Work Where You Play

There’s a well –worn analogy that compares the duck swimming gracefully on top of the water to the front desk clerk smiling hospitably while she registers campers: both are paddling like hell below the surface.

If you’ve worked at a campground you know the scenario only too well. Things are seldom as calm as they appear to the weekend guest who looks around the campground and says,

“Gee. What a plum job! You collect money, assign sites and join guests as they eat S’mores around the campfire.”

It’s true that there are few jobs where you can work where you play. And most campground owners and managers appreciate the fact they they’re playing host or hostess to a great crowd of guests and customers who are eager to be camping.

After all, we’re welcoming happy people on their way to a good time. Campers don’t pull in expecting to have their teeth drilled. They arrive ready for a relaxing respite, prepared to enjoy what’s ahead.

We are the lucky ones who receive them at the front gate. If we’re ready—with facilities well- maintained and all systems functioning, chances are things can go well.

But even when we’re operating at the top of our game, stuff happens, things go upside down. The average campground has several businesses within the business. The same desk clerk greeting campers could be flipping burgers, cleaning bathrooms, shopping for and stacking inventory, managing a web site and reservation system, and cleaning up after pets. All in the same day. The life guard may be the summer employee mopping the floors, stacking the pool furniture, fixing the video games and showing the Saturday night movie after he stacks firewood.

We work hard. This is especially true in small, family-owned campgrounds, where a few workers don many hats for low wages and long summer hours.

At Lock 30 Woodlands, most workers do all jobs—or at least most jobs. When workampers apply to Lock 30 Woodlands, they know they will be camping where they’re working. Most sign on expecting that the job has clear parameters, routine expectations and predictable consequences. That’s the ideal situation, but it’s not always the norm.

Workampers at Lock 30 are treated as paid staff because usually that’s exactly the level of responsibility they assume. They have the added benefit of being given a full hook up site and a few perks beyond their wages, but for that they are often “night hosts” responsible for after hours’ possibilities.

Our reward in hiring workampers is that they bring with them perspectives from wherever they’ve camped or worked. Many are retired professionals, healthy enough to do the demanding physical tasks we require and skilled in knowing what campers want and need. Even better, they bring a breadth of experience to our recreation world that is hard to beat. We’ve had electricians and nurses, retail sales clerks and factory workers. We’ve even employed maintenance specialists and artists, government workers and homemakers. In the ten years we’ve used workampers, most, but not all, have made a positive difference and influenced change in policy and procedures.

What makes for a successful workamper experience? Three things: as clear a job description as management can offer, mutual respect, and lots of good luck.

Campground managers take a chance because often they hire workampers “over the phone.” Technology has provided tools to lessen the risk, but most workampers don’t show up at the front desk, resume in hand and ready for an interview. Managers take a risk that workampers are who they say they are and will do what they claim they can and are willing to do.

Workampers take a chance because they sign on for jobs that often require them to pull up stakes and drive a distance to work for organizations or individuals who are complete strangers. They depend on web sites for accurate representations of where they will live. They count on employers to define accurately and honestly what they will be expected to do.

Lock 30 Woodlands looks for workers who have a “happy to help” attitude. We want our workampers to understand that the first half of the word “workamper” is indeed work. But it’s work with some of the best campers on the planet.

And when you work with and for good people, work can take on all the pleasures and rewards of play.