We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sierra Harris a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sierra , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Has your work ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized?

How I became introduced to speyside, I had a friend who had worked there tell me that the environment was better than my previous job.

At first it was, but soon after I had began getting harassed a lot. I had made it known to my superiors. When I had brought it up, my boss had told me it was my fault due to him being “close friends” with the people who had caused problems for me. These people went as far as adding salt packets into my food, smeared chewed gum across my windshield, tried to get people to fight me, and get me fired.
The 40 year old woman who had caused these problems for multiple coworkers and myself had been related to people in the office or sleeping with her superior, and that is how she would get away with all the problems she had caused for multiple coworkers.

Then after my superiors refused to move me out of the problem department(heading on 2nd shift), I just refused to do any work until they would. When they moved me, they moved me to a department that they knew I didn’t want to be in but settled for just to get away from the constant harassment.

When I had made it aware that I would like to learn how to barrel raise, I was told that I couldn’t hit the same numbers that the men hit.
So, I had to go to my plant manager just to get a chance to even try the position. It did take me a little while to learn my rhythm but once I had, I was hitting production. I was then supposed to be getting full time barrel raising pay. ($20.25)
Instead I was only making fill in barrel raiser pay. ($19.50) I wasn’t aware of what full time pay was until I had spoken with the male barrel raisers. When, I had made it known Speyside had told me that I was infact making the full time pay.
After that they had made me a floater.
They had me trained for 2 shifts on roll out and pulled me off of it multiple times throughout my training days and would yell at me for not knowing how to run the machine after being trained for a couple hours within those days.

Since I had been making these problems known…I had began getting retaliated against. The superiors made a comment about too many women workin there. When I had gone to HR, my boss had came put on the floor just to get onto me for going to HR. They had began nit picking me so much, other employees had began to notice. They would yelling at me for things that I was already doing but would say that I wasn’t doing. My lead began asking me to do my job, train, add barrels on the line, keeping up with everyone’s break times, help people at the back of the line, take barrels off the line, and fix barrels. Then yell at me if I couldn’t keep up with every bit of that all at once. They would yell at me if the machine would break down while I was trying to do 3 jobs at one time. My lead would tell me I wasn’t doing anything at all and would get angry and tell my supervisor and the people in the office that I wasn’t doing my job.
They finally pushed me to a point to where I had felt like I had nothing more left that I could so other than leave.

Sierra , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

At Speyside we build bourbon barrels.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

One of the biggest road blocks I had came across is the amount of sexism in the factory settings. As well as the amount of sexual harassment that is allowed in these environments.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My drive is making a positive impact & equality in the factory setting for everyone.

Contact Info:

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