I’ve been here at Autumn Woods RV Park for a month now. I knew coming in that my primary duty would be grounds maintenance: zero turn mowing, hand mowing and weed eating. My experience with a zero turn mower has been minimal to this point. Usually, it’s been the old timer at whatever park I was at who got to sit on the mower. The mechanics of it are pretty easy but you do have to be careful while you’re mowing around RVs and keep a sharp eye out for hoses, cords, toys, tie outs, leashes, etc. Hitting any of those could ruin your day. I also wasn’t used to mowing on a slope. It took me some time to feel comfortable with steep slopes, especially when wet. Truth be told, I’m still not completely comfortable doing it. I keep having visions of me on a TV commercial, yelling “I’ve fallen and can’t get up”.  So far, I haven’t hurt myself or any of the equipment.

The work though is definitely taking a toll on me. It’s more difficult than heading to the gym a couple times a day. So, on the bright side, I am losing weight. On the down side, I’m exhausted at the end of the day. I guess it’s all good. I should be more prepared for Amazon in a few months.

I also got my last call from the sugar beet harvest. I’ll be showing up in Fargo ND on September 21st. Hopefully, we’ll max out on Saturday and Sunday pay before leaving there.

The majority of campers and other people you meet in a campground are absolutely wonderful. I took a call the other day from someone trying to reserve a site and he went out of his way to make the process easy. He did mention that he had also worked in a campground so he had a good idea what I was going through. Then there was an earlier call from someone interested in camping with us but only if we could provide distance from an attraction she wanted to visit. This lady was absolutely amazed that I couldn’t provide the information immediately. Since I had a minute to spare, I looked it up on mapquest. The attraction was about 50 miles away via twisty country roads, with campgrounds much closer than us. And then there was the local resident who came in that day to get propane cylinders filled. He was also amazed that I wouldn’t fill an outdated cylinder, even after he assured me that he wasn’t the propane police. I’ll bet he was even more astounded that his very creative cursing did not get him what he wanted.

For those of you considering working in a campground, please be aware that it’s like any other customer service job. Many, or even most, of your customers will be very pleasant to work with but every once in a while a total jerk will put in an appearance. May your jerks be few and far between.

Wow! It’s finally over and it was a very exasperating harvest. Lots of downtime due to weather. We only got one extra premium pay day. Towards the end, people with other commitments were leaving. We lost enough people at Stephen that a decision was made to just run a day shift with the remaining employees. We got one day shift in, then got stopped for weather again. After 2 days of everyone readjusting to a normal day cycle, the hotline message at 11 AM said to check back at 6 PM for a possible restart that night. No mention of extra incentive pay. I (and a few others) had no desire to switch from day to night again on such short notice so we notified Express that we were done.

While the remaining workers still had several hours to go on their last shift, I pulled out of the campground. One of these days I’ll catch a break on winds but not this time. The first third of the trip was into a direct headwind, the next third was a crosswind and the final third was back to a headwind.

I’m seriously considering Amazon next year instead of the sugar beet harvest. They’ve increased their wages, the weather is not a factor, and you have a firm end date so you can make plans and reservations based on that. The work is harder but since I know what to expect I should be able to prepare better before arrival.

On to the Pacific northwest!!

I woke up this morning to this view:

Most RVers try to stay far away from weather like this but it’s fairly common at the sugar beet harvest. Unfortunately it kept coming down all day long. With temps in the mid 30s it didn’t get much deeper but that’s going to change tonight as it gets colder.

I checked the harvest hotline this morning and the recording said our piling station would be closed all day again today. For the people who came up here with limited time available, this is devastating. Today is Wednesday. My last full shift was last Saturday. I got 4 hours Sunday night but nothing since then. Looking at the weather forecast I suspect that we won’t go back to work until Friday night, maybe Saturday morning. The company has notified us that our first regular shift next week will be paid just like a Sunday (double time). That’s a great gesture but can’t make up for 4-5 days off.

For the people who aren’t on a schedule, I suppose this doesn’t make much difference, other than trying to stay warm. Campsite is still paid for and you’re sitting around watching TV or restocking supplies. I saw one younger couple building a snowman in front of their RV 🙂

Which shift is better? Right now workers at the piling stations (at least in the Drayton district) work 12 hour shifts, changing over at 8 AM/PM. Sometimes you just have no choice on the shift you’re assigned but if you do have an option, which one is better? It’s a toss up question depending on your preferences. There is no difference in activity level across shifts. They can pull as many sugar beets out of the ground at 3 AM as they can at 3 PM.

The good parts about working day shift are that your sleep cycle is not disrupted, you’re not as cold when working and you could get more hours than the night shift if the temps are dropping too much at night. The bad parts are that you can’t do regular daytime things (shopping, post office, etc) unless the station is down for a weather day. You might also be shut down for high temps.

The night shift allows you to do normal stuff during the day, but at the cost of some of your sleep hours. Your sleep pattern is definitely disrupted so that might not be as big a factor early in the harvest. It will definitely be colder at night but that could be an advantage if it’s too hot to pile beets during the day. If you have a ‘leaky’ RV then you could be warmer sleeping during the day. Night shift also gets the first shift of the main harvest, starting at 12:01 AM on October 1st.

Did you notice that I didn’t even talk about television watching? The night shift will miss out on all the prime time TV but I don’t think most people at the harvest are overly concerned about that.

Some of the permanent company employees working 12 hour shifts switch over at 12:00 AM/PM. Personally, I think that would be a much better option for all employees. Maybe they’ll implement it at some point in the future.

