Mollie was kind and welcoming from the moment we first met her, which was actually the day of Mikey’s interview last month. She waved as we walked in to meet him, and we’ve been looking forward to getting the chance to talk with her ever since! This week, we met Mollie back at Cape Beverage to find out how things have been going.

Mollie is one of our warehouse associates who works 2nd shift, so she’s usually coming into Cape Beverage as many of the team members are leaving for the day. She works with Fulfillment Manager Chris Martin and fellow Warehouse Associate Chris Vicchiarelli on the night shift, and they’ll be welcoming another team member soon as well. 

Meet Mollie Liguori! 

She’s from the Atlantic County area, and currently lives in Somers Point, but she moved around to different areas when she was younger.

“I landed in Linwood for the longest time. I lived in Chicago for a little bit, because my dad lives there, and also moved to Philly at one point,” she shares.

“When I lived in Chicago, it was for a set amount of time. I wanted to live out there for a year and see if I wanted to stay there or not. I decided not to. I missed my friends. When I went to Philly, I went to a trade school to make teeth – like crowns, bridges, and dentures,” she says.

Although she could have stayed and gotten a job afterwards, she found herself drawn back to Atlantic County. 

“I can’t not come back. Every time I leave, I feel landlocked. I have really great friends here. We’ve been friends for 15 years and they’re the loves of my life. I love them so much. When I’m too far away from them, it hurts,” she says.

“I had no clue what I wanted to do. I got stuck in the mentality that I needed a career, which is so false and not realistic,” she says. “I went to community college, and then thought, what am I doing? The only thing I like is English. What do you do with that?”

(Ed. note: Ah, the age-old question. Sometimes, you might be able to write pretty cool blogs about cool people!)

She even spent some time in the soap business as well. 

“I managed the Lush in Atlantic City before the store closed. My best friend’s family owns a local handmade soap company that’s been around since the ‘90s. I was an assistant manager at one of their stores for five years,” she says.

“I thought it was something cool that wasn’t completely soul-sucking. You’re doing something tactical: you’re carving and making something, so it felt less like a 9 to 5,” she says.

“It applied to the tooth thing, where I could come in and have a product and make something and feel like I’m completing something at the end of the day,” she says.

While she worked, Mollie took up studies again, this time at Stockton University.

“I was really interested in archaeology. There are specific fields for tooth archaeology. There are people who specialize in old ass teeth,” she says with a laugh. 

“I was an anthropology major at Stockton. Part of that was field work to interview people,” she says.

“Stockton’s anthropology program focused on cultural anthropology, which wound up being great. I feel like I learned so much about empathy for other humans. I understood the problems in the world, but I feel like it pushed me another step further,” she says.

“I found myself leaning more towards enjoying the fieldwork of the cultural side and going out to interview people. We spent a whole semester at a HUD (housing and urban development) building in Atlantic City. We sat in their community room and interviewed people all day long,” she says.

“Many of the people there needed the opportunity that the building provided,” she says. “It was interesting to learn about their lives. They could get free food from the food bank every week, but they didn’t have a way to get the food. For a while, I was doing it myself, and I realized it wasn’t sustainable.”

“What I learned, fairly quickly, was that they didn’t want the food,” she says. “They would pick out certain things, but leave the rest. That was a realization for me. I knew I should have just asked if they wanted the food first instead of jumping in to go get it.” 

“My brain now thinks three steps ahead because of that experience,” she says.

“My minor was Holocaust and genocide studies,” she says. “Which is super dark. I’m Jewish, and I went to a Jewish private school for most of my life, from preschool to 8th grade.”

“The first half of the day, everything would be in Hebrew, and it would be Torah studies and Holocaust studies and Jewish history studies. Then we would pray, and afterwards, have lunch. The last half of the day would be regular studies,” she shares.

“My mom worked in the kitchen at the school with three Israli women. My life was surrounded by aggressive women, it was awesome,” she says. 

Mollie admits she’s not religious, but it’s an important part of her heritage that she appreciated learning more about. 

“I was raised Jewish, and my mom’s Jewish. My grandparents are from the Ukraine,” she says. “It’s amazing how much has left my brain. I can read Hebrew, but I can’t speak it.”

“I knew all the professors in the Holocaust studies program from my days of being in the Jewish community around here,” she says. “They would ask me how my sister was, because everyone loves my sister.”

“I learned so much more about history and other genocides than I thought I was going to. Now, I’m really well-versed,” she says. “I’m by no means an expert, but if someone were to question me on something I said about WWII, I would be offended.”

Before joining us, Mollie worked in science. 

“I got laid off from the lab I was working at. After the pandemic, they cut their staff,” she says. “I was commuting to Cherry Hill, though, so it ended up working out.”  

“At one point, I worked for Amazon for three months. I think everyone who orders from Amazon needs to work at Amazon for a small amount of time,” she says with a laugh.

We know many have probably heard the horror stories of Amazon working conditions. For Mollie, it wasn’t quite that bad, but it’s still a different environment working for a mega corporation.

“It was hard. They pay well, and I see a place for it, though,” she says. “I met people there who were recently out of jail. There’s definitely a role for it, but at what cost?”

“I do think that the place I worked at was not as bad as some of the others. I started right before Christmas. On top of the normal pandemic, people weren’t able to shop in stores, so it was insane,” she shares.

“I used to order stuff from Amazon twice in a day, and just click the ‘Buy Now’ button. Now, I can’t do that. I at least try to consolidate everything into one box,” she says with a rueful smile. 

