QUOTE(dalsgal @ May 17 2013, 05:25 PM) [snapback]33478[/snapback] I work 9 hours a day as it is. If people had their way I would never leave the office. I am on call 24/365 and am always available for people to check in. I think that is sufficient for people wanting to camp here. This is a small CG and my husband and I are the only employees. The office is closed on Sundays except for people wanting to camp here and I can't leave the property without having calls forwarded to a cell phone. I don't mind getting up in the middle of the night to check someone in but I don't want to have to be out there at 6 or 7 AM so that someone can pay in the morning. I do have grass to cut, bathrooms to clean and other duties that I like to do before I open at 10 AM. In TX there is a law called theft of service. If you leave without paying you can be prosecuted. The bad part is the two times I have tried to do that for someone the Sheriff's department tells me it is a civil matter and they won't do anything about it. They don't want to bother with helping us. The DA agreed that we had a case this last time but the head Sheriff said our policy is not proper (the tenant signed and agreed to the policy) and he convince the DA to do nothing. I have spent hours already trying to get something done. It doesn't surprise me about the Sheriff's dept. Where is your husband in all this? Husband would go in around 6 to 7 AM and then you come in around 10 AM. Then he could go out do maintenance and mowing chores. Workamped for a couple and this was their schedule.
I have always stopped at the office to check in upon arrival at private parks, and just assumed this was common If I anticipated arrival after typical office hours, I would call, and often have been told "just go ahead and stop in and pay in the morning" which was appreciated. One park owner/manager who has her phone number listed in big letters on the office door for after hours , and will come down and open till about 10pm for late arrivals said that she had people arrive at 11pm, not pay, and pull out at 6am to avoid payment. She said that if people are that desperate then they can have her spot, but questioned how much enjoyment they got out of their stay. The idea of parking first is more the norm at many of the public campgrounds in Western states. You generally select a spot then return and pay for it within say 30 minutes or less. However even in these parks there are people who try to cheat the system as there are often fines levied if discovered. I grew up in an era where you paid for gas after filling up not before, and it was considered rude and unnecessary to ask guests to pay for a motel room till they were ready to leave in the morning. I still think the RV community as a whole must still have high standards, as RV parks are one of the few places that almost everyone gladly accepts out of state checks.
"Where is your husband in all this? Husband would go in around 6 to 7 AM and then you come in around 10 AM. Then he could go out do maintenance and mowing chores. Workamped for a couple and this was their schedule. " The office is open from 10 AM til 7 Pm. What more should we do. Those hours are 6 days a week. We both do all the yard work, all the maintenance, all the office work and we are the only ones working here.We start working between 7 and 8 outside to keep the lawn up. Do you think we should work 24 hrs a day for what little pay we get now? We get one check for the both of us and I think that the hours we put in are plenty. Now that the pool is open I have to be on duty even longer because I have to lock it down and clean up that area at night. With our campsite provided, with electric, about $400.00 a month and $1000.00 check we figure that we make less than $4.00 per hour and that is not each, that is shared between us. Sorry but I'm glad I don't work for you.
I sympathize with your situation. The owners really need to step up and get you some help—either security equipment or personnel. That said I also understand that it may be a bit of an inconvenience if one of your guests needs to leave before 10am and needs something from the office. So would it be possible to split the office hours. Come in at 7; stay open until about 15-30 min after your checkout time; stay closed until around 3pm when people start stopping, and then stay open until 7pm. During the time the office is closed, I assume you would still be on site doing other things, so you could have a notice on the office to “call this number for service,” and that way people could still reach you. Just a suggestion. And BTW, I also think it is absolutely horrible that people would try to come in late and leave early to avoid paying.
Everyone knows that if they need me they can use the phone on the porch to reach me at any hour. There is a sign on the porch with the number and it is also on the brochure that I wrote to hand out to people when they sign in. We live about 30 steps from the office so I get to the office really fast, day or night. I also fill propane tanks so there is no way I can close the office for a few hours during the day.
