First Day Impressions

We both went into the office at 9 AM yesterday for our inaugural work day. Josie is working the front desk and handling the store, and I am doing backup for the store and front desk along with welcoming and siting new guests and doing computer work. The computer work will involve several projects. These include: developing a newsletter, upgrading one system from Microsoft XP to Vista, upgrading the network and cleaning up their data base of 20,000 records. It is no small task as I am not a software giant. I can do the basic stuff but will need help from another computer software guy to complete the other, more complicated tasks. There are two people on the staff that have good technical backgrounds on computers, so they will help.

The initial impression that both of us have is that there are too many people working at one time. There was a tendency yesterday for everybody either to be standing around or bumping into each other. This may be a temporary situation since people come and go on the staff. Bill says it is better to have many, different skills available than to be shorthanded. He pays the bills. There was an hour for lunch which is a first for us. We are used to only a half hour. The day seems long, but we again prefer to have the three days off so are willing to work the longer days.

There was a club that came in yesterday and kept us busy siting them. Because of the hills in the park, we need to assist everybody with backing into their sites so that nothing drags on the ground while getting settled even though the sites themselves are level. There is a trick to backing into many of the sites. That's one of my jobs and we generally have at least two people helping with siting the guests - one stays in front, and one stays in back. The clubs represent a major portion of the business here. There is at least one club that comes most weekends.

It turns out that Josie probably could have worked the few days over Valentine's weekend. One of the office staff said she should have gone to Bill with the request instead of the scheduler. Now we know. Also, this shop was offering her about 30% less than the Palm Springs shop so it works out ok. So far, so good...