Organizational Management

The Ethical Study of
Rock Bottom Brewery
Regarding Business Ethics

In the deep abyss of cognant reasoning intellect plays different roles of validity and sometimes leads into fallacy. Life driffs to the outer realms of sanity. The separation of mind and body differentiates the complexity of the soul to the material realm of consciousness. Existence lies within each of our souls but is tormented by the attrocities brought to the physical state by others soul state.

Love is clarified only in ones mind, the definition lies null and void. This conception takes great concentration and can easily be misinterpreted but once found its bound to illuminate the soul into an elevated situation of uneasiness and weariness that can either break or make the fundamental illusions that have been contemplated and re-evaluated over all the encounterments of the atomic universe and then made light to the spiritual essence of existence.

Business and the American way of life are inseparable, not only because the American business spirit is largely responsible for our unparalleled prosperity, but also because business sets the values and provides the context for so much of American life. It molds our conceptions of work and success, our concern for selling our time and our talents, and our emphasis on "the things that money can buy.'' Retailing, today is effected by many different areas than it has been in the past. In today's world, businessis effected more and more by communication.

Communication is a world that dates back to the fourteenth century: 1. An act or instance of transmitting. 2. a) Information communicated b) A verbal or written message. 3. a) A process by which information is, exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior, b) An exchange of information. However, communication is hindered across cultures and genders of these cultures. "Culture" is a quasi technical term used by anthropologists to summarize the various structures and values in a society. It is culture, an ethos, that gives any style of life its ethics, including business. Ethics simply is the quest for and the understanding of the good life, living well, and a life worth living.

Adam Smith described what we might call "cassical capitalism" as the complex interaction, cooperation, and competition of great many individuals, a few of whom were entrepreneurs and owners, most of whom were skilled or unskilled workers, and all of whom were consumers. The dynamics of the market, accordingly, could be described as a microcosm of individual desires, intentions and activities, needing, wanting, making, selling, barganing, and buying. But the basic unit of the business world today, in both legal and practical terms, is the corporation. This is not to deny that the business world is still populated by people, nor is it in any way to deny the importance of the individual. But those now sometimes giant organizations that Adam Smith called "joint stock companies" and dismissed as an unfortunate aberration in the business world are now the institutions around which our business culture is organized. Indeed, some of the largest multinational and global corporations come close as anyone ever has to dictationg policy around the world. Today it is almost correct to think of the world of capitalism and the free market as simply an expanded version of Adam Smith's individualistic model, except that in place of individual entrepreneurs, workers, and consumers, we have a competitive dynamic of corporations.

Although there is a popular image of corporations and business in general as an unusually homogeneous and interchangeable set of roles and positions, corporations have cultures too. The corporate culture in which we work is as important in determining the style and quality of our lives as the social culture into which we are born. "Business is business," we hear, a statement giving false impression that business transactions are pretty much all the same. But the truth is quite different; some businesses are more businesslike than others, and some businesses seem hardly like businesses at all.

The established culture of a large corporation is typically so entrenched, so apart of the organization, structure, and personality of the company, that changing it is almost always risky. Indeed, a top executive, who is given the job of not just "turning the company around" but altering its culture as well (from passive to aggressive, form service to marketing, form free creativity to hard-headed practicality) has been given what is without a doubt the most difficult job in the business world.

Far from being merrily the superficial rituals and the facade of business, corporate cultures in fact provide what "structuralist" anthropologists call its "deep structure," the conceptual foundation on which it builds, the self-image from which all else begins.

Culture determines everything. Culture is everything you think, you do, and make it. Culture allows us to adapt. Culture determines people's ideas on many things. Take the word beautiful. Beauty and sex-appeal are different in every culture. My ideas on the subject are completely different compared to even my ancestors. My ideas on life will be completely different in generations to come. As the neo-evolutionalist, Leslie A. White, put it: Culture = Energy x Technology. Society evolves like a biological organism, for the better or for the worse I don't know. Change is constant and to achieve optimum potential in today's work force, individuals have to adapt or could suffer tremendous consequences.

