YOU ARE TRESPASSING AT 5:00 PM

Today in the office we had a meeting about next summer. I just can’t get my head around how quickly the seasons come and go the older I get. In about 6 weeks I will be receiving about 20 resumes a day and until March I actually read (albeit very quickly) all of them and make any notes on the file so when I am picking the kids I want to interview I pay attention. By the time we open I have usually received about 2000 resumes and eventually stop reading them around the middle of March.

Hiring 150+ new staff for every season has advantages and disadvantages. It is great when I manage to hire a great group the previous season and a lot want to come back (for the record 2010 was a great staff year), it means I don’t have to interview as many newbies. There are seasons however, when I have a lot of turnover and the group as a whole isn’t fantastic or some of the staff have started to take working at Cleves for granted and I have to ‘clean house’ in a bunch of departments when hiring for the next year. There isn’t a formula for hiring a great bunch, it is mostly luck. Honestly if they all get along and have a ton of fun together, I have a good year - simple.

My least favourite part of the job is firing people. I hate doing it but somebody has to when it is necessary. My Dad always told me that firing at least one person at the beginning of the season sets a good example for the rest of the summer and I guess he is right but it doesn’t make it any easier.....unless the person I just fired pulled a major boneheaded move, like one kid did in the summer of 2003.

The job description of a children’s counselor starts with the following sentence, ‘The primary responsibility of a children’s counselor is to provide a safe and fun environment for children ranging in age from newborn to teen.....’. After this following incident I actually read this sentence over to see if there was a grey area there and I should change the wording, nope.

We have made a lot of great additions to our kids’ facilities since 1996. One of the things we built was what we call ‘The Colour Cube’. It is a covered play structure that is like the ones you see in some fast food restaurants and it has been an amazing addition, especially on rainy days. Sometimes when counselors don’t have any kids come back to their group after lunch they are given odd jobs to do. One day in the summer of 2003 one of the counselors had the job of replacing the huge ‘zip ties’ on the foam posts of that structure. There was a group of kids in the ‘Colour Cube’ one afternoon playing ‘Cops and Robbers’ and this SECOND YEAR counselor thought it would be funny to tie one of these ‘zip ties’ around one of the kids’ necks. Of course the kid panicked and pulled the end, which made it tighter, started to choke him and the other counselors had to quickly cut it off with scissors. The Director of my kids program at the time (who did that job for several years and was amazing at it) hauled him into her office to give him shit. He couldn’t understand what the big deal was and thought she was over reacting. She called me, told me what happened and we decided to let him sleep on it. If he came in the next day and apologized and was remorseful we would just put him on probation, if he still didn’t see her point of view, we would let him go. Right after the counselors’ morning meeting the next day she called me and told me he was actually pissed off and thought she totally freaked out for no reason. My immediate response was ‘He’s gone, would you like me to do it or would you like to’. Her response was, ‘I’d be happy to do it’.

I sat in my office waiting for the parent call that I knew was coming (those are a subject for an entire posting at a later date). What I didn’t know was that this kid’s family had a cottage pretty close to Cleves so about an hour later the dad and the kid come into my office for ‘the talk’. The dad introduced himself to me and said that he felt his son had been unfairly treated and that he thought I should have given him a second chance. I have a rule that I have always abided by and it might not be the right way to handle things but I will never do it any other way, I NEVER go over my manager’s heads. If they make a decision and want to handle things a certain way, unless I know something else about the story that will change their minds, I will NOT go against what they say. I called the Director, told her the pair were in my office and asked her to come over. The three of us sat in my office for several minutes not saying a word, and waited for her. When she came in I had her sit behind my desk and I sat on the far side of the office and just listened. She was a pro, didn’t waiver, was confident in her decision and said that there was absolutely no way she was going to give him a second chance because he still didn’t get what he did wrong. The Dad then turns to me and tells me he wants me to go over her head and keep him, which I said I would absolutely NOT do. To say that didn’t go over well would be a major understatement!!!

