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Comment by kiernanmcgowan | Hacker News Reader

The required brand loyalty from Miller crazy - friends who have worked for them will pour non-miller beverages into glassware so that they can't be photographed holding a competitor's product. This is not in public mind you, but at someone else's apartment and not on company time.

Not sure if Budweiser / AB does the same thing back but its a really backwards way to run a company culture.

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Also something similar. A motorcycle (scooter) company in Taiwan only allows their own brand motorcycle into the company parking lot. So if you commute with a non-company scooter, good luck finding parking.

Counterpoint to that: I've been shopping with my girlfriend for a new scooter for her over the past few days. We went to the Yamaha dealer which has limited space for parking in front so all the staff bikes are mixed up with the show bikes (it's Vietnam so 10 staff = 10 staff bikes).

We got to see the Honda equivalent parked right next to the Yamaha we were considering (Honda Scoopy vs Yamaha Mio Classico) and decided it looked nicer. Didn't decide yet but she'll probably get the Honda.

So if people are going to the building to be impressed by your bikes, yeah I can see that it's reasonable to avoid having them parked right next to your competitors bikes where the customers will walk past them. That counts x1000 for the head office where the customer might be shopping for an entire dealership instead of just one bike.

This doesn't mean it's ok to say what bikes your staff can drive or what beer they can drink, of course. But branding at your own company premises is something that you can and probably should control.

I should clarify that this is at the R&D + manufacturing facility, not customer facing shop. :)

Company brand-only parking is typically a thing in the American automotive plants as well, and is also negotiated as part of the union package. Some people that work at the plant and don't want to drive company end up just buying a company beater to get a remotely decent parking spot instead of walk a mile or two through a sea of remote non-brand parking...

I'd be totally fine with this if they paid for the scooter.

AB did this for sure before the merger. Working there during my prime, going-out-to-the-bars age, I was told that I should only buy AB products and make sure the label was turned outward for others to see. Thought it was weird but I only drink whisky so it didn't really affect me.

Didn't Microsoft not allow employees to have Apple devices for a while? Or vice versa? I remember something along those lines.

I think you're remembering this story:

https://www.businessinsider.com/ballmer-snatches-microsoft-e...

It was never an actual policy, which is why the employees reacted the way they did.

Ballmer was notoriously a prick about such things.

While my experience is over 15 years old now, it was a common practice for the majority of beer distributors at the time.

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