suddenly they’re promoted. It seemed there were men less experienced than me who would get promoted - it just felt wrong. A friend - who I helped get a job - lasted a month and she left saying: ‘It’s awful. This is hell’.
During the World Cup male customers at BrewDog Waterloo would literally pick me up off the floor by grabbing me around my waist - there was always a lot of touching around the waist when it wasn’t necessary. Just the way they speak to you, you could tell they didn’t have any respect for you.
Like they would ask me how much I earned and then throw money at me to show off.
There were a lot of microaggressions: when I was bringing beer to a table they would shout ‘do you want help with that?’. I’d tell co-workers but I felt there was no point in telling management not because I didn’t care but what was the point? They never seemed like they would care - they just wanted to keep selling shit.
I haven’t been able to go back to hospitality - I really struggled to find a job. Working there scarred me. I had been working in hospitality for four years but this has ruined it for me.
Anonymous BrewDog employee who worked at Waterloo from when the pub opened, at the time she was aged 22.
It was definitely a very masculine environment but one I wouldn’t describe as wholly misogynistic.
I accepted too much when male customers overstepped the mark - they would assume I was bad at my job which they didn’t do to my male colleagues who had not been at BrewDog Waterloo as long as me. They would mansplain to me on how to pour a pint, that kind of thing.
Customers would bring up my appearance and say things like “why is someone like you working in a place like this?”. Older customers would use demeaning language such as calling me a “pretty girl” and there was this assumed familiarity which they didn’t have with my male colleagues.
When dealing with these customers I felt we never got support from management and they would really have overstepped the mark for us to feel comfortable to say “I feel unsafe”.
We got trained on how to deescalate situations but there was nothing on how to deal with this type of sexism. If a male customer was making me feel uncomfortable at BrewDog Waterloo there was only one female manager I felt comfortable to talk to about this.
You would feel dismissed and not really understood by the male managers - a lot was seen as banter and you were expected to brush it off. I believe promotion was easier if you were part of a manager’s friendship group.
Some male colleagues also suffered from the masculine/misogynistic environment as they were expected to “be a man” and brush things off. In general I felt we were expected to be “tough” and just put up with what the customer says to you.
I believe there was a general disregard for mental health and it felt like the men felt less like they could express [their feelings]. Men were expected to subscribe to this bullshit, traditional idea of masculinity and this was apparent in the way the tasks were divided.
We would change the kegs at night at BrewDog Waterloo - I think they have changed this recently because there is a dedicated night team - but at the start they always got the men to bring in the full kegs in spite of the fact that a lot of the women were more than capable of doing this.
It was assumed that because they were men they were stronger.
One male colleague who was a lot older than the rest of us - I think he was in his late 50s - would regularly make inappropriate comments. He would be suggestive and call you “trouble” or a “naughty girl” and if you bent over to get something he would make a comment about that.
One of the managers fancied me and was trying to pursue me romantically or sexually.
He disrespected everybody unless you were a woman that he found attractive or a male buddy of his. He favoured an exclusive group of people whom he treated fairly but the rest he wouldn’t - I believe his treatment of women depended on whether he fancied them or not.
When a new female member of staff joined, the first or second thing he would say to me about them was how attractive they were.
He made a physical advance at me - he kissed me - when we were socialising away from the workplace. I thought I was just friends with him and I was really disappointed [by the way he acted]. In the moment I just went along with it because I wasn’t fully expecting it. I submitted and let it happen.
I would have a lot of conversations with him and he would open up about his mental health. I like to think I was a bit of an outlet for him because he struggled to talk - he set a bad example as a manager as he would just grin and bear it.
But I could’ve been an outlet because he was using it as a way to get closer to me. I didn’t directly reject him, I just let it fizzle out and then he was cold to me afterwards.
Bethany Lyons, Grind coffee shop floor staff at BrewDog Waterloo from August 2022
It seemed that women who were petite, pretty and blonde would be promoted quicker than girls who were a little bit chubbier, had dark hair or wore makeup. I believe that management liked to promote women who looked natural, clean and blonde.
