Read Part VII.

Once upon a time, ownership visiting Pink didn’t want to wait until the delivery budtender on the clock was finished with an in-store customer and decided I should have to be the one to move the delivery vehicle. I protested three times, insisting I do not know how to operate a push to start vehicle and that I felt it was a bad idea. Long story short, I scratched the side in my best attempt and was basically sent home for my own prophecy coming true. This was only the case in the first place, might I add, because we were understaffed and the delivery driver that was busy budtending was a “hybrid” budtender. Cannabis industry jobs do require “wearing many hats” and “quiet quitting” strategically is one of the many ways I have seen to defend oneself against burnout from doing too much, but it’s still such a shame, and feels a bit stacked against the worker because of the lack of HR precedence that comes with not being federal.

Halloween was quickly approaching, and, despite the weather getting cooler, it seemed Pink was on fire, and not in a good way. My back of house lead’s explosive departure in response to toxic leadership, though understood, left the team high and dry. I found myself doomed to build all the promo sample goodie bags only hours away from Halloween weekend. On Halloween, ownership decided to come in dressed as a police officer, even after we had literally gone through a slow opening partly due to a nationwide protest against police violence. This is the thing though; he knew what he was doing. He thought it was “funny” again, like the “midget mariachi.”

I remembered that my last town hall at Red had taken place the previous Halloween, and that the CEO (whom I have an unpopular opinion in having respect for) also tried to jokingly suggest he should dress up as a joint to be arrested by one of his kids, who was going trick-or-treating that year as a police officer. I remember I openly but respectfully booed, because, yikes! Why do that? Isn’t it obvious? It’s not really funny! The very mention of police in cannabis is triggering to most, the same way police presence at Pride triggers counter protests every year. You would think leadership positions in cannabis would know this by now, but here I am, writing about it again.

I hated how I was getting so used to the ignorance of the ownership team and selective ineptitude from upper management when morale was low. Despite being credited as a co-founder, I felt pretty powerless overall and angry at myself for not being able to make more policy changes happen myself. It was becoming increasingly difficult for us all to fake respect for ownership and upper management (including me in my eyes, an ineffective co-founder). Ownership started coming in less and less for good reason; having no idea what they wanted, what anyone did nor how anything really worked, stemming from the general misunderstanding of the entire scope of their own operation.

I tried to bring Starbucks for coworkers often during these times, and on one of these days a coworker and I had the opportunity to hear from the custodian that our boss’ family sees him as the dud of the family, not taken seriously, much more successful dad (whom, according to this man, in decades past was a stretch limo with models all day on the phone type). Long story short- not the pride of the family vibes. This person further explained they knew because they had worked for the family before, as my spanish-fluent coworker translated for me in summation. I remember how we each cringed then, giving each other a look like “wow” before transitioning into more of a “sounds about right” nod of pessimistic acceptance of the reality of this person’s place in each of our lives at present.

One thing was for sure, my inventory manager wanted to leave. I didn’t blame him, he was the last one of my original dream team left, and my last (I felt) true friend at the job. He was tired like I was, but he didn’t co-found the place, he didn’t need to be there and had begun seeking the greener pastures he deserved.

As previously mentioned, the unchecked racially insensitive faux pas continued, and I realized though these occurrences are part of the life-long commitment to unlearning - they still do not belong at work at all. Coworkers don’t need to hear an assertion that you can’t be called racist because you plan to have a baby with your black boyfriend. LGBTQ+ coworkers don’t need to listen to you minimize the institution of marriage as trivial because you don’t have to worry about your chosen partner having the right to make your medical decisions for you if you wed, unlike same-sex couples until very recently. You cannot try to have a budtender fired because you don’t like their do-rag. That hurts people, and makes it more difficult for them to do what you hired them to do for you. See? So simple. The truth is, Pink is not the first nor the last place where this type of micro aggressive filth occurs, and it has got to stop. Is unionizing the only way to achieve this, or is that in itself toothless until federalization?

Inventory began to become strained because of our POS system (Point Of Sale) having consistent syncing issues with our METRC, buying becoming more reactionary and increasing despite the operational and sales turnover, causing cross-training to be more frequent, difficult and too many hats being worn without adequate pay increase. Neither the inventory manager nor myself had been granted the salaries we had been promised. Still at hourly rates. After the owner’s assistant one day accused my inventory manager of being “unhappy” and patronizingly asserted the need for a “talk about it,” the straw broke the camel's back and before I could blink, I found myself the inventory manager, the back of house manager, a marketing assistant, and one farce of a co-founder.