People are naturally threatened by the unknown. Education about culture is crucial to every individuals sucess in today's market. Understanding is the key to sucess. Understanding of other cultures and societies is crucial to an individuals success in today's business world but realize that the understanding of other people is and will always be secondary information because you will never be them.

To hold to a belief that your culture is the best and superior and that your religion is the only one, is a true sign of ignorance. This belief in the superiority of one's own culture is known as ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism causes us to judge others by our own values. We expect others to act and react as we would. Ethnocentric ideas must be eliminated to achieve success in today's work environment, along with gender bias. Cultural relativism is the idea that every culture is valuable and that they should be judged but not by our culture, one should understand from their perspecive not ours. Holding fast to this concept is the most significant way to eliminate ethnocentrism.

I worked for Rock Bottom Brewery as a brewer
in the summer of 1999, this is what I learned
besides being a brew-mister.

Frank Day opened Old Chicago in Boulder, Colorado in 1973. His restaurant chain thrived and Old Chicago's began poping up all over Denver's metropolitan area. Then the concept companies started. Investors, the joint stock company, a corporation is born. In 1991, the Rock Bottom Brewery was established at 16th and Curtis. This site had once been a place where people sought out help and refuge. A place where nuns once fed the hungry and poor and counciled people trying to overcome the harshness of life.

The first stage of investment is property and to manage that property correctly to maximize on capital return. Times really haven't changed, it still is a lord who owns the land and has servants, indentured servants, or slaves, or however politically correct you wish to put it, we'll call them subordinates. Money is power and it has no regard for ethics or morals. A place where drunks go for help should undoughtedly be changed into the fifth largest brew pup in the United States.

The city of Denver was changing its appeal to the rest of the world. This new brew pup should cater only to a wealthier class, driving undesirables away. The Baby Boomer generation is in power. The yuppie is the American standard to measure for success. Rock Bottom only markets to this white upper class. It is only wise to go after people who have money to earn money. To market a product sucessfully one must meet the needs of those who posses monetary status and set them a standard, an image, a new utopia where they all belong.

Management and Marketing go hand in hand, one must know how to manage while he or she is marketing. Rock Bottom sits on the 16th Street Mall in the heart of Denver's retailing district. Its just blocks away from where hundred of thousands of these yuppies work for corporations. Corporations like AT&T, US West, MCI all of which are leaders in Communication. So inturn Rock Bottom must communicate to them and fit into each of their corporate cultures and what better way than to market a corporate image.

The store lay out is roomy and open but posses areas that can be restricted for private parties. People who look old, unattractive, and young are brought to areas where they are less likely to be seen by other customers to uphold their image. They cater to these yuppies and give them an environment for luncheons and meetings and private parties in the evenings. They present and image of a full family atmosphere during times where neighboring merchants are selling their products to consumers and a high class bar by night to appease the hard working yuppies upon returning home after a hard days work.

They market the concept of a brewery and have a heavy influence on their specialty brews. They give free beer away on the tappings of new beer, to let their customers try their new products. The profit margin on serving alcohol is fundamental, so to cut cost why not produce your own product to capitalize even more. It is essential to make the most money the easiest way. Every four weeks they sell on average of $130 thousand in just beer alone. The benefits of brewing your own product results in extremely high capital returns, plus the alcohol content in microbrew beers fall under less restrictions by the government than due the macrobrew companies such as Miller, Coors, and Anheiser Bush. Macrobrews can not go over an alcohol content of 3.3% and is highly regulated by the federal government, microbrews can make the alcohol content to whatever they feel is good to market.

My favorite that I brewed an Oatmeal Stout that we put in a 40 year old oak cask of Jack Daniels and then added Raspberry puree it was in the Great American Beer Festivle of 1999.
It came close to 10.

Displays must change on a regular basis to appease the time of season and to market correctly. Rock Bottom sells, shirts, hats, and other merchandise plus reaps the benefits of free advertisement. The consumer pays for an item to help further advertise the establishments name. Rock Bottom sits in a heavily traveled tourist area and supplying souvenir items equals free advertisement to the tourists origin. The restaurant appears tidy and neat at all times only in places where it is visible to the public. In areas not seen that does not need apply. For example the fire exit out the back of the restaurant is cluttered with food waste and empty boxes and the door is propped open with a propane tank. This is a blatant disregard to the fire marshal but when Rock Bottom is under inspection they clean out the hall way as not to loose any revenue in fines. So in the event of a fire the personnel in the kitchen will be seriously injured or killed with the obstacles in the fire route but this is good management of space that is just wasted being empty.