Have you tried using traffic cones to block access to the sites? That might get expensive if you have more than a few sites to block, but it might deter a few people that don't stop at the office.
We encountered a park, in which the check-in process was accomplished on the other side of a busy interstate from the park. It was a 24/7 gas station, with the clerk managing everything from cig and slurpy purchases, to campsite payments. These folks kept the electrical pedestal, and the water turn-on device locked. Unregistered guests could pull in and park, but that was it. You got a key upon payment.
What about a fake camera (available at home dpot for a few bucks) pointing at the exit, and a sign - "Parking overnight without paying is a criminal offense. Your license plate is recoreded upon exit" Would the owners spend ~ $20 for a solution taht COULD have an ROI of 1 stolen night? the scofflaws don't have to know that the sheriff is lazy and unhelpful. As Veronica said to Dante in Clerks: "Honesty through paranoia."
QUOTE(dalsgal @ May 20 2013, 04:37 PM) [snapback]33519[/snapback] Yes we have used cones. They just get out and move them, and in some cases, take them with them. Well I hope theft is still a crime in Texas and your local sherriff takes that seriously. Maybe you need one of those surveillance cameras at the entrance with a sign saying,"hi, you're on candid camera". There's got to be something to deters these knotheads.
QUOTE(dalsgal @ May 20 2013, 08:57 AM) [snapback]33511[/snapback] "Where is your husband in all this? Husband would go in around 6 to 7 AM and then you come in around 10 AM. Then he could go out do maintenance and mowing chores. Workamped for a couple and this was their schedule. " The office is open from 10 AM til 7 Pm. What more should we do. Those hours are 6 days a week. We both do all the yard work, all the maintenance, all the office work and we are the only ones working here.We start working between 7 and 8 outside to keep the lawn up. Do you think we should work 24 hrs a day for what little pay we get now? We get one check for the both of us and I think that the hours we put in are plenty. Now that the pool is open I have to be on duty even longer because I have to lock it down and clean up that area at night. With our campsite provided, with electric, about $400.00 a month and $1000.00 check we figure that we make less than $4.00 per hour and that is not each, that is shared between us. Sorry but I'm glad I don't work for you. No I don't expect you to work 24 hours a day. Just giving you a suggestion or two. I have a few more, but I'll pass on them. Good luck to you. Hope you can come to an idea on getting RVers to stop, pay first and not just take any site they want.
Lindsay, we did get accused of greeting people while we were waving a gun at them. The funny thing is that, not only would we not do that but....we don't even own a gun. To be honest, there have been a few that I would like to have done that to.
As I see it, your complaint is late arrivals who leave early to skip paying. People have made good suggestions and you have basically 'shot down' all of them either because the owners won't spend money or it is not convenient for you. There is no solution that won't be one or the other. The owner's lack of financing security measures is beyond your control since you can't make them spend money. The only thing within your control is what you can do, personally. You've made it clear that you will not rearrange anything so that you or your husband can open the office earlier to be available for people to come in and pay, which would be the optimum solution. My only suggestion then would be an evening sweep of the park (maybe an hour after the office closes) annotating empty spaces and then a 'dawn patrol' (say 6 or 7 am) with visits to late unregistered arrivals to collect fees or register them if they're staying longer. Just be sure you have clear signage for the late arrivals so they know that if they don't pay upon arrival they can expect a knock on the door early in the morning. We stayed in one park that handled late unregistered arrivals that way. Unfortunately there is no way you are ever going to catch those 'in after the office closes, out by 4am' cheats. We've seen them arrive in the night & sneak out early in the morning. They're despicable.
