Boyfriend Won’t Buy My Beer

*Originally written by Ashley Stevens who quit

Three months ago I gave up my personal space, my humble abode, sleeping in the middle of the bed, having a closet to myself, and pooping in peace when I invited another human to have a permanent toothbrush next to mine.

It can be a scary and stressful decision to combine your space and personal aspects of your life with someone else and there will be handful of people that will caution you to not take that step too early. Me? I ignored most “advice” and thought of it as a new adventure with my best friend.

We have both learned very quickly that we can’t hide anything from each other– literally nothing. Our house is comparable to a dollhouse in size and too small for even a bathroom door. I think we both wait for the other to leave the house to enjoy some quiet-uninterrupted poop time due to the fact that the window in the bathroom doesn’t open, there’s no fan and it is located directly off of the bedroom… A couple feet from where we lay our heads (do you see where I am going with this?). One morning we ended hiding our poops from one another when I heard S start the water for a shower and I decided to sneak in to grab some items I needed to finish getting ready for work… As I opened the curtain we use as a door, I screamed bloody murder when I unexpectedly locked eyes with him mid deuce-drop.

We have also learned that compromise is key to not strangling each other in our sleep. We take turns doing the dishes, I try to not take up the entire bathroom counter and he makes the bed every morning, but there’s one thing we will most likely never see eye-to-eye on. BEER. My life is beer and working for the brewery, his life is beer and running a bar. I sell beer, he buys beer. You would think this would be a Hoppily-ever-after situation, but we avoid bringing beer-talk into the house in order to avoid saran wrap on the toilet or toothpaste in the Oreos. Even when removing ourselves from our jobs, our taste buds can never agree so we never share. S meets dozens of beer reps every day wanting to put their beer on tap, they bring him samples hoping to win him over with one of their styles. If only I could win him over with Iron Horse beers (the fair way) but you see… the bar he runs does not serve IHB beer. I know what you’re thinking.. DUMP HIM. Well that’s not going to happen because he is pretty great. He has a business to run and limited taps. He dedicates those taps to other local breweries (a tap or two for the yellow shit-beer) and encourages people looking for a hyper-local IHB beer to skip a couple blocks ahead to [ the pub ] to enjoy it from the source.

Ellensburg is a competitive market when it comes to food, beer and wine; everyone wants a piece of the pie.  Iron Horse is a culture company working to improve lives and communities by engaging and respecting the human spirit. We make good beer people want to drink. In a perfect world Iron Horse would be present in every bar (even S’s) not only in Ellensburg but the entire region- trust me we are working on it. Some reasons why this should happen:

• The shit sells. On average local business’ will go through 8 IHB 1/2bbls per month (that’s about 1200 beers) people are thirsty for our products.

• You support us, we support you. We host trivia at locations that serve our product to encourage our fans to spread the love to other establishments while enjoying our beer. We also take part in “Tap-Takeovers” at IHB serving accounts–bringing in a rep to chat first-hand with your establishment’s patrons because you are a part of this process and we want to do what we can to support you and your customers.

• We do not want to compete. We want to high five. We deliberately forgot to hang TVs on the walls– we want people to conversate with one another, so if you’re a sports bar or serve those who can’t miss the Seahawks game you don’t have to worry about us stealing your customers. Our food menu is unique– you will not find bacon wrapped dates, or a sloppy jared anywhere else in town because we like weird stuff and didn’t want to repeat any other local menu already available to the public. So if you’re a burger and fries kinda place, we aren’t after your customer and will recommend a tasty burger joint to those who come into [ the pub ] looking for such. 

I believe I got a little off subject…. S also steals all of the blankets at night, snores louder than a banshee and buys beer I don’t like so he can have it all to himself;  but we did get past the poop-phase so I think we are on the right track.