But Marcus, 22, quit his budtender position at the Hunny Pot Cannabis Co. after he alleged the company mishandled two floods, including one where his colleagues were asked to clean up sewage water without proper equipment.

When Marcus got hired to work at the first legal weed dispensary in Toronto, he didn’t expect to come face to face with a puddle of human feces.

In a separate flood, Marcus alleged management offered water-damaged containers of cannabis to staff at a discount. He said he didn’t realize the water may have been contaminated with sewage.

Marcus and five other former Hunny Pot employees who spoke to VICE described a chaotic and at times unsanitary environment, with racial microaggressions and payroll issues. They described a culture of fear, where management played favourites among staff, and those who spoke up were punished or faced “jokes” about being fired. The workers (five out of six declined to use their real names due to privacy concerns, and are identified by first name pseudonyms) showed VICE documentation of their grievances, including a letter they gave to management in October.

“I had to leave for my own mental health,” Marcus said.

All six former employees quit their jobs.

In response to a detailed list of allegations, Cameron Brown, communications officer for the Hunny Pot, said the company is “committed to providing a healthy, safe and inclusive environment for all our employees and customers."

Brown didn’t respond to most of VICE’s questions, claiming that they pertain to confidential personnel matters. However, he said the store has never sold contaminated products.

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The Hunny Pot became Toronto’s first legal weed dispensary when it opened on April 1, 2019. Customers lined up on Queen Street West by the dozens on a freezing opening day, and the store—a multilevel space with sleek black and gold branding—remains bustling now, according to former employees; one former worker said a manager told him the place raked in more than $100,000 on the final weekend of last year’s Caribana festival. A former cashier told VICE her till would have $3,000 just in cash (not including debit and credit) at the end of a shift.

"The safety of workers, the happiness of workers, anything to do with their people, it was completely second thought.”

The Hunny Pot opened following a chaotic process through which legal cannabis retailers in Ontario were selected via lottery and expected to be ready to operate within two and a half months. There was a lot riding on the launch, as Ontario was already months behind the rest of the country in opening legal cannabis stores. By that time, most of the illicit dispensaries in Toronto had shut their doors. Many had received negative press for operating outside the law, selling questionable products, poor working conditions, and robberies, and there was an expectation that legal dispensaries would be more professional.

When I spoke to the Hunny Pot’s owner Hunny Gawri, a real estate agent, on opening day, he admitted he had very limited knowledge about cannabis but said his retail experience would allow him to run a successful shop. The store is opening a second location in Burlington soon.

But the Hunny Pot made several gaffes from the get-go. It wasn’t wheelchair-accessible; it was accused of overcharging its customers; and, as VICE reported, the shop’s publicist pretended to be its first customer in a television interview, during which she raved about the service she received. A shirt worn by a white female employee bearing the slogan “I run on weed & gangsta rap,” was criticized by some as being tone deaf considering that Black people are disproportionately arrested for cannabis crimes and often left out of the legal industry.

The former budtenders who spoke to VICE said they wanted to work at the Hunny Pot for a variety of reasons, ranging from an interest in medical cannabis to a desire to be part of a burgeoning industry. But they said the working environment quickly became intolerable.