Until that point I don’t think I had said a word. He was getting really pissed off and told me he was a Vice Principal and that he had to give students second chances all of the time. Me saying to him ‘OK you are a Vice Principal, if one of your teachers had done this to a student what would you have done’ PUT HIM OVER THE EDGE. (By the way it is important to note that he might have been 5’7”, I am 5’9”, thank God) We are now all standing because I want them out of there and he gets right in my face and starts screaming at me and I actually thought he was going to take a swing at me, he was that pissed off (for the record I wanted him to, I could have taken him!!). I stepped back, reached for the door and said ‘This meeting is over’ and I followed that with ‘and you have until 5:00 pm to have your kid off the property’. RAGE! He started to leave my office and screams the whole way down the hall ‘YOUR FAMILY SUCKS AND YOU DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUR STAFF.....’. I obviously wasn’t going to dignify that with a response. The Director and I went back into my office, she sat back behind my desk, and I sat across the room from her. There was silence for at least 2 minutes until I said ‘I don’t know about you but I thought that went VERY well!!!’ HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER, meeting adjourned.

THE LAST TANGO IN PARIS

In the last several years I have had a lot of people tell me I should write a book because let’s face it having spent my entire life working in this business I have seen some great and horrific things and have met a lot of interesting characters. I decided to start writing a blog to help me recall some of the stories that are worthy of telling. The first thing I did before I actually started writing wasto make a list of topics I thought people would be interested in hearing about or that I thought were hilarious. Never in all that time did I ever think I would feel compelled to write about something or somebody that doesn't even have a Cleves connection.

Let’s get one thing straight, I think Paris Hilton is a total skank / ditch pig and a spoiled little bitch. I know I am not alone in my thoughts on this. I still cannot understand why this person is famous. She can’t act (unless she is in a sex tape), she can’t sing (without auto tune) and she is as dumb as a bag of hammers. I am certain if her head were held under water bubbles would rise to the surface. Please don’t misunderstand me, I am absolutely not comparing the Hiltons to the Cornells at all. We owned 1 hotel in the smallest town in the world and they own several in the most glamorous places around the globe. It has however got me thinking as to why she is such a disaster and for me it boils down to her childhood and parents. Obviously I can’t say that without discussing my own childhood or parents, both of which were amazing.

The differences are blatantly obvious. She grew up in Beverly Hills being waited on hand and foot every moment of her life. I grew up in Minett and was waited on at the family dinner table in the Dining Room in the summer to which I have already told you wasn’t exactly enjoyable for me. Getting dressed up every night just about killed me. She likely spent her childhood being raised by nannies, rarely saw her parents and spent her days lying by the family pool having some poor servant wait on her hand and foot or shopping on Rodeo Drive. After the age of 9 I spent my days running around the resort spending every minute with PS skateboarding, swimming in the lake, riding my bike and after the age of 11, working. At 11 I rented boats half a day, 6 days a week. It wasn’t exactly difficult and I spent most of my time swimming in the lake, but it was a job. After that I did everything from nursery, front desk, reservations and bar. Along the way I have done my share of housekeeping and dishwashing. Let’s not forget the black out of 2003 when I was in the kitchen for 6 straight meals hand washing cutlery for 500 people. The second the power came back on I walked into Dad’s office and had a serious discussion about generators and how badly we needed one to run the kitchen. I doubt Paris had a job until she made that sex tape.

A lot of the blame for what an ass she is has to be put on her parents. I can’t imagine she had a curfew as a teenager and until I was about 17 I distinctly remember looking at my watch every 30 seconds willing the second hand to slow down as 11:00 pm approached. I had the exact time it took me to run from the club up to the house, down to the second. My dad would be sitting in the front living room window waiting for me, having a smoke (Cameo menthol - yuk) looking at his own watch as I flew in the door every night at 10:59:59. I knew if I was late I would be grounded which would mean I wouldn’t be allowed to go to the club at all for a period of time. Let’s face it Cleves isn’t exactly a place where you want your kid wandering in and out of the staff house in their early teens at night which makes me think that Paris spent her teenage years living any way she pleased with absolutely no rules or even the pressure to work. I also highly doubt that unlike me, she got excited when she and her friends ran up to the phone booth to score loose change, crawled under the pop machine on the dock where we made a mini fortune, or got to roam around the woods beside the golf course looking for golf balls, so excited to yell ‘FOUND ONE’ every time one appeared!!!

