Eddie O

I’ve taken yet another job…. as if pro mountain biker, race promoter, coach, and bike fitter were not enough…I am now the official part time bottling peon at Atlanta Brewing Company. They are right down the street and a few weeks back Namrita and I stopped in for one of their happy hour/brewery tours. They had a mailing list type form up where they were checking IDs looking for those interested in helping on bottling days. I signed up since I have a few hours to spare on occasion and I have an interest in beer. Nothing happened. So I called last week and asked about it. This was about the extent of the interview process. I was alive, willing and the final part was showing up.

I reported for duty at 8 AM this morning and was greeted by Dave McClure, brew master. He gave me the low down on my duties and introduced me to the other two guys, Brent and Y. My duties, or duty as it may be, was to make sure bottle were being fed to through the label machine and down stream to the stacker guy (not sure if that’s an official title, but it seems to be next position up from bottle peon). We started out just getting some extra cases set up, so if there was a slow up on my end for some reason the rest of the process could continue. I began to hone my skills.

One bottle per hand quickly became two per hand as fed them on to the conveyor. This went on for a 15 minutes or so as Brent played stacker guy. Then Y showed up, he is a pro. I was keeping up with Brent with no problems, but Y had conveyor on the back end of labeler clear out and before I knew he was grabbing like 8 bottle in each hand and loading my end too! Y is a man a few words and I took this to mean I needed to speed it up a bit. I graduated to 3 bottle per hand.

Just as I was getting the hang of my bottle peon job, the process came to a stop as Dave and Brent took a beer break….and it’s only 9:15. “These are my kind of people” I though as a headed to the front room to join them (actually I needed to pee). Dave informed be there was too much sediment in the beer…though it tasted great…and bottling would cease for the day. No bottling means no need for the bottle peon. I was out.

This could work out very well. They can make due without me (not sure how, I seem so integral to the process) and I can make myself available as time permits. Plus I can learn all about one of my three favorite things….right behind Namrita and bikes. Did I mention they pay in beer!

Eddie O

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.