I'd like to understand why the Mountain Exchange Program was totally suspended for reasons of the Governor's orders regarding travel outside the state. It seems exchanges to local resorts of Timberline and Ski Bowl to recreate during non-work hours is no different than recreating at Meadows and poses no increased risk of spreading COVID. MHM employees visiting on exchange are guests and required to follow the rules like any guest. Additionally, the exchange for Yoga classes which are conducted virtually does not involve travel. I would like to see the Program revised before Jan. 24 to include these exchanges because of the physical and mental health benefits they provide.
Welcome to my Ted Talk. I understand Meadows is trying to handle the covid situation as best they can. However I think some parts of the response are misguided. Such as employees not being allowed to leave the state except for neccesity.
Do we allow guests who have come from out of state? Do we allow guests who have flown in the recent past? Yes, we do allow them. Thousands of people from who knows where come to Meadows and risk infecting our staff. Yet we are *required* to change our lives and not visit our families to protect guests who do not do the same for us. Its a backwards expectation. If you require no out of state travel for employees you need to require the same for the guests. I find the current policy demeaning, it says to me that the freedom and well being of employees is less important that the freedom and well being of our customers. I shouldnt see my family to protect them, but they can take a roadtrip all over the US and then come breathe in my face and by Meadows policies that is acceptable. I wonder why thats acceptable? Hm.. maybe because meadows wants the money more than they want to protect us? Think about the message you send to your team.
I work at the bottom of Hood River Express every weekend, and I did last year as well. The number of guests showing up at the lift this year with beginner progression passes is significantly higher than before. I believe this has to do with online only ticket sales. If a customer tried to buy a progression pass at the rennasaince last season, the person working the ticket booth could tell them HRE is not a beginner lift. Now people already have their tickets and just show up at the lift having no idea they cant ride it. This has resulted in a lot of upset guests. People wasting their day parking, waiting in line, getting to the lift to be told they cant ride it, getting a shuttle to the main lot, and getting their first lap at 2 pm. And I dont blame them for being mad about it, there is not proper signage to prevent this from happening. Im sure it tells them when they buy the ticket online but NO ONE reads the fine print. The only sign stating no beginner runs is at the bottom of the lift and isnt visible until you're practically through the RFID gate.
There need to be multiple signs in the parking lot and around the lodge saying "This is not a beginner lift. Intermediate to expert riders only. Progression passes not valid here."
This would not only prevent beginners from wasting their time and having a bad day, it would make the lifties lives easier, AND the regular guests who always park at HRM would love to see those signs. They would be stoked.
Thank you for your observations around Beginner Tickets. That is a good point that we could do more with signage when guests park in the HRM lot that their Beginner Ticket will not be good there. I will think of how we could better get this information to our guests.
-Jeremy Riss
it is unbelievable that MHM has completely done away with the ski exchange program, to even ski bowl and timberline! Seriously? We cant reward ourselves after a good days work by riding at a resort just down the street?? Does MHM consider those places unsafe? How could this be when MHM is larger than both places combined? when there has been ZERO true limitations on guests other than online reservations. Literally every employee i have spoken to is furious that meadows has not kept thier promise of 3500 guests or less. this is ridiculous.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I was of the understanding that the Mt Hood Meadows mission statement was 'to enrich the lives of our employees, our guests and our community.' I was told that employees come first and foremost. The decision to suspend the letter program and prohibit employees from traveling spits directly in the face of this. It contradicts our mission statement and our core values of integrity, passion and wellness.
I understand that as employees, we agreed to adhere to Meadows COIVD plan, but our guests sign a similar agreement. If we held our guests to the same standards, this wouldn't be an issue. If guests coming from out of state or have traveled were forced to quarantine before coming and riding up here, I would accept it but that's not the case. Walking to my car at night, I see license plates from Utah, Montana, South Dakota and others from all over the United States who have travelled between states to get here. As a lift operator, I am at a significantly higher risk of contracting the virus here at work as opposed to riding outside at another resort. The amount of abuse we have experienced from guests, the amount of exposure we face daily from guests who don't care about COVID is substantially riskier than driving solo to Mt Baker for two days to play outside on a mountain. If it is in fact employee safety you are concerned about, please address the biggest risks to employee safety as opposed to how we choose to recreate. The biggest risk is our guests. Even with visitation being limited by the hour, at the lift I am still exposed to literally thousands of people and potential carriers of the disease daily. If you actually cared about employee safety, get the rest of your employees access to the vaccine like you have for Patrol and DPS. But this definitely feels like a financially motivated decision and employee safety is just the guise you presented to the team.