Does Paris live a glamorous life? Absolutely. Would I trade places with her? ABSOLUTELY NOT!! I had just as much fun at Cleves growing up. Believe me I cranked it up A LOT and there are lots of stories that will always remain in the vault but I think my parents did a brilliant job of finding a way to raise 3 kids in an environment like that who never got into any MAJOR trouble. Paris used the ‘the cocaine found in my purse wasn’t mine’ defense not long ago...really? I had to fire a kid this spring for drinking underage in the Club and she tried to use the ‘I didn’t actually buy myself the drink I was enjoying, somebody gave it to me’ defense. What I should have said to her was ‘and I am sure they water boarded you with it and that’s how you ended up having to drink it!’

My advice to Paris is simple; get a grip, get a real job, and put your big girl pants on - scratch that - put some underwear on. Didn’t your mother give you the time honored advice ‘don’t leave the house without clean underwear on or without $20.00 in your pocket?’ Your way is obviously not working and you are making the rest of the ‘Hotel Brats’ look bad!!

THE 10 WEEK BREAKDOWN

Eating in the Dining Room with the family has changed a lot over the last 30 years. When I was a kid we ate in there every single night as a family. That was back in the day when men were required to wear jackets so that meant we all had to dress up seven days a week. For a kid who windsurfed, swam and skateboarded around the resort all day long that was a pretty bitter pill to swallow! These days we might eat dinner in the dining room twice a week, but in the last couple of years even that has been a stretch. Long gone are the days where the men are required to wear jackets. The last time we had dinner in there on Labour Day weekend a father and son came in to eat dinner wearing baseball hats and they wore them through the entire meal.

One thing that hasn’t changed in the last 15 summers is the ritual of my Mom and I eating breakfast in the dining room about 4 days a week. We don’t eat in there on my day off, on Sundays (because she is at church getting a good word in for all of us) or on her ‘hair day’ - we cannot mess with ‘hair day’, after all her hair could be considered a ‘National Treasure’ it is that good!! Mom actually eats breakfast with Dad before she comes down and just has a coffee with me and I go into the kitchen and grab something quick. We aren’t there for more than 20 minutes but it gives both of us a chance to see some of the long time guests. Not a meal goes by when a guest doesn’t stop by the table to say hi on their way in or out and it is usually one of the great parts about eating in there. There are however some guests who come over and just stand there for ages. A couple of years ago we actually ate our entire dinner, salad, entree and dessert while the same couple stood beside Dad and talked. I couldn’t even look at Mom across the table because every time I did she crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at me - hilarious.

After eating breakfast with Mom four days a week for a few summers I started to notice a distinct pattern to her behaviour and enjoyment of our brief time together. When she and I go in for breakfast we always sit in the same seats. She sits in the chair closest to the kitchen facing the Dining Room door and I sit in the chair across from her facing the dining room. As I have mentioned before we are always ready for the spring conference season to end and for family season to begin, but after you read this you will understand why I have also said that we are also always ready for family season to end.

On the first Monday of family season we sit down at the table and immediately some cute 4 year old girl will come running in to get to her table and Mom will say something like ‘Ohhhhhh look at this little girl with the little pigtails coming in here, she is so pretty and look at her run by with those adorable running shoes on....’. At about week 5 some equally adorable little boy will come flying through the lobby and Mom will say something like, ‘This little boy about to run in here is really cute but jeeeeeezz I wish the managers would stop him from running through here...sigh......’ Week nine hits and the first kid that runs down the aisle gets ‘the eyebrow’ (those of you who have seen it and know what I am talking about are shaking right now - it still scares the crap out of me at 41!!!’ and she puts her fists up in front of her face and shakes them ever so slightly and she whispers ‘one of these days I am going to stick my foot out as they run by’.