This season definitely feels colder than previous seasons. I got to work a full shift during pre-pile (that’s before Oct 1) and there were snow flurries at the site. Short duration and nothing stuck on the ground but they were definitely there. In prior seasons, I might have still been in shirt sleeves. That night the temps dipped down into the high 20s for a few hours. I woke up periodically during the night and opened a water tap each time so I didn’t have any problems. One of the other guys in the campground was not so lucky and woke up with no city water. Luckily for him, he had a full fresh water tank so he could at least make his morning coffee. Temps are back above freezing now and should stay that way for a few days. But the night shift could be brutal with temps in the mid to low 30s for awhile. I put the heat tape on my outside water hose today so it’s ready for the next drop in temp and will fill the freshwater tank tomorrow.

I’m not sure what some folks were thinking but there are 4 people in the campground without cars. 3 have bicycles and 1 is in a truck camper. Riding a bicycle on these roads, in the dark, with all the truck traffic is just not safe at all. The truck camper is just an annoyance to drive into work with all the disconnects/reconnects/stowing items. So, I cleaned out the back seat of the truck (found some stuff I haven’t seen in years) and will have a full truck going to work and back.

There’s an old saying that desperate times call for desperate measures. I’m here to tell you that my attempt to work for Liberty Tax Service in Palm Bay FL was a desperate measure. I did just fine in the tax preparation course but red flags started popping up towards the end of the class. All students were given a schedule of upcoming events. They included dates and times when we could go to one of the offices and practice on actual Liberty Tax software. At no point during the class did we use the actual software even though the computers were sitting right in front of us. Any time spent practicing in the office was unpaid, although the owner and managers did tell us we had to be there in business attire, just in case it got busy and we wanted to do actual returns. There were also 2 mandatory meetings for new and returning employees, totaling 11 hours. These meetings were NOT part of the preparation course but covered office procedures and policies. One person did ask if those meetings would be paid and the franchise owner (Ben Teaford) immediately responded NO since they were only training. All the new employees signed employment contracts at the end of the second meeting. These contracts stated our pay rate and bonus conditions. Mine stated that I would get 1% of the gross of my returns if I completed at least 75 paid returns and lasted the entire tax season. Later I discussed this with a returning employee and found out that last year the magic number was 50 returns but a few people got close to that so it was raised. The hours I was given at the beginning of the tax season were minimal, less than 10 hours per week. Due to problems with the owner and my second manager (the first manager moved to a new office), I quit during my first month. To be perfectly honest, I shouldn’t even have started with the red flags I saw but I’d been out of work over a year at that point. Think about that word ‘desperate’ again. Most of the new employees I saw were in the same boat so they put up with the crap just to get some income.

After quitting, I sent a separate email to Liberty corporate detailing the conditions in this franchise. They acknowledged the emailed and thanked me but I never heard anything else from them or the franchise owner. I  really thought getting paid for those training sessions would be a slam dunk after filing a complaint with the US Department of Labor. Boy was I mistaken! Since I’d filed a previous complaint with the DoL back in the 90s, I certainly didn’t expect to be so mistreated this time. The local worker assigned to my case seemed to attach a great deal of importance to the fact that I was the only one who complained. They finally sent me a letter stating that they were declining to prosecute the case but that I could pursue the matter in small claims court. Naturally I asked for a copy of my case file to take to court if I decided to go that route. Their response was that I would have to file a Freedom of Information Act Request to get a copy of my own case file!!!! So I did and got an emailed pdf file that included their documentation – a whopping 2 page form with acronyms and abbreviations that weren’t explained anywhere. So far, they’ve ignored 4 requests for a layman’s translation of their form. That’s our government in action folks. They should be very thankful that at least their jobs are secure, with our tax dollars.

Besides contacting Liberty Tax corporate and the DoL, I also contacted a local ambulance chaser (lawyer) and an investigative reporter. Both of them declined to take up the cause, without giving any reasons. I’m assuming that there wasn’t enough money in it for the lawyer and it wasn’t a big enough story for the reporter. I also contacted my US Senator, who sent a form letter to the DoL and has done nothing since. Apparently, the game is rigged so that if you only steal from the little guys, you can get away with it all day long.

For those of you who think I might be foolish in posting this rant and that I might be hurting future employment chances, I say ‘not a problem’. If a prospective employer is that worried about being held to his/her end of the bargain, that’s not someone I want to work for anyway. I stand ready to provide an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay but if you try to cheat me I’ll do everything I can to rectify the situation and expose you. In the end, you might get away with it, but not for lack of effort on my part.

I had a follow-up ortho appointment this morning for my ankle injury from MN. It’s healing nicely and I was given doctor approval to quit using crutches although I still need to wear that damn boot for another 4 weeks. While I was there, I asked the doctor if I should be doing some type of exercise at home since the ankle has been immobile for so long. He looks at me like I’d just grown a third eye and was amazed that nobody has addressed physical rehab yet. So, he writes a scrip for the nurse case manager to find me a physical therapist. The actual order was for range of motion, general strengthening, and proprioceptive exercises. Huh? I looked up proprioceptive at home and it means balance. This must be why our health care system is so expensive, all that time spent in a thesaurus looking for $5 words.

On the brighter side, I’m actually doing better financially because of the injury. Since I had another job lined up immediately following the harvest, Express Employment agreed to pay me lost wages. Not knowing how that worked exactly, I sent a spreadsheet of my Amazon wages from last year to the claims management company. Well, it turns out they didn’t need that. They need to base my payments on my average weekly wage where the accident occurred. Since my hourly wage was significantly higher at the sugar beet harvest, I’ll actually receive more in temporary total disability than if I’d been picking on schedule for Amazon. And it’s tax free! So, I certainly would NOT have chosen a broken ankle to get out of work but it seems to have worked out well.