This past winter break was tough. We were short staffed, had people out on quarantine, were being harassed and abused by the guests and rarely supported by DPS or Patrol and left to deal with it on our own all for the sake of our guests to recreate. It feels very apparent that the mission statement was designed to appease employees and trick them into thinking they are cared for and supported but in reality our mission statement feels much more like 'Enriching the lives of our guests and generating more revenue, no matter the cost or damage to our team and employees.' I have bragged about integrity being a core value here and something this company valued but I feel like a fool now.
I hope this company takes the corrective action to remedy these issues and restore the team's faith but I am skeptical after this. I used to feel like this was my mountain home but I feel more and more disrespected, alienated and unappreciated by higher ups here. I hope this message doesn't land on deaf ears but after this most recent decision, I don't see any reason why what I think as an employee would even be considered.
Working for lift ops is more like an 8 or 9, they’re doing the best they can with given restrictions.
It’s a 6 though because my experience with patrol, food and bev, and upper management is about a 2-3.
In case you didn’t realize, most people are here, or at least traveling here for about 10 hours a day, 4-5 days a week. That’s two meals... We deserve to eat cooked food (it’s tough packing that much food for that long and still having an appetite.) I totally fail to understand why there is no employee cafeteria. I come from resorts where that was a thing, and the payouts were tremendous: 1. Guests had more space/peace to themselves, free from stressed, muttering employees running through the area tying to quickly get food and leave. 2. It gives those employees that chance to eat if they need to. If you really care about employees you’ll provide complimentary breakfast (cereal/bagels/etc.) and if you care about guests you’ll get us out of their space. The resort I came from, we would get in trouble for being in a guest area in uniform... (such as a restaurant) Reason for this is because guests deserve the best experience.... I just so happen to know a perfect place for one. Old ski school area would work, perhaps connect it to higher grounds (also why is higher grounds called higher grounds when it’s on the first floor? Literally blows my mind how that slipped by.) Cafeteria could also be in the current employee lounge. There’s plenty of places, let’s make it happen.
With lift ops and a cafe set up for employees, one where it is taken out of your paycheck, employees can order their lunch in the morning and have a supervisor bring it out to them. This way they actually get to enjoy their break. This has been done before and is possible, it’s just a question of how badly you want to help your employees. By the way this would barely cost a dollar.
We need more employee only ride nights. In case you haven’t noticed, nothing happens on Monday or Tuesday night. It only takes two people to turn MHX for a couple hours. A handful of patrollers, two mechanics are pretty much all you need. Doing this once a month (or more) would be nice. Crystal Mountain has an employee only ride night every wed. Meadows should be better.
Patrollers need name tags on their jackets. Bottom line. I do everything they do except through bombs (only a handful of them do that anyway,) and I have never had an issue with my pin name tag.
I understand people must wear masks. Employees need to learn how to tell people. I saw some manager’s eyes exploding out of his scull, neck veins erupting, screaming bloody murder at people just for forgetting to pull up their mask. That’s not the family vibe I want at meadows. I have told people hundreds of times to put their masks on and have never had an issue. I believe it’s because I approach them empathetically and calm. I don’t understand how people are having to pull so many passes. Maybe we should have more training on the process of it, rather than the enforcement of it. Id like to see more empathy out of management whose company’s core values include wellness and integrity.
You guys took away the best benefit we have here. You don’t pay us anything, the extra bump in recent years almost covers some of the gas. For Matt Troskey to have the audacity to roll off so lightly, the multitude of objections that HR has been seeing makes me furious, and destroys my faith in this company’s upper management. Profits over people. That has really been shown this year. Makes me sick. Ten people use an awesome exchange program? Ban it!!!! Hundreds of paying customers coming from all over the country? Sure thing! It’s disgusting.
It’s looking like it’s about time to find a resort that actually cares about their employees, because meadows, as of right now, is all talk.
I would LOVE to further discuss ANY of the above complaints. But so far in my ten + submitted surveys over the years nobody’s ever gotten with me after the fact for feedback.
Cheers
PS paint the names of the lifts on the chairs
Also shoutout to the broken refrigerator and still serving food. Gross and illegal. #wellness lol
Suspending letters while allowing people from other states to freely ride around isn't helping morale at all. If you're going to be preventing us from going anywhere, maybe do the same for out of state guests. We are here to ride. If we were doing it for the money, we'd be working at Costco.