The Monday of week 10 a few years ago Mom came into my office to get me and on my way by Sharon’s desk I said ‘this is it, this is the morning, Mom is going to FREAK OUT at the first kid that flies by our table, it is going to be AMAZING’. Mom and I headed over to the dining room and took our usual seats. I hear it before I see it.... coming through the lobby is some cute little kid super excited about his first full day at Clevelands House, looking forward to starting camp for the day and just as he hits warp speed beside our table Mom screams at the top of her lungs......‘SSTTTTTOOOOOPPP RUUUNNNNIIINNNNGGG!!!!! Of course the kid bursts into tears immediately and the parents rush up to little Johnny to find out what happened. Mom calmly explains that she told him to stop running because little Johnny is going to be trampled by a server carrying 12 entrees and hot coffee and that probably wouldn’t be a good thing. Now really, what sane person would look at a woman with hair that white and that fabulous and yell back!!!

CHANGE BAD - TRADITION GOOD!!!

Tradition has always been a pretty huge part of the Cleves experience both from a Guest’s perspective and from the Staff’s. Some have been around for as long as I can remember and some only last a few years until we think we have found a better way of doing something. That new way often ends up failing in spectacular fashion and we just go back to what people are used to. In recent years we have tried some new things that absolutely bombed. Hardcore Cleves Guests apparently don’t like major change!

Up until the time I was about 18 one of the best and most popular traditions was the Wednesday night Masquerade Parties that were held in the Club every week during family season. The Dining Room Staff kicked off the fun every Wednesday dinner by dressing up and serving in their costumes. After dinner, Rockin’ Roy Kitchen the greatest 70 year old, Herb Tarleck plaid suit wearing DJ, would spin his records down in the club and all of the staff and guests would go down for the night. It was so much fun. The Social Directors would then offer prizes to the best costumes in various categories like Best Man’s Costume, Best Woman’s Costume and Best Group. The coveted prize was a box of ‘Black Magic’ chocolates, I kid you not!

From as far back as I can remember there was one family who came to Cleves for 2 weeks at the end of July every summer. The most hard core supporters of the Masquerade in the family were the Grandparents and they had to be about 60-65 when this all started. To say that they lived for the Masquerade Nights is a major understatement. I really think they planned most of their vacation around it and arrived with supplies, costumes.... and lots of rum. They were really good to my friends and I as kids and always included us in the planning and made sure we were part of the entire process.

Some of the ideas they came out with were pretty elaborate. One year we went as aliens and painted our faces silver with some paint they pulled out of a suitcase. When I think back on that now I am sure that if I did have kids of my own they might have been be born with 2 heads because of what was lurking in that paint! One year they decided to dress up like the Flintstones where the Grandpa ran around the club wearing absolutely nothing but a giant diaper because he was Bam Bam and his wife proudly followed right behind him dressed like Dino wearing a skin tight black full body suit with a huge milkshake cup over her nose held on with the leg of a nylon stocking, one must never forget that they were in their late 60’s at least!! Watching her do the ‘Bunny Hop’ dressed like Dino was pretty great!. You gotta love the enthusiasm and the fact that they really didn’t care about what asses they looked like...it was all about that box of ‘Black Magic’ chocolates. Down in the Club on the other nights of the week all of the entertainment was held in the big room of the Club and those two would dance every night away. He had the best taste in clothing and would show up about twice a week wearing a hot pink, cream and black zebra print blazer. Excellent. Sadly in the late 80’s Masquerade nights lost their popularity and nobody dressed up any more so we had to cancel them.

