My Beef With San Francisco’s Cannabis Dispensaries
With a couple odd jobs in between, I’ve worked retail and/or food service for over twenty years. Both are terrible for their own hellish reasons (I promise, while the service industry is punishing, retail is outright unforgiving). Meanwhile, as I mopped up the coffeehouse/shoe store/sausage hut, the cannabis industry was flowering.
Every stoner and their cousin has considered working at a cannabis dispensary, but few get off the couch and do it. Yet the industry is surprisingly hard to break into. You need a reliable (read: verifiable) reference. Gatekeeping is the face of an internal vetting process. If you’re hired, your next test is that of your composure. When you witness wrongs like theft, racism, and corruption, you will be expected to turn the other cheek. What follows are some personal complaints based on my experiences in the cannabis industries of Oregon and California.
As it turns out, selling legalized weed in California is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Medicinal treatment decentered
My multi-year fling with one of the West Coast’s most profitable industries began in early 2018, in Portland, Oregon. Oregon had recently legalized recreational cannabis sales, having primarily served the medicinal marijuana community in 1998, two years after California. That therapeutic approach bled into recreational sales, as many people without medical recommendations self-medicate without guidance. Additionally, medical cardholders did not stop existing. Patients deserve real care from dispensary workers who know what RSO is and who to recommend it to.
I soaked up as much medicinal knowledge from veteran industryfolk as I could. They taught me that THC treats nerve pain and CBD treats tissue damage, how to help cancer patients find weed strains that stimulate hunger (Purple Kush, Northern Lights), that Δ9 is bullshit. I took interest in how certain weed strains affect mental illness symptoms, positively and adversely. For instance, what lifts depression (Blue Dream, Green Cr**k, Tangie) may not relieve anxiety (SFV OG, GSC).
There is nothing wrong with simply wanting to get stoned. But I appreciated the holistic practice of the Portland dispensaries I worked for. In 2019 when I came back to SF, I figured I would land in a similar environment. San Francisco also has dispensaries on every corner, so it shouldn’t be too hard, right?
Wrong. California’s cannabis industry was a new beast entirely. By the time I got hired in January 2019, recreational sales had completely taken over, leaving no aspect of the job unchanged. And I thought I’d finally escaped retail. San Francisco’s medical marijuana patients are outnumbered, constantly pushed aside because they’re buying only one item. There I was, back in the realm of conversion (turning lookers into buyers), beating your sales goals, customer appreciation points. In SF, dispensaries had become little more than candy shops serving potheads and tourists. And it was only getting worse.
Shady owners
As bartenders and small business employees will tell you, “The job is alright, but the owner…”
I’ve worked at four San Francisco dispensaries. Make of that what you will. The most recent laid me off along with 30% of the staff. Prior to that was one I worked at for three weeks, then COVID happened. Beforehand, I got fired from a dispensary owned by a strict Taiwanese/Filipino family because I forgot to flush. So what, I washed my hands! Besides, they were [allegedly] skimming our tips and always putting up a big stink about my weekly therapy appointments. Sorry Debbie, crazy people love playing with their own shit! The last one, we’ll get to in a minute.
I believe scientists should conduct a mental health study on adults who willingly choose to own a small business. How many healthy brains are there vs. seriously afflicted ones? I’ve watched a parade of owners sabotage their own businesses in my life so far. The place that laid me off, it was not a coincidence the shop was suffering financially. I watched as the owner came in nearly every night, a girl on each arm, and robbed his own store. “Put that on my account, will you?” he told the closing manager as he left with $500 of product.
I understand business owners find themselves under unimaginable pressure every day. But they express it in such peculiar ways.
Shitty presentation
The magic of selling legal weed in Portland vs. here partly comes down to how Oregon dictates tracking, called seed-to-sale. Wholesale purchase—actual pounds of primo bud—allowed us to sell from massive jars we kept on shelves behind the counter, apothecary style. I could hold out a big-ass jug of weed for your olfactory delight, before you made your decision. As long as the shop’s numbers even out after close, Oregon takes their cut and you get to keep operating—and that’s dealing weed the Beaver State way.