The fridg technicians were fixing our fridg yesterday and said that it has been to warm in there for a week and the food is probably bad but we are still cooking withit. Are we going to get in trouble if somebody gets sick? I feel wierd about this
The resort needs roof rakes and vests for kids. Lift ops has no method of loading kids and there’s already been two hangers this year. Both were preventable. Ski schools pennies should have handles on the back for anyone under 42 inches so they can get all the way in the chair. We could offer them to parents for their kids that aren’t in ski school just for more safety.
There’s currently a 100 pound slab of ice that’s on the transfer rail at bottom of vista that will fall sometime soon. We’ve needed these materials for years
I don’t know why patrol doesn’t have to wear name tags. I do everything a patroller does when it comes to carrying boo, riding with packs, packing lots of things, snowmobiling... I wear a pin name tag and have never had an issue. I think it’s bogus they don’t have to because you can’t hold them accountable for the many rude encounters I have with them.
Patrol needs to close vista more due to conditions. It is a beginner lift and they can’t handle it. Maybe signs at the bottom saying you can’t see anything.
I was hoping we would paint the names of the lifts on the lifts this summer. People still ask me “what lift is this”. The brown signs suck and you’re ignorant if you don’t think so. The sign works if you know it exists, and at that point you don’t need it.
Employees NEED a cafeteria especially during Covid. It’s a great thing we dropped like 20 mil on an unbelievably horrible building. There’s only two exits, both on one side. There’s no doors heading down to buttercup. It’s a good thing ski school got a whole floor in there, because they didn’t have enough room before in the south lodge? The eating area can probably only accommodate 100 people comfortably. The resort needs a new lift, a mid mountain lodge, or a (real) lodge at hrm, but we lit millions on fire for literally no benefit.
Bottom line: If you care about your employees (and guests) you’d give them a place to eat away from the guests.
Bag lunches need to be a thing and there is no reason they can’t be, someone just needs to set it up.
Sahale needs red pepper, also whoever said the “heated trays” that the pizzas sit on do anything, should be fired. I’m tired of eating cold pizza. Put a freaking lamp over it. The togo boxes are worthless. I can’t make it 30 seconds of walking before the box busts open on me. Then it’s cold by the time I get to eat it.
The refrigerator that all the food is stored in has not been getting colder than 50 degrees and has been that way the past week. They are still serving the food. Almost certain that is illegal. I’m making sure I tell everyone.
How dare you take away the Employee Exchange. Maybe what 10-20 people a day use the exchange program? There are literally hundreds to thousands of people that come here everyday from out of state and management is welcoming them with open arms. THAT IS SHIT AND YOU KNOW IT IS. It does barely anything to protect people and NEWSFLASH! You don’t pay us anything! The food sucks and literally gets you sick! The exchange program is THE benefit! The people that made that call aren’t the people on the front lines seeing these people everyday, talking to those people everyday.
I heard Matt Troskey thinks it’s ridiculous that people are pissed off about losing their right to ski at other resorts. I am outraged that the head of Human Resources dismisses our feedback so lightly and I believe it is grounds for termination. I expect more empathy in my management, but at this point I don’t expect much because nothing has ever been done in any of the above complaints.
If I see another employee scream at a guest for not having a mask I probably won’t come back.
You all are doing a great job with all of the challenges this year. My only struggle is the traffic (5+ hour commute is insane) and parking. A 7 hour work day requires about 3-5 hours of driving, plus a long break before we start since I have to arrive over an hour before my shift. That paired with being confined mostly to my car for breaks makes the whole day extremely exhausting. In the end it’s often a 15 hour day with driving, unpacking gear to dry then packing it up again to leave my house at 5:30am. I would almost prefer a half day. The logistics of doing just one day of work are daunting and I have another job. I know this can’t be helped really but I fear burnout when most of my energy goes to just trying to get to and from work and keep warm between lessons. I try to carpool but that isn’t very safe now and I also try to camp in the sno parks to avoid the traffic. That’s about all that can be done I suppose.
Please, Please, Please stay on top of the Port a Potties in the HRM, and Twilight, lots. Empty TP holders, nearly full sewage vaults and no Port-a-Pottie are not the way to "stoke" the guests, or the employees who have to explain to guests that yes, the Port a pottie is the only option, unless they go in the woods.
If the Twilight Lot is unlocked and accessible to the public, there needs to be a port a pottie in that lot. We've got another holiday weekend coming up and I hope the A- GAME PLAN is in place to manage the restroom situation, for staff and guests.