To say that these 2 grandparents partied would be a huge understatement. They showed up for their two weeks with the same stuff every year and one of my most vivid memories would be when they hauled out the massive bottles of booze and the little silver metal cups they used to drink it from. They would go down to the club with a mickey stuffed in her purse and crank it up every single night and quite quickly you would notice them go from dancing to swaying to the music. There were many nights when the two of them, still wearing their amazing clothes from the dance would show up in the Staffhouse to play caps with the staff after spending all night down at the club pounding back the booze and waltzing / staggering around the dance floor. After weaving their way up to the staff house from the club he’d sit on the floor of the hall wearing that zebra print hot pink jacket and she’d be in a dress sitting spread eagle on the floor with a beer bottle between her legs. I am sorry but it just doesn’t get any funnier. They were a huge part of my Cleves childhood memories and I was very sad when they passed away. Every time I see somebody sitting at table 19 in the dining room I am a little sad because it isn't them :)

TIMOTHY MICHAEL ROSE

The summer of 2002 was horrific. Business was great and we were 95% - 100% full every night but I had major problems with the staff that year. There was so much damage done to the staff house that summer I think I stopped keeping track at one point. Every single morning I got out of bed and actually dreaded going into the office, it was that bad. Thankfully I haven’t had a summer like that since.

Friday, August 9th, 2002 is a day that forever changed me and everybody that worked at Cleves that year. I was on my way home at about 5:30 pm and I ran into the Corner Store to grab something. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny without a cloud in the sky. As I walked up to the register to pay for my stuff I saw the 2 trucks from the Minett Fire Department go screaming through the stop sign and head towards Port Carling. I got in my car to head home not knowing that in about 15 seconds my life would be changed forever. When I came around the corner by the ‘Welcome to Minett’ sign, I saw what I can only describe as something that one usually only sees in the movies. There were 2 fire trucks, 3 ambulances, 3 OPP cars and every member of the Minett Volunteer Fire Department about 200 feet in front of me. I got out of my car and walked closer to find out what was going on when I saw 3 of my staff standing on the side of the road. I asked what happened and all I heard was ‘Tim’s really bad.....’. I distinctly remember not hearing another word and I took off running full speed towards the accident and down into the ditch.

Tim Rose a Dining Room Server that summer was riding in a Jeep on a beautiful day heading home to see his family in Waterloo for the weekend. He was with his girlfriend and best friend. When they left Cleves his seatbelt was stuck and he told them to leave and he would get it untangled. Less than 2 minutes later another car coming towards them was driving on their side of the road, the Jeep had to swerve to miss it and they ended up going off the road and down a steep and deep ditch. Tim was thrown from the Jeep. I knew every police officer, fireman and paramedic there that day and they asked for my help to try and get the 2 girls calmed down because they were both very close to going into shock. It is an absolute miracle that neither girl was injured in any way.

When I climbed out of the ditch I was met by one of the OPP officers. We didn’t say it out loud but we both knew that Tim hadn’t survived. The girls obviously didn’t know that and neither did any of the other staff who were there. It was very important that his death not be made known until his family had been notified. He asked me what I needed as he helped me out of the ditch and all I could say was ‘grief counselors at the hotel as soon as possible’. I did my best to try and calm the girls down and they begged me to ride in the ambulance with them but there wasn’t room so I promised to follow close behind.

The next 2 hours were maybe the longest of my life. The girls had been admitted for observation and I was going from room to room to try and comfort them. A physician who was staying at Cleves helped with Tim at the scene and went in the ambulance with him to do what he could. He and I spent our time in the ER just standing with each other, with our heads down holding each other’s hands most of the time. The girls asked me every 10 minutes to go and see how Tim was and to get some sort of update on his condition. Each time I left them I just walked around the corner and did my best just to keep it together. After a few minutes I would come back and tell them they were still working on him. Eventually the ER doctor called me out into the hall and told me they had notified Tim’s parents and that I could now tell the girls he didn’t survive the accident. I distinctly remember telling him as the attending physician it was his job to tell them that. I knew those two amazing girls would resent me for their entire lives if I told them the worst thing they would likely ever hear. Tim’s girlfriend’s parents arrived about 30 seconds later. I went outside, where about 20 Cleves staff had gathered in the parking lot and the doctor took the girls and the parents into the conference room and told them. If I live to be 100 I will never forget hearing the girl’s reaction to the devastating news.