Seniority in the work force evolves into a mind state of laziness and incompetence because a sense of job security has been established. Performance dictates less and less, pride and service fall drastically and is all placed upon the shoulders of subordinates to continue to carry out the establishment's mission. This creates an intolerable work environment and a high subordinate turn-around.

Time investment and training become constant to newly arriving subordinates. Subordinates are easily replaceable and expendable. Subordinates are student level based, the newly arriving Generation Xer's and Millinieals. Their inexperience in the work force is used against them to extradite them for cheap labor with an easily replaceable attitude held by the business's hierachy.

Rock Bottom tries to only hire people who posses desirable sex-appeal. Young females with large breasts and defined buttoxes. Stocky males with an occasional gay for cuteness and they make exceptional waiters, but never any lesbians, because yuppies have determined that the "bull dike" image is unattractive.

In places where subordinates are highly visible only white-Caucasians are hired save for a few "token" African-Americans, so job quotas can be achieved. The kitchen staff is primarily Hispanic-Americans, ecept ofcourse for the hierarchy. Long hours at low minimum pay with constant abuse to their character because they have four children and still send money home to Mexico. They have to have their jobs to survive, so inturn this is used against them along with the fact that they don't speak good English and won't have anyone to talk to about their injustice. For dishwashers, hire people with diseases and mental problems so you don't have to pay them accordingly as "normal" individuals.

Males need to be in places of supreme management and make sure the glass ceiling exists. Abuse your young females just like date rapping them. Make it an uncomfortable situation so these young women won't speak out. Grab their breasts and butts so they get used to the customers doing so. Only give positions to females if they have sex with the male hierarchy. This is why the "bull dike" must not be hired because she speaks out to much. Make sure that the women realize that their sexuality sells and that this is beneficial to maximizing capital gain and market share. Males only group to establishments who have women with sex-appeal. To gain more capital you should go after and appease the needs of those males because they have more monetary status.

Management positions must be relaxed and free spirited. They should be able to have sex in the offices during business hours. General Managers having sex in the main office along with the brewers having sex ontop of the gain that they make the beer with inside the grain room. Management needs to be taken care of, they should have sex with everyone to help uphold the corporate image.

When attaining return on an investment and reaping the benefits of your capital gain one must look at the results and determine if it was ethical and moral to achieve its rewards. One must understand their own cultural values and unstated cultural assumptions which, at times, may and can cause conflict in communication with members from another cultural or national group. Understanding the dynamics of cross-cultural communication, interaction, and institutions, should facilitate the reexamination of rules that proscibe and prescibe behavior, and also generate effective ways to bridge seemingly immunatable differences.

I would have to say to Mr. Frank Day, what now do you have to say because your illusion in your dreams no longer match those of reality. I think I could look into your dilated state and that you can't mistake that I still hope we still exist when everything is blown to abyss because I can't resist the Utopia where we coexist. The illusional forces search for peace and sanctity, while our dillusional materialistic habitations wallow with the police and insanity. Corruption running rampid. Pollution to the poor of mind and body, controlling you, owning you. No different from before, its the same song but with another tune. Captive is the state we're in. Times don't change when superiority is the authority because that's not the majority. This is my story and I still believe and I won't leave. I hold fast to my P's and Q's. You can use me, abuse me, isolate me, captivate me, and rule me. You can oppress me and depress me or be open to a new realm state but you seem to not fathom or seem to ration the concept of equality, so you live in and behind those materialistic walls and bars that you have built yourself. To feel good about it, you don't speak about it and lock everyone in or out and claim your spiritual entourage is superior due to your advanced carnal essence but you slacked and didn't listen and now you see what you've been missing. That is not my mission I just want a decision to see a vison of peace and serenity. Equality and justice to all not just for those with monetary status because ethics and values and morals all play roles.

Jonathan J. Benson