The people that sneak in come in around 11 or 12 and leave about 5-6. The owners can't afford expensive security devices and I am not paid enough to spend 24 hrs sitting in the office. When we have 6 acres of yard to mow and keep clean, a pool to clean and other maintenance issues I think 10 -7 is plenty of time to spend in the office 6 days a week. The more hours we put in working the less we are paid since we get a very low salary. I know, at all times, which spaces are empty and which are rented so a sweep would be unnecessary. Also that would mean we must stay up late each night to do that. Since we are up about 5 AM and starting to work doing the cleaning we don't want to sit up all night and see no reason for it. I have waked up in the middle of the night and checked outside and gone pounding on doors to get the rent. We have signs plainly posted stating that everyone must check in before parking at any hour and a stop sign in plain sight at the office but too many don't want to bother stopping at all. I'm not trying to be difficult, as you implied, but trying to find a solution that is feasible. My husband and I already purchase our own tools (weed eater, chain saw, extension ladder, leaf blower)for yard work. We also are available 24/365 for anyone wanting to check in no matter how inconvenient it is for us personally.
Some of this is going to sound a bit harsh. But the way I see it, when someone doesn’t pay, they are not stealing from you—they are stealing from the owner. You will get paid whether the patron pays or not. So why should you bust your butt for an owner that appears not to care. Otherwise if he did care, he would get you the help/equipment you need to do your job without having to work almost 24/7. (Hope he is not a close friend of yours, or worse yet—a relative.) You seem to be conscientious managers who want to do a good job. You probably feel some loyalty to the owner simply because he is your employer, and your work ethic compels you to do everything possible, in spite of your working conditions, to run a nice campground and keep people from freeloading. It sounds like the owner knows that he has a good thing going and continues to take advantage of you, and I’m afraid you may be enabling him to do that by trying to work out solutions that basically involve you having to make unreasonable changes to your schedule—get up earlier, stay in the office later, close the office during the day, patrol at midnight and dawn, work 25 hours a day. It really is not up to you to provide a solution. The owner has to step up. If he can’t see the problem and help out in some way, I’m not sure I would worry if someone doesn’t pay.
Hi dasgal, You are being taken advantage of. Unless there is some compelling reason to continue to work for your employer I'd be giving my notice.
QUOTE(pianotuna @ May 28 2013, 04:43 PM) [snapback]33601[/snapback] Hi dasgal, You are being taken advantage of. Unless there is some compelling reason to continue to work for your employer I'd be giving my notice. I would have to agree. Especially if there is something else occuring we do not know about. The fact that a few people are stealing services is really not your concern. If the owner is busting your chops about it, tell him it is his problem, so he needs to find a solution. I seriously doubt it is a recurring problem, there really aren't that many dishonest RVers running around. If the situation was you closed the office early and didn't open till late, that kind of changes things. But are there really a lot of people who arrive around midnight and scoot out at 4 AM? Personally, I would pay dearly to not have to keep those kind of hours. That sounds like a whole lot of trouble to go through to save a few bucks. Unfortunately, theft is a fact of life for a business. It is a cost of doing business, and you really shouldn't get too caught up in it. Hopefully they will eventually get their just do, but it is not your job to make bad people good. Getting back to Pianotuna's point, and my agreement with him, you have listed a whole bunch of grievances against your employer. Given your low rate of pay, and the fact that a similar position shouldn't be that hard to find, maybe it is time to move on. Many times both sides of the employment equation start to take advantage of the other and it works for both to go their separate ways. Good luck, you sound like a potential employee an owner would be lucky to get.
dalsgal, I am a park owner and I was surprised when I read what your responsibilities are compared to what you are paid. I have workampers too and I would love to have someone like you working for me. However, I only ask my workampers to work a reasonable amount of time based on the value of what they are getting. For example, the ones I have had only work for their site and utilities (about $400 per month at face value). Based on a near minimum wage of $8/hour, I should get about 12 hours per week of work from them to be fair. And I am just blown away that you had to purchase equipment for yard work at your own expense. I know you didn't start a thread to complain about your work situation, but it does seem that you are not being treated fairly by your employer. Nor is it really our place to judge you for what you are willing to tolerate. You probably have good reasons for wanting to stay where you are and in your current job. But if you ever decide to move on, I'm sure you can find a place easily. As for freeloaders, I'm with kcmoedoe on this one. I just don't think there are many of them out there to worry about. And it's not your problem anyway. If the owner is not willing to install enough security measures to prevent it from happening, I wouldn't worry about it either.