“I got really strong really fast, so that was cool,” she says. “I was loading trucks like I’m doing here.” 

“After the season, they let go of all the seasonal workers. I showed up one day and my badge didn’t work, so they were like, oh, you got let go,” she says with a laugh.

Luckily, AR and Credit Specialist Noelle Smuz, best friend to Mollie’s sister, kept nudging her to apply.

“I’m grateful that they took a chance on me,” she shares. “After the interview, Craig told me, ‘you were really cool,’ and I was like no, that’s not possible, but I appreciate you for saying that,” Mollie says with a laugh.

(Ed. note: She may believe otherwise, but we can confirm that Mollie is really cool! Having Operations Manager Craig Tropp’s seal of cool-ness approval certainly doesn’t hurt, though.)

“When I first started, I wasn’t very strong,” she says with a slight smile. “These dudes walk around this warehouse with one full keg in each hand, just picking them up and moving them like it’s nothing.”

(Ed. note: It’s true – our warehouse guys are really strong.)

“It’s insane. I’m like, I can’t do that. I want to, though. I remember the first day I was able to pick up a keg by myself, and I lifted it up off the ground,” she says.

“Normally we roll them and it’s not too bad. But I felt like a supervillain. I was so happy I could get it off the ground. It took three months for me to be able to do that,” she says.

“They’re so casual about it. They’ll be talking and just throwing the kegs. It lost its luster eventually,” she says with a laugh.

She really gets along with her coworkers, and they’re so efficient together, it’s almost a bit spooky. 

“Chris V. and I, we’re like a well-oiled machine. I think we can read each other’s minds. It’s so weird. We hardly know each other, but he knows exactly where I’m going and when we’re cleaning up at the end of the night, we just know what the other person is going to do next. He’s so great,” she says. 

“It’s been great. I really like it here,” she says. 

As for her life outside of work, Mollie’s older sister is a Deputy Attorney General for the state of New Jersey.

“I’m very proud of her,” she says. “She got into Villanova Law, which is crazy elite.”

(Ed. note: Woo, Villanova!)

“I have a dog, Darwin, she’s great too. She’s like a Pointer/Greyhound mix. She’s really lanky,” she says.

Mollie shares a picture of Darwin as we chat, which we’ve included here.

“I love that picture of her. It looks like I’m interviewing her for Time magazine’s Dog of the Year,” she says with a laugh.

“Darwin is from the south, maybe Arkansas. My mom and I met these two women on the parkway at a rest stop. They were on their way north with a truck full of rescue dogs,” she shares. “We picked her out online and met them. They were two nice women who clearly did this all the time.”

“She’s so good. I got her when she was three months old. I put a treat down on the floor and I told her to wait, and she wouldn’t get it until I told her to. I don’t know how she learned how to do that. I didn’t teach her that,” she says, shaking her head in disbelief. 

Mollie loves history and reading, too: “I love to learn about as much as I can, about whatever I can; I just want to absorb all the information.”

She’s also a big movie fan, although horror movies are her favorite.

“Horror movies weren’t a thing that I got into until I was in my 20s,” she shares. “I was terrified as a child. I couldn’t watch them. If there was a scary trailer at the beginning of a movie, I couldn’t watch the rest. Then, something switched in my later teenage years.”

“I feel like horror movies have the most range and freedom for directors to play with, for different themes and cinematography. They aren’t afraid to make their movies weird as fuck,” she says.

“I love the classics, like the Friday the 13th series. I also really love old Italian horror,” she says.

“I love watching truly garbage horror movies,” she says. “I can’t watch movies where the dog dies, though.” 

(Ed. note: Thankfully, some lovely folks created doesthedogdie.com.) 

“One of my favorite really bad horror movies is called Microwave Massacre,” she says. “I remember looking it up, and one of my favorite quotes on the website is, ‘Despite the surprising ratio between microwaves and dogs, no dogs die in this movie.’”

The Universal classics also have a special place in her heart, including Creature from the Black Lagoon. 

“I have a tattoo of that little weirdo,” she says with a laugh.

“Frankenstein is great too. My favorite movie, though, is probably the remake of Funny Games. The acting is so dry and great. The mood is great. It’s all shot in the day. It’s very scenic and the cinematography is amazing,” she says.

While Chris Martin might play 2000s punk in the warehouse, Mollie listens to a range of music.

“I listen to a lot of punk and hardcore. I do like some folk music,” she says.

Mollie sighs. “I have a banjo that I cannot play. I bought it for myself two years ago and I can’t teach myself how to do it. All I want in this world is to play the stupid banjo and I can’t do it,” she says, laughing.

“My favorite band is probably mewithoutYou. I like their lyrics a lot. The singer is really interested in worldly ideas, like religion and philosophy, and incorporates that into the music. It sounds a bit pretentious, but it’s not,” she says.

Much like her time working with soap, Mollie enjoys working with our products as well.  

“I really love the shandies,” she says. “The best part of this job is being able to bring good beer to family events and parties and share it with people.” 

“I love being able to bring people something made locally with love, and not part of some crazy big corporation,” she shares. “It’s nice to be like, real people had a hand in this – real people love this!”

When she’s not in the warehouse lifting heavy things and doing a lot of work to help make sure things run smoothly at Cape Beverage, you can find Mollie out and about at local antique stores searching for old books, which she specializes in buying and selling. Next time you see her, make sure to say hi and ask to see more pictures of Darwin!