Heidi's First Week; May 26 - June 1

I think I’m gonna like it here.  At least I hope I’m gonna like it here.  I’ll probably know as soon as I get a day off.  Today is my third day here.  I don’t have to report to work until noon.  I got here around 2 pm on Saturday and started working at 3:30.  I worked Sunday from 9am to 5pm.  The work is fun and the food is good.  The weather is nasty though. 

The Luxurious Employee Buses for Employees Arriving Car-less

We got up Saturday morning at 5am at the Bozeman Holiday Inn and were on the road at 6 with breakfast from McDonalds. At McDonalds, we saw the bus that would have been my transportation if Dan hadn’t been escorting me.  It was old and brightly colored but unmistakably The Bus to Yellowstone.  The blueberry oatmeal was very tasty and the hash browns yummy.  It would have been even better if we had gotten the other hash brown we ordered and a spoon for the oatmeal. But Dan found a spoon and somehow managed to keep the car on the road even without hash browns.  He liked the coffee and breakfast burger. 

I-90 Westbound, Approaching Livingston; May 26

We both liked the view.  The mountains are awesome!  On the ride from Bozeman to Gardiner for check-in, we saw cattle, bison, elk, horses, llamas, and the beautiful Gardiner River.  There were flurries in the air and snow all over everything.  It felt like January, but it was May. 

At Gardiner, Dan delivered me to the new employee check-in building where I slopped through the slush to a windowless room full of mostly young people, some of whom remembered each other with hugs and high fives from seasons past.  I stood in line and enjoyed the sights.  There were tattoos, piercings, and all sorts of interesting costumes.  For the unprepared, there were two boxes of jackets.  On the wall above the jackets there was a piece of paper with arrows pointing to the boxes.  One box was labeled “larger jackets” and the other was labeled “smaller jackets.”  The walls were decorated with quotations from famous visitors to Yellowstone.  When I got to the front of the line, I flashed my passport and began the process of having my paperwork reviewed by about ten people, each of whom welcomed me to Yellowstone.  The final stop in the paperwork review process was the photo chair where a very unflattering mug shot was taken and I was given my badge and employee card.    Then I was off through more slush to the uniform room. 

Snowy Welcome at Mammoth Hot Springs at YNP's North Entrance

The uniform room had three or four dressing rooms or changing booths opposite a counter behind which were several uniform clerks.  One of the clerks asked me what size pants I wanted to try on, so I came up with a number and started trying things on.  I needed bigger pants and a smaller shirt than I had estimated, but they were really nice.  The shirts are stark raving white with snaps.  The pants are snazzy black and white checks.  I also got a couple of mushroom hats and some plain white aprons.  From the uniform room, I proceeded to the shoe trailer, where I found a charming woman with a clipboard surrounded by stacks of shoeboxes.  She found some for me to try on, but there was no place to sit, unless I wanted to slop through the slush to the picnic table outside next to the trailer.  After trying on several pair of shoes, I selected the least offensive ones and slopped through the slush again back to the car.  Dan kindly accompanied me through the whole process. He had invested quite a bit of time and effort to get me this far and didn’t want to risk having me back out at this point.

Geyser Steam Hangs Long in the Cold Air

The next stop was the mandatory orientation meeting at Mammoth Hot Springs.  We slopped through more slush, watched a beautiful video, and enjoyed a hearty lunch in the employee dining room, or EDR as they are affectionately called.  After lunch we headed for Old Faithful. 

The road to Old Faithful had been closed, but we watched the gate swing open, passed the big truck with the chains that didn’t fit, and joined the optimistic procession of cars.  I had the camera in hand and kept clicking photos as one beautiful view after another revealed itself.  Along the way, our progress was slowed several times by “jams” of gawkers, but we got to our dorm in due time, and then went for a quick, informal orientation and to find my new boss.  He was “real glad to see me” and asked how soon I would be ready to pitch in.  About a half hour later I was back, in uniform, ready for my next orientation and my first assignment.

The kitchen is a multimillion dollar state of the art shiny new facility.  A few more square inches here and there would have made it even better, but it will do for now.  My first assignment was wielding a clipboard and writing down each employee’s employee number as they lined up for food.  Most of them have their six digit number memorized.  My next assignment was shadowing Miss B, who has been here a couple of weeks and is less than half my age.  She is full of energy, and knows what to do, how to do it, and where to find things.  I helped her tend to the salad bar, tidying and replenishing as needed.  At the end of the day we put everything away and cleaned up everything from the salad bar to the drink bar.  People sure are sloppy!  And whoever designed those drink delivery machines surely never had to clean one of them.

Snow Doesn't Last Long Once the Sun Appears

My second day of work was a full day, not just a few hours.  I think I remembered three people’s names.  I wore a different pair of shoes so my feet wouldn’t hurt, but although they had tiny suction cups all over the bottom, they were definitely not slip resistant.  I kept a-hopping from nine to five thirty, when Dan showed up, hoping to eat with me.  I don’t remember exactly when I had lunch, but my break was “at least thirty minutes,” and I had several unauthorized trips to the ladies room as I need to drink lots of water to acclimate to the altitude.  We are over a mile above sea level.  When we got back to our dorm room, Dan gave me a much-needed foot massage.

On my third day, Dan had to report early, so he went to breakfast by himself, and I stayed in our room to start writing.  When I got to a good stopping point, I checked the schedule posted by the door, and discovered that I had just missed breakfast.  No problem, we have fruit and granola bars in our room, I can have lunch at 10:15, enjoy a leisurely hot shower, and maybe finish unpacking.  Time sure flies. 

Bison Grazing at Elk Meadow on the Gibbon river

Today is my seventh day here.  I have been learning lots of things about how kitchens are run.  We kitchen crew members keep running all day.  So far, most of my work has involved attending to the “salad bar” and the “drink line,” but I have also enjoyed washing dishes, dicing tomatoes, slicing mushrooms, and stuff like that.  Yesterday was the hardest day so far because I thought it was my day off.  But after a leisurely breakfast, my phone rang and I was told that the schedule had been changed and I was a half hour late.  But they are short staffed, they were counting on me, and it was humanly possible for me to be there, so I put on my snazzy pants, my stark raving white shirt, my plain white apron and my silly mushroom hat and reported for work, spitting mad!  People kept asking me how I was doing, and all I could think of to say was that I was “still standing” or that “it wasn’t really me they were talking to, it was just a zombie in a uniform.”  But I lived through the ordeal and today was a better day.  I’ll write more when I have more time, but now I get to go to a ranger talk about Yellowstone.  

The ranger talk was very interesting.  It was all about the mistakes that have been made over the years in the park.  Years ago, hunting was allowed, people put foreign objects in the geysers, and bears were fed and observed at close range.  We don’t do those things anymore.  The population of bison has increased from a low of 24 to several thousand today.  Some of the geysers have been ruined beyond repair.  We are asked to stay at least one hundred yards away from bears and never feed them. 

There was a ranger talk last night too.  It was all about bison.  Bison can weigh as much as a car and move surprisingly fast, even though they look clumsy.  They can jump six feet high too.  They are allowed to go wherever they want in the park.  That’s all for now.