When I got back to Cleves I allowed myself to come totally unglued for a while and collapsed into my Mom’s arms in my office. I remember thinking over and over on the way home from the hospital that there was just too much responsibility involved with dealing with a bunch of kids every summer and for a brief moment decided it was a responsibility that I was unwilling to accept anymore. With the help of a friend, I wrote a letter that was placed on every dining room table at breakfast the next day because our Guests needed to know why every single member of the staff would be hysterical. I had a few Guests come into the office the next day and tell me they would do anything we needed them to do from washing dishes to bar tending, to help us get through it all. We had about 500 guests in the hotel that week and it broke my heart to tell the staff they couldn’t go to the funeral. I had already decided we would have our own Memorial Service for Tim the following Wednesday that his family would attend, which made them feel better about missing his funeral.

The next couple days of my life were totally dedicated to the staff and their emotional needs. They were obviously away from their families and really only had each other to lean on during that horrific time. If you have worked at Cleves before I am sure you can try and imagine what it would have been like if that had happened when you worked here, but believe me, you can’t and there aren’t words to tell you how heart wrenching it was. The morning after he died I went into the dining room at 7:15. I knew I couldn’t help but thought if everybody knew I was just as upset as they were, they might be able to limp through the next few days because we were all trying to cope together. The hardest thing I have ever done in my life was go over to the morning meeting for the children’s counselors that day. I lead everybody out of the Sagamo Centre and we all went and sat outside the colour cube on the ground. I asked the Guests to give us a little bit of privacy while I talked to them, tried to comfort them as best I could and told them about our plans for the Memorial service.

With the help of the Minister from our church up here the Memorial was planned. I invited the volunteer fire department to come to the ceremony and hand yellow roses to everybody after the service. Tim’s entire family came up for it and I remember dreading meeting them. When I introduced myself to his parents they both threw their arms around me and told me how much Tim loved working at Cleves and that they were so glad his last days were spent there surrounded by his friends. His parents still come up twice a year to visit the site and come to the office every time they are here to see me. They are incredible people who will always have a special place in my heart.

After the Memorial service ended, I was on the sundeck talking to Tim’s family and the parents of the girls that were with him in the accident. I could hear a huge commotion off to one side but wasn’t really paying attention until I looked over the side of the sundeck railing and saw at least 50 people swimming. Everybody had jumped off the dock in their clothes. The commotion I heard was them chanting my name. It took me about 30 seconds to run down those stairs, take off my shoes and cannonball off the dock in my suit... then Ted promptly jumped off the dock and did his best to land on me! If you weren’t there you won’t understand this but everybody jumping in the lake was a major turning point. It was at that exact moment that the kids realized life would go on and they were allowed to still have fun for the rest of the summer even if it was with a heavy heart.

The whole event had a very profound effect on everybody who was at Cleves that summer. It forced all of us to bond in a way that quite frankly I never want to experience again. I saw the best in some people, like the Guests who volunteered to help in any way possible, and the Doctor who helped at the scene and ended up at the hospital with me, all of whom ended up becoming great friends of mine. It also brought out the worst in some in people, like the Guest who came into the office to freak out because we cut the kids program short so everybody could attend the memorial (don’t worry, my Dad handled her....). I do have to thank RB for coming with me and being at my side that entire day and night at the hospital. I leaned on you a lot that night but didn't want to put words in your mouth about how you felt during those awful hours we shared. I will always value the support you gave me that day and in the days to follow as I know you had your own team to lead while grieving yourself. As always you did it with class and stoic grace.

Today marks the 8 year anniversary of Tim’s death and like every other year I will go and sit with my Mom on the bench at the Memorial Garden we made in his honour. I will remember the handsome young man I hired, with the amazing smile and great personality who’s brief time at Cleves made such a huge impression on so many people. We were all so much better for knowing him even if it was for such a brief time.

