I applied to work at a 3bbl brewery the owner asked me to come to a brew day and work so they could get a look at me.
I was the only person who showed up on time, 5am. The head brewer didn't show up till after 8am, even admitted to over sleeping. The owners showed up about 6:30am (after telling me to show up at 5am) Had a bunch of lame excuses why they were late.
Don't get it twisted it was work, hard work. My full time job is a production worker in a large factory. It's hard work, 12 hr shifts on concrete, straight overnites.
Working at that micro was harder. I was there from 5am till 11:30 pm at night. I was the only one who was there the whole time everyone else either came to work late or left early. I stayed till we were done. This was all unpaid, a try out. Since the owners left early I emailed them the next day. Said they liked what they saw but wanted me to come in for another brew day (unpaid) to see more. I replied that I was there for 18 1\2 hrs and if they didn't see enough then I wasn't interested in coming back.
Now I burned 2 vacation days at work drove 2hrs to get there and back and performed hours of back breaking labor, for free. Now do I regret it? No. I enjoyed the experience. I learned a lot. Basically it was like my brew days on my old 10 gallon system. Just at 3 bbls. We had the same problems and hiccups that happen on a brew day at home. I had as much if not more knowledge than the owners and the head brewer. So that day gave me a lot of confidence and made me feel good about my abilities. I certainly had a better work ethic than any of them.
But as someone else said it seems small micros rely upon and use the "free" labor provided by folks interested in brewing. Another guy came in during the day and helped for like 3 hrs. They talked about another guy who used to help out who stopped coming by. It was hot, dirty, sweaty work, heavy lifting required. You're love of beer and Brewing will only keep you doing it for nothing for so long. Now if it was My brewery and I was doing all that for myself it I would find it very enjoyable.
A friend of mine who worked with me at my current job worked at a large production brewery. This was before my experience at the micro. When he told me I was like "that must have been cool" he was like "not really". He went on to describe the working conditions, basically a sweaty hell, and the pay was pretty piss poor. But he did say they got a lot of free beer and could even drink while working.