Red Flags

Those of you who have followed my dating/marriage travails (until I met Chris, of course) are aware of my ability to ignore red flags. I might chalk this up to my upbeat personality. Others might call it naivete or downright foolishness.

I am trying to be better about heeding those red flags and gut feelings, but the issue with the job in SC reminded me that we had ignored some warning signs when we made the agreement to go.

• The manager was pretty aggressive in trying to lock down a deal with us. She contacted us, which was flattering, but it felt like she was in a big rush. We should have slowed down. 

• Although she was willing to work with what was already on Chris' schedule, she was very clear that there would be no other flexibility in the schedule. Made me wonder how she'd react if we had an emergency or just happened to get sick. 

• Our report date for that job was April 20. We asked if we could arrive about 10 days early and just leave our MH there while we drove to Ohio for a few days to take care of some things. She was adamant that she would not have a place for us until April 20. Really? We didn't need a site, just a place to park the MH while we were gone. Again, not too accomodating. 

I'm not trying to make excuses to justify our not going there, just pointing out some of the things we should have heeded earlier.

However, we've had some even more distressing dealings with KOA owners/managers.

One owner seemed very nice, but when I read the reviews for her KOA many people mentioned her by name as being a liar and unfriendly. Another red flad was when she called the KOA in NM for a reference and was rude to the workamper who answered the phone. I continued communicating with her and asked a couple questions which I thought were more than fair.

First question: It was a guardhouse job which required 15 hours per week in exchage for our site but other jobs she advertised only required 5 hours per week in exchange for the site. Why the difference?

Her reply---bascially she said she didn't think the guardhouse job was "real work" so didn't think we ought to be compensated as much as the other workers. Nice. Did we really want to go to work for someone who had decided we were lazy?

Second question---Would there be an end of season bonus for staying for our entire commitment? This is not mandatory but more and more employers are including a bonus in their compensation to keep people from leaving early, so I asked.

Her reply---if it's possible to screech in an email, she did. Basically it was "how could anyone ask about a bonus? A bonus is a surprise that is given not something mandatory" and she "had never heard of such a thing".

A bet she's not much of a tipper.

We discontinued our communications at that point.

Last fall we saw an ad for a KOA in Massachusetts (near many of our loyal readers) which I was very excited about. We arranged for a phone interview and got up an hour early (this was when we were at Amazon) for the call.

The phone never rang.

When Chris emailed to ask if there'd been a miscommunication about the time, she replied that she was sick. We replied that we were sorry she wasn't feeling well and to please get in touch when she was feeling better.

I guess she's still sick. Or worse.

However, I will say that it seems like it goes both ways. The woman from SC sent us a very curt and somewhat condemning email after we said we weren't coming, but the next day she sent another thanking us for letting her know because "some people just don't even show up".

We've heard about workampers who packed up and left during the night without even telling their employer.

My favorite: When we were in NM the owner had hired a couple to clean the restrooms. They were taking forever to arrive and then we found out that they had run out of gas money (Or so they said) so they'd pull into a gas station and call the owner and he'd give the gas station his credit card number. When his daughter (the office manager) found out about that, I think she put an end to it because they never showed up.