A Granite City Stroll

As everyone is trying to get groceries delivered or at least curbside all at once, we sometimes have to go out of our way in order to... eat. 

This time we had to cross the border and get groceries at the Walmart in Granite City, Illinois. I noticed some people walking along a trail by the highway, so after we secured our food we went over and investigated.

There is an active train track along the trail which gave plenty of interesting things to look at. This seems like someone built an office out of an old shipping container.

You know things are bad when the government postpones Tax Day.

Goodbye Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV

Things sure are changing. I moved out of the apartment I've lived in since returning from Neosho last week, and now I was quitting Anheuser-Busch. The last year and a half at AB have been such a wild ride. I learned so much and I think it really set me up for success at my next job. Some of my friends were surprised by the move but I think they were more concerned about their free beer supply than my professional development.

Whatever challenges were waiting for me at my cubicle, the walk to the office each morning was always magical. The smell of the beer brewing here was so wholesome. It was like breathing bread. Some days I feel like I loved and hated this place at the same time. I think it might be a while before I'm comfortable coming back here.

I told my coworkers that after AB I wasn't sure if I would be able to sit through a meeting without a couple of beers. I was only half joking.

I'd been eyeballing these sweet Budweiser shoes in the gift shop window for months. I don't know what the heck I'm going to do with the AB clothing collection I've assembled. I assume most workplaces frown on people wearing Bud Light t-shirts to the office.

Working in logistics and having a view of the St. Louis brewery's warehouse loading operation from my desk was pretty magical.

On my last day I went to visit my buds at the distribution center across the river in Granite City, Illinois. The trip was purely a professional courtesy and not an effort to pick up enough beer to drown a clydesdale, I can tell you that.

I situated my last day to be on a Friday, that way I could have one last little happy hour with my coworkers and go out on a high note.

One of the privileges I am reclaiming is the right to order whatever I want at a bar and not feel guilty.

I packed up my beer bottle collection, lugged it to the car, and drove out of the parking lot of the largest brewer in the world one last time. As I turned a corner a news crew was out front. Of course it was.

A Field Trip to Granite City

Anheuser-Busch has a lot of breweries across the country because they brew a lot of beer. A lot of that beer goes to nearby distribution centers where it's stored while it waits to be loaded onto trucks and shipped to a store near you. My job is to build different tools and reports that show data about how fast the trucks are being loaded, how many mistakes are made while loading, etcetera, etcetera.

Since I'm doing so much work involving the distribution centers I thought it would be good to go visit the nearest one over in Granite City, IL. GRAN as we call it is the busiest of the distribution centers and handles a lot of the craft beer as well so the truck loads leaving here are the most complicated.

The Cold Room is where we store the keg beer because it needs to be kept refrigerated as it is not pasteurized.

Import keg beer on the other hand is pasteurized so that it can survive its boaty journey to America.

I'm always sad when I think about how much beer has to be thrown away. Beer that has passed its freshness date or stuff that gets damaged in shipping is marked as "dump beer" and gets shipped to a company that dumps the beer and recycles the packaging. I just learned that when A-B dumps beer it gets a refund on the excise taxes paid to the federal government. Very interesting.

I got to take home a case of fancy Goose Island Noel that was still good it just was out of season.

Best field trip ever.