From Elvis Juice, Head of Flannel and Human Remains at Brewdog.
We would like to say right up front that we are incredibly sorry.
Sorry that a tiny number of our workforce have felt the need to put a cowardly open letter on social media complaining about our business and the way we run it.
Sorry, too, that they didn’t even have the good grace to put their names on it. Except for the ones who did.
So much pain
Of course, as our PR team have made clear to us, they have every right to voice their concerns.
Even if they’re wrong. Which they are.
It’s obvious that there’s clearly a lot of pain and resentment here. Particularly on our part.
Frankly, we feel hurt that people who we regularly donated money to out of the goodness of our heart should throw our charity back in our face in such a public way.
As a company, we would never resort to such a cheap attention-grabbing stunt, as our slew of cheap attention-grabbing stunts down the years clearly demonstrates.
And we’re confident that, if we asked them, the thousands of happy employees of ours who didn’t sign this completely unjustified letter would all back us up if they know what’s good for them.
Complex issue
We’d be the first to admit when faced with apparently irrefutable evidence from clearly traumatised ex-employees that we might have not always got it right all the time.
Though we still think we probably mostly did.
After all, you don’t build up a massively successful business by being total bastards and creating a climate of fear.
Or maybe you do. It’s hard to tell.
These things are rarely black and white, which I think both sides in this controversy should remember.
Particularly the ones who started it by going all over social media rather than keeping their sneaky little copper’s nark mouths shut.
In a spirit of fairness we’d like to draw everyone’s attention to our company handbook, where we clearly state that ‘snitches’ are eligible for support in the form of ‘stitches’.
As the rabble-rousing squirrel whose arse we shoved a bottle up back in 2010 would surely agree.
Zero tolerance
Clearly there’s no way we would ever try to justify an aggressive culture of bullying or harassment. So it’s a good job that we don’t have one.
You can see from our witty and sensitive Public Relations activity down the years that we are a caring, inclusive company with a strong sense of responsibility.
Yes, we’ve not been afraid of a bit of gentle confrontation: taking on the shit big brewers for instance, or winding up the hand-wringing do-gooders in the health lobby.
But it was always done with a glint in our eye and the best of intentions.
To make us a fortune.
Zero awareness
Which is why, even though it’s hard to have years of good work so casually undermined by a handful of whingeing losers – and even if we feel let-down and underappreciated – we’re big enough to apologise and to say we’re going to change.
So we would like to put on record that we’re very sorry that you’re upset for no reason, and promise that we will not be afraid to take action on your comments.
By finding out who you are and where you live and rigorously kicking your sorry arses from here to Ellon back.
Zero intolerance
Rest assured, from hereon in, we will have a zero tolerance policy of any form of complaint.
To us, Brewdog has got where it is today by thinking the unthinkable.
In this instance it’s clear that you weren’t thinking … and it’s unthinkable that we’ll do anything about it.
Elvis Juice
Click here to read about Brewdog’s decision to become fully bullshit neutral