One woman [who fitted this profile] that they promoted I believe was a bully and would act like she was in the playground - making comments about female colleagues’ clothing saying stuff like ‘yuck, what she’s wearing?’ I raised concerns to management but they still promoted her.
Female floor staff who started after me got promotions because it seemed they were happy to flirt and smile. To me it was very cliquey and I believe to get promoted you either have to be good friends with certain managers or very flirty with other ones.
One female colleague - who was bi - kissed one of her male colleagues and the management disciplined her but didn’t even speak to the man [in the relationship] about it. She was reprimanded and told not to have workplace relationships, while he was open about the kiss and openly told people that management never even spoke to him about it.
When it came to how they allocated roles at BrewDog Waterloo it feels like they favoured men. I knew I could lift more than the men they hired and before I worked at BrewDog I worked in a job where I had to lift barrels and deliveries - I’m capable of lifting heavy items.
So when I was not given a promotion to the Speakeasy cocktail bar which would have been an extra £3 an hour and told by a manager ‘he’s a guy, he’s stronger’ I was in shock. I have Long Covid - which I declared when I started - so I understand that he could be more reliable but I didn’t agree with what they were saying with the lifting. And to make matters worse the stuff that needed to be lifted wasn’t any heavier than in the current job I was doing.
[BrewDog has denied this incident despite Beth’s statement]
Maybe because it was a pay rise they wanted to give the job to a guy and this was their excuse but they did say because of how physical the job is they want a guy to do it. He wasn’t more experienced than me and we started our training at the same time and he was a little bit younger than me.
I’m not easily intimidated but I felt there were staff that would make me feel uncomfortable or would try to have banter with me. But some of the comments that were made to me I think would’ve made a lot of people feel uncomfortable.
If I squatted down to get something in a fridge someone said ‘nice arse’ or if I bent down once someone said ‘you can do that above me’ - it was things like that. Some male colleagues I felt lingered too long and I found them a bit creepy.
There were a lot of times when I was at the bar and male customers would come over and try it on - typically these were drunk customers. If [when I rebuffed] them they got funny about it I would report them to who I was working with - usually because they were drunk and needed watching.
Some customers would come back again and again when I was on shift and try to get reactions. One man came back a third time in a week when I was working, which I felt was weird - he was telling too many jokes and being overly friendly. He was very cocky. He was a lot older than me - I was 18 or 19 and he was early to mid 30s.
His friends would all leave him to go to the toilet - which was suspicious - and then they would say to me ‘he’s a really good guy’. There was a group mentality and they were egging him on. Other times groups of men would be like ‘have you met my mate’ and when I said I wasn’t interested they’ll say aggressively ‘are you sure?’
My shift manager was sympathetic and would take over if any female colleague felt uncomfortable but if we wanted things to change I felt we weren’t heard by higher management. In fact, my shift manager would say ‘I can’t take this to higher management because they are customers unless they do something really bad I can’t kick them out’.
It didn’t stop the problem, it just redirected it. Their answer was to move staff members around - get someone else to come in and take their orders. It seemed like they were telling me to smile and just get on with it because they didn’t discourage [this kind of harassment].
There was a culture where you were made to feel stupid for raising issues and men who supported the women, I felt, were almost hushed. And these were the kind of people who should have been made managers.
In my section we had some really good staff leave because they’ve been made to feel uncomfortable at work. A woman I worked with was called a ‘slag’ after her boyfriend came to work and they were a new couple.
There’s been a few occasions where customers have been respectful and ask for my phone number. I didn’t give it to them and told them I have a boyfriend - that I don’t mind. This was really rare though and I remember being approached like this by people who weren’t obviously a lot older than me, not more than twice.
It was the persistent harassment that I struggled with.
There’s a lot to digest here and if anything that was said causes emotional distress please speak to someone. I am more than happy to have a chat about any of the issues raised.