In California, it seems that thoughtful magic has been stripped from the dispensary experience. Law dictates that weed must arrive and be sold pre-measured, pre-packaged. No sniffs allowed. Sometimes you can’t even see the bud you’re considering! Now and then some growers throw in a gram or two of bud specially marked ‘SAMPLE.’ One sample for a whole shipment cycle, which can vary from weeks to months to never again. The sample nug usually goes bad within days to a week of arrival anyways.
The difference in quality comes down to the cure (“It’s Friday, I’m in love!”). You can’t smoke cannabis fresh off the vine. You’ve gotta cure it first, and that is a months-long process—if it’s done right. The plant needs to lose moisture gradually in a humidity-controlled, light-sensitive environment. In Oregon, where they recently grew more weed than they knew what to do with, a proper cure is approximately three months. Unfortunately more and more farmers, especially in California, are turning to the heat-and-treat method to churn out cannabis faster. Flash-cured weed is a deceiver dressed in the skin and scent of its authentic counterpart. Give it a few weeks however and that $55 eighth will wither into dry balls of hay.
Overpriced weed
Hate me all you like, but it’s true—Oregon simply has better weed. They cure it better, distribute it more efficiently, and regulate it with proper cultivation in mind. A top shelf eighth at my old store in Portland cost $36 before tax. In my opinion, true top shelf-quality weed (Cannabiotix) hides in plain sight among its lesser-quality competitors (Pure Beauty). It’s just as expensive, but delivers exactly what you’re paying (still too much) for. In Oregon, more often costs less.
Another gripe of mine that stems from California’s shitty pre-packaged pot policy is the absence of bulk order discounts. Dispensaries in Portland (I can’t speak for the whole state) knock a little off the top the more you buy. What went for $20 an eighth could go for less than $40 a quarter if the customer was interested. Buy an ounce in PDX and you’d end up saving twenty bucks.
Not here! Prices just stack when you buy from a dispensary. And, terribly expensive as it is being a customer, you don’t save much once you start working for them. For one, your usage invariably skyrockets, as even the stingiest pot shops must offer their employees new product samples. At least there’s a trickle of pre-opened rejects you can get high off of after work. Don’t assume your employer will give you fair deals on weed. The shop I got flushed from (Debbie!) gave employees just 25% off.
Letting racist customers get away with racist shit
This problem is hardly specific to cannabis dispensaries. What I mean to illustrate by this point is that it’s so prevalent that no industry is immune. The first San Francisco dispensary I worked at was no exception. It’s why I quit that job after seven adequate months of employment.
I am proud of my Potawatomi heritage and use it to teach, bond, reconnect and more. My mom is white but my dad is Native—“full blood,” because this matters, for better and for worse. There exist plenty of Natives with my blood quantum that “look” more Indigenous. I look pretty damn white almost all year round. Because of my passing skin tone, no one ever guesses my ethnicity.
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Cue a customer that comes by around 5 PM. He’s one of those white guys in his sixties with the personality of an old work glove. While he wasn’t my customer, he caught my attention when he mentioned a rumor about a tribe in far Northern California. I could tell by the tone of his voice it would not be a positive one.
According to him, a coastal tribe was considering a desalination plant to supply themselves with clean drinking water. Not only was this outrageous (because who needs clean drinking water?), it constituted theft from the United States government. “These damn Indians don’t pay taxes,” he asserted (unfortunately, we do) “and now they don’t want to pay the town to supply their water. I swear, they don’t want to work for a Goddamn thing.”
Before he got another word out, I found myself underneath his chin. I can’t remember what I said to him, other than, “Get the fuck out, you’re banned.” But I remember what my manager told me. I followed him to the back, where he overheard the whole thing. He tried telling me I made far too big a deal out of it, which just pissed me off more. Then he said I should not alienate customers, since their support keeps us in business. He was close to meeting the business end of my fist.
I haven’t worked in California’s cannabis industry since the owner with an obvious [alleged] coke problem laid me off. The gay bar I work for today would happily toss that tool on his ass if that happened today. It’s hard work, some of the hardest I’ve done, and I’ve worked at Waffle House. Where weed is concerned however, I’m fine never working for or with it again.
Howdy! My name is Katy Atchison and I'm an Associate Editor for Broke-Ass Stuart.
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