GENERATION 'WHY'

Having spent 41 summers at Cleves I have seen 3 different generations of employees come and go. The first one being the ‘Baby Boomer Generation’, the Second one, my generation ‘Generation X’ and the one I have worked the most with, this generation ‘Generation Y’. There are so many differences between the 3. The ‘Baby Boomers’ were just happy to have a job, the ‘Generation Xers’ were happy to have a job that came with the the chance to party and most of the ‘Generation Yers’ have a job that interferes with the party. As I have said before back when I was 19-22 I went out 6 nights a week, maybe got 8 hours of sleep a night twice a week. We all partied hard and got up, went to work and never complained. Most of us were scared shitless of the management team and the thought of being hauled into one of the Manager’s offices was quite frankly horrifying!

I started working as the Director of HR in 1996 and quickly after, once the shift from Gen X to Gen Y occurred, there was a definite change in the staff’s behaviour. I would have to say that the most difficult years for me would be 1997 - 2003, with 2002 being the worst by a long shot. That summer the doors in the staff house were being broken and kicked in every day, several kids were late for work almost every shift and there was a definite rebellion against any sort of authority with many staff constantly asking why they had to do something. I have decided that the internet is a major cause of this generation being so different (how ironic is it that I am posting this on the very same internet) and has turned a lot of them into the instant gratification generation. Before I go on I have to say that a lot of the kids in the last 10 years have been great, but the attitude of a few of them is that they start work and can’t understand why they aren’t the manager of their department one week later. I still smile when I think of the day about 10 years ago when we were just opening and I asked somebody to vacuum one of the areas of the dining room. The obviously slightly spoiled girl turned to me and said ‘Sorry Sandy you will have to show me how to use a vacuum, I have never had to do that before’. WOW we interviewed well that year!!

Some of the kids in this generation ‘have a very large chip on their shoulder, that’s very unattractive’ (kudos to those of you who get that movie reference), questioning authority all of the time and could care less when they are late for work. I am sure some of it stems from the ‘get a trophy for showing up to a sporting event’ that is the norm for kids now - what happened to getting a trophy for winning!! It has just made so many of these kids feel that they should be given raises and praise for just showing up to work when they are supposed to. Over the last couple of years I have actually noticed the behaviour and attitudes getting better and the kids have some respect for authority again but that just happened fairly recently.

So many of the doors in the staff house were being kicked in every year that I actually had to write a policy that if somebody kicked in a door they had to pay the damages and labour to fix it (I think I charged them $150.00 and they lost their entire $50.00 room deposit), if they did it again they had to find accommodation somewhere else. One night one of the girls who worked in the kitchen got totally plastered, kicked a huge hole in her door and then told the Night Manager and Security Guard to fuck off. She was actually painfully shy when she was sober, or so I thought...I called her into my office and told her I was firing her, not for kicking in her door but for her complete lack of respect for the Night Managing team.

About three weeks later I came back into my office after having lunch with my friends in the dining room to this exact voicemail, (It was way too good not to memorize) ‘Ya hi Sandy, this is Laura, you know the one you fired. I was at Cleves today and saw that somebody had kicked another hole in the door to my room. Did you fire them too you AAAAASSSSSHHHHOOOOOOLLLLLEEEE’ I am sure most Directors of HR would be horrified by that, but I can honestly say it is still one of the funniest things I have ever heard. Just imagine how proud her parents would be to know she called me and left that voicemail. I have to say the joke was actually on her, I saved that voicemail for months and had a lot of my friends call in and listen to it. She just about crapped her pants the next summer when she and I ended up alone in the bathroom at Bala Bay one night, I loved seeing the blood drain from her smug little smart ass face when she saw me walk in!!

FILL ME IN....

One morning a few years ago, I pulled into a parking spot in front of the office at around 7:00 am to start what I assumed would be a typical busy day at Cleves. I had no idea how atypical it was about to be. Waiting for me outside the office was our Baker. As soon as I saw the look on her face I knew something pretty bad had happened. I opened my door to ‘we had to call an ambulance. A girl was found almost naked and covered in mud in the Main Hotel Lobby - BY A GUEST’ (For the record that was not very funny that morning but is HILARIOUS now looking back). Trust me that is not the way the Director of HR at a resort wants to start her day!! I found out that her roommates had moved her to the front of the staff house to wait for the ambulance. When I got there, lying on the ground on a blanket was the most wasted human being I had ever seen and having spent my whole life at Cleves, that is saying a lot. There was talk that she had potentially been drugged by somebody and obviously finding her naked, alone and this wasted in the morning, in the Main Hotel Lobby was bizarre even for Cleves. I tried to wake her up and she head bobbed a few times at me but I couldn’t get one coherent word out of her.