I still tried my best to invite important people in the industry, marketing pros, photographers, growers, etc. to experience what the team had built, and the feedback was positive. My own cousin and his wife (the mostly non-smoking, screenwriting one I mentioned earlier) even came in, cowering for the most part near the safety of the edibles section but were clearly impressed. I pushed delivery drivers for marketing department contacts and formed relationships with those as well as brand territory managers to assist marketing as much as possible in place of marketing managers and even a photographer departing due to, you guessed it, toxicity in the Pink workplace. Additionally, marketing as a department began to become further strained due to Instagram and influencer challenges.

For example, a nearby competitor (the same one who hastily built an LED wall to compete with Pink), was regularly suspected of targeting our social pages by mass reporting that would trigger suspension. They would even deliberately time “attacks” to occur on days when we had Instagram “Live” sessions scheduled with vendors in advance, which they should have had little to no notice about. This confirmed for me that one of our own was likely informing the attackers, working for a company just as vulnerable as Pink. Unless you have been under a rock, as far as retail competition in the cannabis industry is concerned this has been a commonplace challenge though still an overall sad state of affairs that has continued for some time. I say sad because I believe it holds the industry back as a whole in the same way paltry access to banking and insurance do. It seemed no matter what precautions were taken on our side; it was always something.

Speaking of precautions, it was standard for the store to display a budpod of QA/QC’d flower from the most recent shipment of each strain. On one memorable day, I was rushed outside of my normal SOP (once again) to ingest and release a limited edition “Cheetah Piss” strain for purchase. This limited run from a giant, albeit shady, Blue brand was in collaboration with a grower who we had a good relationship with - which was the only reason we agreed to carry it in the first place. As I opened the first of two eighths to make the budpod, I was reminded of the reasons why we didn’t carry them to begin with.

Listen up people: You can be a big bad whatever, but if you put two types of weed in the bag, you’re doing bad business. Period. It’s unacceptable. While dealing for three years in Texas, do you think I could have ever done something like that? And, if I had, would I still be here today to tell the tale? Probably not. The bottom line is, I could not believe the blatant illegality of this, outside of the poor planning and product development. Such shamefully low regard for the consumer. There is only one C.O.A. for good reason, and besides, people have eyes and can clearly see a difference.

We called in our connection to let them see for themselves, and the last I remember was watching his tall frame sweep in a huff from the comparison scene - I had hoped he was on a rampage to stick it to the big blue cookie monster he decided to collab with, and then tell everyone he’s ever worked with, but we never heard anything about it again (at least, I never did).

"Red would never have done something like that" I remembered thinking to myself. What a shame it felt like at times, everyone from the teams I worked with running dispensaries were scattered all over the place by now, and couldn't likely come in to see what all that I learned from them could make. For some, after the amount of drama that had so far unfolded, they were starting to feel embarrassed about even being associated with the place, which made me feel very guilty. I wondered what my own late business owner mother would say about Pink as I watched ownership and the owner's assistant show family around the dispensary around holiday time. Soon I found myself running into small camera crews excused to the staff as "footage for buyers and investors." So much for six more stores by next year!

Speaking of illegal things happening all around us, did you know some people come in to buy their total allowance all at once so they can sell it on the black market? Before New York went rec, people came into Pink all the time with intent to cash out as their buyer sends it onwards to their dealers on the east coast. What is the dispensary supposed to do, say no? Report them? This also got me thinking about the number of “bags” and carts from legal brands I would consistently see at underground “sesh” markets. “It’s just the Chinese doing what they do! How are they supposed to stop them?” are some common phrases regurgitated for when the real answer is they are profiting from it one way or another. Sure, brands have to make profits in creative ways to survive and compete with vertical operators but I am tired of the excuses and it is not ethical.

I also observed at Pink a series of inconsistent sales performances after exotic “drops” with an exclusive partnership, who upon questioning let me in on a little secret. That the inconsistency could be attributed to an unsaid commonplace, which is to have a “shadow account” online with a different name completely, said to be a DTC signaler for local, loyal buyers (and where hype weed is concerned, this is not as difficult to pull off as a shady brand with “fire” genetics) who can then be directly connected and get delivery. Cutting out the dispensary and the taxes at point of sale entirely.

Coming up next, don't miss the stunning conclusion of the Pink era, lessons learned and a vague where are they now as I wrap up this series for good and move on with my life!