I also helped educate one of said employees, by teaching him what the four digit code on a bottle of beer meant.
Most of the time that code is the bottled on date. The first three numbers represent the day of the year the beer met the glass, the fourth digit is the last digit of the year. So, the example I showed him of 1921 on a bottle of Long Trail Coffee Stout (22 oz.) equates to day 192, year 2011. (At 8% it might be okay, but it's been sitting on a not so cool shelf in the back, so all bets are off.)
Then I handed him a six-pack of Beerlao Dark Lager, and told him to yell at their distributor. I was too eager to pounce when he asked why. I told him, "you see, not all bottling dates are encoded, and this one is in plain English. See, stamped on the front label it says 'MFG DATE Sep.26.08'." Four years old, lowish ABV, covered in a thick layer of dust, sitting on a hot shelf. It's as much the owners fault (past & present) as it is the distributor, but the distro people should be checking this stuff every time they come in there, and the owners should be checking the inventory sheets regularly. Oh well.
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