A Day of Rest....

Yesterday was a killer day at work so we are so glad that today is our day off. The week felt incredibly long !!

Friday night one of our servers quit without notice so Linda and I spent some of Saturday interviewing. We conducted five interviews, interspersed with a server calling off for breakfast and supper and two of the three servers, for lunch, were fifteen minutes late which really threw service off. On top of that, we had sixteen guests for lunch (thirteen of which were there for a new residents' house warming party)so it was not a good time for the servers to be late. That meant Linda and I had to jump in, after pouring coffee and tea, to get things started. Other things in the mix yesterday was taking down a defective smoke detector which set off the alarm the previous two nights (waking us and the resident in the wee hours of the night when we were sound asleep), giving a tour to a family, setting up for the house warming party and tearing down and washing the table cloths...putting away, making marketing calls and sending out mailings. While all of that was going on, our regional boss calls and asks what we're going to do to get move ins. He had already asked that he be e-mailed at 10, 3 and 6 with this info. Well, with all that our day consisted of, he didn't get any of those e-mails from me. We are getting increasingly frustrated with this company and their focus on numbers and nothing else, like resident satisfaction or facility readiness. We have a sprinkler system that hasn't worked in 2.5 years (yes, the grass tends to die without water), carpets that are in dire need of shampooing (but that requires labor dollars), a dishwasher that doesn't get the dishes clean (but dang new washer arms are awfully expensive), filthy balconies and patios that need pressure washing but that would entail getting a lift (yep, you guessed it...that costs money). So, Linda and I are the best dang coffee pourers we can be and hang in there. We love the residents but it's really tough to stay positive when they pay so much as it is and get slapped with annual rent increases of over 4% and don't get the services they should for what they pay. This week we won't have our shuttle bus running cause the bus driver is on vacation. When we were trained our trainers told us that there always needs to be transportation to take them to their medical appointments. Call a cab if you have to but that is something that needs to happen. We asked why a cab wouldn't be used and yep, it costs too much. ....Just another day at the office. Whew !! Come 9 p.m. we were ready to go to our apartment and collapse !

Today started out rainy. We ran into rain on our way up here, from Winston Salem, and it was coming down pretty good while we set up. Yep, we were pretty much soaked to the skin. Pretty crowded in the campground when we arrived but as usually happens, they start pulling out mid morning. There is a late checkout on Sundays (3 p.m.) so that makes it really nice for the locals to stretch out their weekend as long as possible before returning home. We were told that there is a really large rally next weekend so our rig will be on a different site when we come up next weekend. They like to keep the groups together so they can use the pavilions for their pot lucks and gatherings. Not a problem for us....just so we have a space somewhere. Last weekend we met a couple, from Florida, who came up for a week or so...just to get away. They are taking advantage of the storage plan ($1 a day to store your rig here and they will put it onto the site, hook it up to electric and start the frig for you before you arrive) so they'll come up again this fall. The husband wants to sell the sticks and bricks home and full time it but she says she isn't ready to do that. We chatted about the FT lifestyle and he got even more excited about the idea just hearing our stories. Penny's body language (arms folded across her chest) told me she wasn't budging....

No definitive plans for the rest of our time off. We went last week to get our annual check ups and need to make some follow up calls tomorrow on some of the results. Hopefully my new eyeglasses will be in tomorrow so we'll pick them on our way back into town Tuesday. Other than that, chill out...relax and regroup.