TVC - Day 77 - "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly"

Saturday started out so innocently.....TLE arrived at the office at 0730 hours as she usually does when she opens, and I arrived 15 minutes later......that was the normal part of the day.  Once again we are at near capacity, and had over 120 arrivals combined with an equal number of departures.  When we are this full it is pretty certain that every site with a departure will have an arrival coming to replace them so it was very important that all our departures were out by 1100 hours, or shortly thereafter, and that was the GOOD part of the day.....all but two of my departing customers were out of their sites by 1130 hours.

As is the case when any customer service type business  involving a few thousand contacts a week it is inevitable that a customer will come up to the counter who is not just unhappy, but quite angry about something......so angry they lose their composure and are willing to make fools of themselves in the hope of getting what they want.  In the case of one male customer yesterday, he had made two separate online one day reservations 2 days apart assuming the website, or some anonymous person would divine his intent to stay two consecutive days in the same site.....well, that didn't happen....the computer assigned him to two different sites for one day each.  He never called the reservation center, or our office to explain what he had done, and what he wanted, and therefore, arrived with back to back reservations in two different sites.  Somehow it was our fault, and he made sure everyone in the office/store knew it.  There was no way we could combine his two one day reservations into one site at this late date and we were sold out.....literally.  When you start moving people it creates a domino effect and instead of having one unhappy person you end up with half a dozen or more unhappy customers.  After a few minutes of dishing out verbal abuse he was advised by our manager to exit the office and the park under threat of police escort if necessary......that was the BAD.

More BAD......around 1400 hours three customers towing 5th wheels arrived in the park.  They had, apparently, made their reservations one year ago and wanted to be together as they were friends.....quite understandable.  At some point during the intervening 12 months one of the three were moved to a different site by an employee who is no longer here.  Why that was done is a mystery, but it happened.  Once again, we had few options available to help solve the problem, and none of them were satisfactory solutions to the customers, who by this time had all gathered in the store insisting that we inconvenience numerous other customers yet to arrive in order to get them all back together.  Our manager explained patiently to them that we were not going to compound the mistake by moving more people......at 1600 hours they were still there in the office, and their 5th wheels were still parked in the entrance which was causing unnecessary congestion.  While not as loud, or insulting as the male customer I discussed earlier, their surly mood could not go unnoticed by other customers.  Ultimately they were asked to either move their 5th wheels to their assigned sites, or leave the park.....they chose to move to their sites....

Shortly after the 5th wheel band of brothers left for their sites a customer from site 217 came running up to the office advising there was a water leak at his site that was flooding his site.....we got in the golf cart and raced over to his site to find it just exactly as he described.....at the ear of his site water was bubbling up out of the ground.....not gushing, but a steady flow.  I immediately called maintenance on my two way radio and Johnny responded and began to dig....we all hoped it would be simple but it was not.  Within minutes reinforcements were called in as the hole got bigger and deeper.  It was obvious to me that we were going to have to shut down not just the water in section G, but the whole park, so I went to retrieve the 'key' used to shut the main valve while the maintenance guys continued to trace the source of the leak.  Ultimately we did shut the water down in order to stop the flow of water so we could see what we were working on.......I went around the park with Victor (from the office) announcing that the water was going to be turned off 'temporarily'....by the time we returned to the 'dig' the hole was 4 feet deep and just as wide.....Rick was head down in the hole clearing mud away from the break which by now had been identified as a 3/4" reducer.  Within a few minutes we had installed a temporary 3/4" plug to solve the immediate problem and give us time another day when the park is not as full to make the full repair.....so we have one site without water instead of the whole park.....that was the UGLY.

I headed home about 1845 hours and TLE followed about 30 minutes later......that was a long, long 10+ hour day!

Thanks for stopping by!