‘It Was a Mistake’: School Bus Driver Fired for Drinking White Claw on the Job Claims She Didn’t Realize the Seltzer Contained Alcohol

A Long Island bus driver was fired from her job after drinking a White Claw. (Photo: AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

Amal Hanna, a Long Island, New York bus driver, was fired from her job of 15 years after drinking a White Claw while transporting a busload of children home from school. Hanna claimed she mistook the White Claw for a non-alcoholic fruity seltzer, the New York Post reported Monday.

The 60-year-old Long Islander worked as a bus driver for Smithtown High School for 15 years, was recently diagnosed with cancer and is currently in the middle of chemotherapy.

Although Hanna says she is sober due to her treatments, she claims she could not taste alcohol even if she wanted to due to the chemotherapy.

Hanna alleges that she grabbed a White Claw from a fridge that she shared with her roommate while rushing off to work.

“It was a very honest mistake,” a parent said to the New York Post in the wake of Hanna’s termination.

The local police chose not to press charges against Hanna for drinking and driving, but the administration at Smithtown High School and WE Transport Inc., the bus service company, chose to terminate her from her position immediately, citing it as “completely unacceptable.”

“It was just a mistake, it was a mistake,” Hanna said in a tearful interview with the New York Post.

She claimed the White Claw packaging was confusing, and that the alcohol percentage was in small print on the can:

“For people like me that don’t drink — how are they going to know this is alcohol?”

She was described by multiple parents according to News 12 Long Island as a woman who “treated the children like they were her own.”

Hanna says she fears she will be “in the street because of a mistake,” due to the high cost of her chemotherapy treatments and unemployment.

Crackdown on Confusing or Misleading Alcohol Labels

Hanna’s claim of confusion arising from misleading labeling is just one incident in a larger issue within the alcoholic beverage world.

A growing packaging trend within booze marketing has led to many alcoholic drinks appearing nearly identical to their booze-free counterparts.

Business Insider reported in early September that states like Illinois and Virginia were taking regulatory steps to ensure these beverages are kept away from their alcohol-free lookalikes.

“We were really concerned that busy parents, busy caregivers, busy shoppers, as they traversed the marketplace, were inadvertently grabbing the wrong thing,” executive director of the Illinois Commission, Lisa Gardner, told the Wall Street Journal.

The ruling also prohibits placing these alcoholic beverages in close proximity to soft drinks, candy, or snacks with youth-oriented images. Additional signs notifying shoppers that these co-branded products contain alcohol must also be displayed near the beverages, as one mistake can clearly have life-altering consequences.

“It’s creating a lot of confusion in the marketplace,” Gardner concluded.

This issue even extends to alcoholic beverages. In January, Sazerac faced a lawsuit over the similarity in packaging for its Fireball Cinnamon malt beverage and Fireball Cinnamon Whisky products. The malt beverage contains half of the alcohol of the original Fireball Cinnamon Whisky and caused confusion among customers who said they were under the impression they were buying the original, higher-ABV Fireball.

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