Job

It poured it down for all of a few days ago, a first for me here, and I was cleaning the cabins so had to drudge around in it going from room to room. Summer has now officially passed in Yellowstone to autumn, although the morning and nights surely feel like an English winter to me – some people say there are only two seasons in Yellowstone, summer for the two months of June and July and winter for the rest. It may snow soon, should have bought warmer clothes!

In the end the Housekeeping manager barred me from moving to the gift shop after she had a quick talk to the manager, she wouldn’t let me go because so many people are leaving from all the departments, which they attempt to fill by giving us a one day weekend. It can be irritating because Xanterra controls almost everything in your life, what you eat, when you eat, what job you can do, where you live, when you can be noisy, when you wake up, etc. However, I am allowed to move to being a ‘Truckey’ where you primarily pick up all the housekeeping linen and drop it off. When I tell people that I am trying out as a Truckey everyone exclaims ‘What, you’re a turkey?’ It must be my strong English accent with which many people are perplexed and intrigued by, especially the internationals as they have learnt from American speakers. I had 3 trial days starting yesterday morning, beginning work an hour earlier at 7 am. I was thrown in straight away, they were missing two people because copious amounts have quit from all departments. This job seemed a walk in the park compared to cleaning rooms as you mostly sit in the truck, put some linen away and collect or drop it off. The only difficult part is when you sort the dirty linen, picking up hundreds of heavy bags and putting them into the correct bin in the baking sun. I am not sure whether I am working full time on this job yet, I think it might just be when Housekeeping don't need anyone. I am not allowed to drive the trucks since you have to be 19, which is somewhat a relief because reversing onto the docks seems challenging. I won’t get tips with this job, which was a nice perk when cleaning rooms, for two weeks we got $32 each in a packet, of which Penn my area manager humorously sketched on a cup of steaming tea and wrote ‘Tea (English)’.