Ghosted. Yelled At. Fired. Then I Got to Work.
I was the fastest inventory lead at an Upper East Side NYC cannabis dispensary. Raised a pay issue. Got ghosted by two owners. Got yelled at by a COO who's never in the state. Got fired the following week. Asked for a reason — none was given. So I automated the whole thing. All is forgiven. Nothing is forgotten.
This isn't a feel-good founder story. No garage. No dorm room. Just a back room on the Upper East Side and a termination with no explanation.
Let's get into it.
The job
Inventory lead. Upper East Side, one of NYC's first licensed cannabis dispensaries.
My only goal was simple: receive inventory correctly. Every product accounted for. Every field accurate. Every box stickered. Done right, the whole floor runs smoothly — budtenders know what's in stock, customers get what they came for, and nobody's guessing.
I was good at it. Really good. Before any tools, before any shortcuts — just focus, repetition, and a refusal to be slow. They started calling me "AI" before I'd even touched a single piece of technology.
Then I became the first person in that building to get a ChatGPT membership. Paid for it out of my own pocket. Because I saw what it could do and nobody else was even thinking about it. Once I plugged it in, I didn't just leave everyone in the dust — I lapped them entirely.
The culture around me was horrendous. But the work? The work was immaculate.
I raised the menu score from 2 out of 5 to 4.9. Trained staff. Ran the floor. Did the job of a manager without the title or the pay to match.
The flagship Brooklyn location — the operator's original store — still sits at a 2 out of 5. Still.
The reality of NYC cannabis retail
New York dispensaries are supposed to be something special. Curated. Community-rooted. A new kind of retail built for the culture.
Too many are running on something far less interesting: friendships, nepotism, and vibes. Restocks driven by who you know, not what your customers actually want. No data. No strategy. Just trends and favors.
Friends in HR. Friends as COO. A COO who isn't even in the state most of the time — but somehow always has an opinion.
When I raised a pay issue — professionally, directly — I got ghosted by two owners. Then yelled at. Fired the following week. Asked for a reason.
None was given.
That's the game. But all truths come out eventually. They always do.
Shoutout to the unions organizing across NY and NJ dispensaries right now. The workers holding this industry together deserve better. Keep going.
What I built
I took everything I knew — every invoice format, every compliance headache, every moment a budtender had to say "it's not in the system yet" — and I built Trakie.
I'm not going to tell you how it works. I'll just say this: what used to take an hour now feels like magic.
Dutchie API integration is in the works. This thing is only getting faster.
The nickname stuck
They called me "AI." Now I'm building one.
If you run a Dutchie dispensary — come find me. I'll show you in person.
📩 stevenfounder@trakie.ai 🌐 trakie.ai
Founding customer pricing is available now. Yesterday's price is not today's price.
All is forgiven. Nothing is forgotten.