Due to the bizarre 9-1-1 call that was made the OPP were also dispatched. The paramedics arrived, did their assessment and loaded her in the back of the ambulance. This poor girl had just earned the distinction of being labelled ‘the drunkest human being this paramedic had ever seen in his career’ - YIKES. He told me to follow them but that the police would come and the ambulance would pull over so they could brief him. We had just gotten on our way when the cop car came screaming from the other direction, did a U turn and we pulled over. It wasn’t surprising that I knew him. There was some panic with all of us because we didn’t have a clue what had happened to her or how she ended up where she did, in the state she was in or if anything horrific had happened to her. After a brief chat we all headed to the hospital. They put her in a room in emerge and started an IV to get some fluids other than vodka running through her veins and thought it would be a good idea for me to sit in there with her while she came to, lucky me.

At about 9:30 am she opened her eyes and saw me standing beside her bed and said, ‘Where am I?’, I said ‘Where do you think you are?’ She looked around and said ‘In a hospital’ to which I nodded. That was quickly followed by ‘What time is it?’ I replied ‘About 9:30’ - she bolted up in bed and screamed ‘I AM LATE FOR WORK!!!!’ That was immediately followed by me saying ‘Honey, that is the least of your problems right now. What happened?’ Of course she couldn’t remember. The Doctor on duty wanted to run some tests and said she wouldn’t be let out for a few hours so I decided to head back to Cleves and try and figure out what happened and how she ended up where she did, looking like she did.

I spent about 3 hours putting her night together and when I had fully solved the mystery I was relieved and quite frankly highly amused at the same time. The following is the abridged version of what happened.....

It was a Tuesday night so she hopped on the bus to Resort Night. She was underage (not a big surprise) and had excellent fake id that apparently also worked at the LCBO. She and her roommates started priming for their night out almost immediately after they had finished work at Play World that day so she was well on her way before she even got on the bus. When they got there she met up with a bunch of people that she had just graduated high school with (the same school I graduated from - so proud...) so her Cleves friends lost track of her. At the end of the night when the bus was leaving to come back to the resort her roommates tried very hard to get her on the bus but her high school friends wanted her to go back to their cottage with them. They assured everybody they would have her back in the morning in plenty of time for work.

She continued to drink and party at a cottage. At the first sign of daylight the time came to get her back to Cleves. When the boat pulled up at the dock, she fell in the lake, dragged herself up on the dock and proceeded to take her jeans off. They watched her stumble and weave halfway up the dock and then left. Looking up she obviously thought that nice looking cottage (the Main Hotel) would be a perfect spot to have a nap before work so she continued up the path. She bailed in 2 different gardens (hence the mud on the legs, I later saw the ‘body prints’ in the flowers), weaved up the stairs and curled up in front of the fireplace to have a little pre-work nappy.

Her parents were called by the hospital and they showed up a few hours later. The Dad tried to give blame me for the events of the night. He couldn’t believe his underage daughter was allowed to go to the bar. I pointed out that she was an adult and if she was old enough to work at Cleves she was going to be the one doing the babysitting for the summer, not me. Even though I am sure he didn’t appreciate my answer, the argument ended after I said that.

She didn’t come back to work at Cleves that year. It turns out that the ‘lab tests showed some irregular numbers in her liver screening...’. A few days later they came back up, packed up her stuff and moved her out. I don’t think she actually had ‘liveritis’... I think she had ‘humiliateditis’. Imagine the man who originally found her curled up in front of the fireplace going back to his wife and kids after picking up his paper and telling that story!!! That gave a whole new meaning to ‘Dirty’ Dancing.