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| Selling bus tickets at the bottom of the mountain |
This week the weather has been beautiful on the ski mountain so all the baggy-pantsed snowboarders have been going around saying things like "What a cracker day, bro" and "It's a splitter day, dude" and so on.
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| Morning sunrise view from the shed |
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| Pickles likes the gas heater almost more than I do |
With the additional snow and now constant sunshine, the Ice Bar has opened at one of the top of the lifts. The bar is cash only and since there is no cash machine on the mountain, our little Sno Shop has been extra busy with debit withdrawals. Lately, I have been the human equivalent of an ATM.
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| Reading in the sun and waiting for bus passengers |
Working at the ski field is opposite in many ways to working in housekeeping. The work is not physically demanding, I have lots of human interaction and I get to be outside a lot. There's another important difference as well: hours worked per week. At the hotel there was always more work to be done and our supervisors were always looking for volunteers to start early, stay late and come in on our days off. I easily put in over 50 hours a week without even trying. At the ski field, however, we all have to fight for hours which is really frustrating. The company is very tight financially and tightening down more lately. This means that I am always asked to leave work early from the shop or take extra long lunch/ski breaks. This is all well and good but it doesn't add up to a very livable or saveable paycheck. Currently, even though I am up on the mountain six days a week, I'm barely hitting 35 hours.
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| Ice Bar open at the top of the mountain |
Luckily, since I am kind of a floater between retail and transport, it's not too much harder for me to try and float somewhere else as well. Today I did two hours of cross-training with Guest Services and learned a whole lot about prices and procedures for booking lessons, rentals and lift passes. The amount of information that needs to be understood and memorized is astounding and I was glad that I was merely shadowing for the afternoon. I hope that Guest Services lets me continue to train and eventually pick up some shifts on my own. In the meantime, it's not exactly torture to be forced to go out and ski or leave work early, I just wish Sean were there to enjoy the time with me.
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