Sticking It Out

As difficult as it is to stay focused in that office, we are giving it 100%. The management admitted to some kind of "unknown" problem that is preventing me from getting into the automated time reporting system. Josie uses the clock, I still record my time manually. The fact that we work solo on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and the fact that we both have to be there from 8 till 5 in order to properly cover the day, and the fact that they won't pay for more than 8 hours worked in any day, it was suggested we change our weekend hours to cut each of those days by a half hour in order to balance the week. So, 81/2 hours on 2 days, 7 hours on 2 days, and the normal hours on the 5th day. The two managers that are leaving soon really don't give a rip about what happens. It is scary to think about all the problems that are going to occur when the park manager leaves, and all her friends call in their "chits" that she committed to them, but for which there is no printed evidence. She is already giving wild deals to so many people that almost every check-in is unique. I hope we're gone before the s__t hits the fan.

We are getting calls from places we sent "feelers" to that were advertised in our Workamper News. One is a campground in the Catskills in NY, and one is in AZ, in Mesa, to manage a 55+ mobile home park. The one in NY would be a little more than 1/2 the distance to Cody, but the one in AZ would be almost 3/4 of the trip to Cody, and probably is still too far if we decide to leave soon. That one includes a salary and living quarters, but we also know all about the summers there. We are still trying to decide when the best time would be to give notice here, so we are playing it by ear. The longer we stay, the more money we would have to travel. Josie has gotten her first paycheck, but they still haven't issued any to me yet, and it now looks like my first pay won't be until next Thursday, the 14th. That's 20 work days after I started. And they have the gall to ask us for our site payment in advance!

Today will be the first of three days where there will be 4 of us on duty at the front desk. That means I'll be odd man out again and struggle to find things to do to keep busy. Oh well, at least I know it is only short term...

Marching Through the Week

We had our weekly meeting about the website yesterday between 11 AM and 12:30. It reminded me of the many meetings I attended over the years I worked. It was mostly a waste of time in my mind. There were 6 staff members plus Bill in attendance and the majority of the meeting was spent doing an exercise in figuring out who our customer was. Everybody had to write down suggestions, one each on a post-it, and the moderator would place the post-its on a board and we all would discuss and prioritize the responses. Sheesh! This is part of the project to redesign the website. There was one major step forward though. It was decided that the original author of the website, Harv, would be responsible for implementing changes to the old website and I would be used to help design the new, replacement website. That was a relief. There was no way that, with 60+ pages of the old website written in strange software, I could maintain the site. I know it sounds complicated. The fact is, I didn't think I was signing on to do any of this "corporate" work. The Lodge at Happy Jack also had to redesign it's website and they hired a web developer to do the work - that's the way it should be. It was more fun when I was taking pictures of the groups in the campground and putting together collages for them to take home.

It was another "look-for-things-to-do" day for Josie. It is really tough to stay busy when there are only one or two people coming into the store every day, and no customers checking in. We know it is going to get busy again soon. There are some groups scheduled to come in during March and that should help. There are 3 more days left in our work week and then we can play again. We're certainly looking forward to that time again. We are really getting a good taste of how different jobs can be on this adventure. It is a great learning experience for us and even though it may sound like we aren't enjoying the experience - we truly are and still wish we could have started years ago. There is nothing better than the freedom to go where we want, when we want. The wonderful sights we see and the fun things we do in our free time make it worth the hours we spend working. Til tomorrow...