Diving Into "The Dumpster Fire"

Today is only my third day as Park Manager and already I am a bit overwhelmed. In any other position, when you start a new job you have a supervisor or some other employee there for at least a brief period to orient you to the various aspects of the position and make sure you are set up for success with all of your work duties and expectations. That, unfortunately, is not the case here. With the department shuffling around staff right at the start of the busy season, I am being thrown into things to fend for myself (remember the dumpster fire I mentioned last time.....its proving to be an ongoing thing). So, huge shout out to the three employees who decided that this was a great time to retire instead of doing so in the fall or winter so that this could have been settled then and everyone would have been better prepared for the busy season. But, here we are. This is the hand we have been dealt, so we've just got to play through and hope for the best. 
Thank goodness I worked here last year and have a handle on the daily operations of the park and what all the seasonals need to do each week. I can't imagine how much more stressful it would be to get thrown into this position having never even visited this park! So at least I have that going for me.

The dumpster fire in all its glory:

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  The park's amazing maintenance guy, Steve, also retired this year, which leaves all maintenance supervision up to me. One of my seasonals is a "maintenance ranger", but it is his first time working in this type of job, so I've still got to get him trained up on how things work around here.
• I'm two weeks out (at least) from getting my park cell phone
• My computer set-up in the office is barely functional (I've got someone coming down on Thursday to help with that though)
• Its days before Memorial Day weekend and the buoys are not out at the swim beach (apparently they should have been put out by May 15th, but nobody did it) and I haven't yet had boat/trailer training to put them out myself. My current options for that are to just not have them out or get in the freezing cold water while its 30something degrees and windy as fuck out to place them myself. But, SURPRISE SURPRISE, they are old as shit and the chains are rusted through so those need to be replaced first.
• I don't have a purchasing card, so I can't go out and buy things (like the chains) that the park needs until that comes in.
• The firewood shed was removed before a replacement arrived, so the firewood bundles were outside and got rained on last week. (my executive decision was to throw them all into the shop for now so at least people can buy some dry firewood this weekend)

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  The beautiful truck they are stealing from me

  They tore down an old vault toilet but haven't finished the replacement, and I have no idea when that will be done. I don't even have the keys to it- the contractor person is holding them hostage.
• I have one little Kubota among three employees because one is in the shop and the wrapped ranger pickup is being taken away from me and given to a manager at another park, so the blank pickup will become my work vehicle.

I'm positive that after the first few weeks of chaos, it will all settle down and be completely fine, but at this very moment it kind of sucks. 

Despite my complaints, I really am excited about this position and I can't wait to learn and get a better handle on what's going on. I'm going to gain so much from this position, that any bout of stress will be overshadowed in the end.

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Campground is almost ready for campers!

Now that I've had a chance to go through my day, I do feel a bit more in control of what's going on. One of the little arsonists is on his weekend and the other seasonal ranger is back from his. (Don't tell the others, but this one is already looking to be the favorite) Things on their end has been going really smoothly today and I've actually had time to get some stuff figured out in the office and even hop on a mower for a bit to clean up some of the trickier areas. The two of them have been busy touching up the park grounds with the mower and weed eating wherever needs it (I drove around half way through the day and made them a list of what still needed cleaned up). 

Everything is actually looking pretty good for their first official go of it and it will only get better as they get more practice with the equipment and get a better rhythm going. They should have it all finished today or tomorrow morning and then we can move on to planting the baby trees we just got in the other day. With it being Memorial Day weekend, most campers are arriving Thursday and staying through Monday, so we had to make sure everything with the campground got squared away before then.

Hopefully we keep on this ever so slight upward trend and things just continue getting better and easier from here on out!

Tomorrow starts my first [BUSY] weekend as Park Manager!

How Neat Is That?!