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| by Arline Chandler |
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Workamping is a Family Affair for Two Couples
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Workampers are accustomed to being treated like family by their employers. A camaraderie among working RVers at a particular location often develops into relationships akin to family. But Troy and Marilyn Sirmans, Workampers for a season at an RV park in Colorado, brought their kinfolks to the job.
Seasoned RVers with home bases in Texas, Troy Sirmans and his sister, Jane Smith, and their respective spouses, Marilyn and Jim, have traveled together extensively for the past 30 years. Owners of Mountain Aire and Dutch Star motorhomes, both couples actively participate in the Newmar Club.
Troy and Marilyn, retired for five years, embarked on a Workamping adventure first. While working in Colorado, a vacancy in staff occurred. After talking to the manager, Troy called his brother-in-law, Jim, and asked if he and Jane, newly retired from their Mexican restaurant business, would be interested.
“I thought for a moment—99 degrees with 102 percent humidity in Texas opposed to high 80s with 20 percent humidity in Colorado,” Jim says with tongue in cheek. “I told Troy we would be there within a week!”
Despite several 98-degree days that followed, Troy and Jim teamed with other Workamping employees to maintain and improve the luxurious RV park. Since the park contracts out no labor, their job description included hauling rock to fill in landscaping around the grassy area at the sites, digging ditches, mowing, washing windows, replacing water hydrants or outdoor lighting at the sites, and changing out the sprinkler system. In between maintenance jobs, Troy and Jim escorted RVers to their sites and pumped propane.
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With a laugh, Marilyn states that Jim and Troy are jacks-of-all trades. “They do all kinds of jobs well, and they don’t mind doing them,” she says. “When they put their heads together, there are few things they cannot figure out when it comes to building, repairs, or maintenance.” With another Workamper, Troy dug out the grass in the playground area, edged it with cedar timbers, and filled the space with sand. Although his career skills were in quality control with an engineering firm in Houston, Texas, Troy was the only Workamper to date who could operate a new welding machine owned by the park. He put his skill to use, fabricating signs to direct traffic or to designate the pet walk.
On weekdays, the park hires one lady who cleans all the restrooms. However, on weekends, the job falls to Jim and Troy. “Being in the restaurant business for 21 years, I have no problem with cleaning bathrooms,” Jim says. “During the week, the manager writes up a list of maintenance chores and tacks it to a clipboard. He doesn’t assign specific jobs to a particular person.” He continues, “For example, every Thursday and Friday, washing windows is on the list. So whoever feels like washing windows on those days, tackles that job.” Prior to owning his restaurant, Jim worked for Texas Instruments in Dallas. He knows the value of good customer relations, and often goes the extra mile to accommodate guests in the park. If he’s passing on a golf cart and someone steps out of a motorhome with a garbage bag in hand, he stops and offers to drop it off at the dumpster. He also strikes up conversations with folks as he escorts them to a site.
Jim relates that one morning a 40-foot motorhome pulled off a site and knocked out the electrical system in an outdoor light. The pole bent and the globe crashed to the concrete pad. “I went to clean up the glass, repair the system, and the ruts where the rear wheels dropped off the hard surfaced drive,” he says. “A job that should have taken me an hour, took a half day because I had to stop frequently, throw my tools in the cart, and go to escort a new guest to a site.”
While Troy and Jim labored outdoors in the heat, Jane and Marilyn put in their forty-hour weeks inside the air-conditioned office. Although their jobs were no match for the physical exertion expended by their husbands, their days were equally fast-paced. Marilyn normally opened the office in the mornings and checked the overnight reservation board. Her day ended at 4:30. Jane came on duty later and worked until 6:00. Their duties, shared with other Workampers, included taking reservations, locating sites for arriving guests, calling on the radio for escorts to take them to sites, and completing all the paperwork manually. A gift shop adjoins the reservation desk, so they both acted as cashiers for purchases. Their hours were punctuated by the constant ringing of a phone.
When they were not busy with guests—which was seldom—they dusted in the gift shop, cleaned the coffee area in the game room, made coffee, and occasionally, cleaned inside windows. Taking calls on the radio from their husbands outside, they kept records of propane pumped or off-the-road RVers who used the dumping station.
Marilyn, retired after 21 years at a school where she registered students and kept attendance records, had never done the type of office procedures required at Dakota Ridge. “The first week was overwhelming,” she says, noting that the manager trained her. “She assured me it would take three or four weeks to become comfortable, not only with the job, but with the altitude. And it did. I loved the job, although we worked very hard.”
Jane, a stay-at-home mom in the early years of her marriage, worked for the mayor of Dallas before she and Jim opened their restaurant. “The Workamping job was very different,” she says. “The busy office was brain-rattling because there were many steps to each task—registration, reservations, billing for propane. Nothing was entered on a computer.
“Yet, the documentation was easy for me because I’d done all the paperwork for our restaurant,” she continues. “I’d also run the cash register, sometimes with a line of 20 people waiting to be served. So I had experience in working under that kind of stress, as well as skills for pleasing customers that I’d honed over the years .”
As an example of bargaining options open to Workampers, the Smiths and the Sirmans told their employers up front that they needed a schedule that would accommodate them to attend their individual churches for at least one service on weekends. Troy and Marilyn got off early on Saturday to attend an evening Mass. Jim and Jane went to their church on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. Following the Sirmans’ church service on Saturday, the four had a standing date for dinner out.
The couples also requested that one of their two days off each week coincide. The employers accommodated them. One couple took off Mondays and Tuesdays. The other had work-free Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Together on Tuesdays, they explored eastern Colorado On one day off, the couples drove to Glenwood Springs. Troy warned the other three that going through Glenwood Canyon, the mountain highway would appear to have one route in and no way out. His sister, Jane, agreed that the tall mountains, rising in layers of rusty red rock, surpassed any hills she had seen in Texas. On the same driving tour, the foursome visited Breckenridge and Vail. They gasped at the height of the ski slopes.
On another Tuesday, they made a day trip to Rocky Mountain National Park. At Colorado Springs, they explored Garden of the Gods and the Air Force Academy. When grandchildren visited, they spent a day at the North Pole, an amusement park with a Christmas theme.
Every evening, the Smiths and Sirmans ate dinner together, each one preparing certain dishes. When one couple had a day off, the other prepared dinner. At their lunch breaks, they gathered in the shade between their motorhomes and enjoyed mealtime, catching up on each other’s morning experiences.
“We liked our jobs, liked where we were, and we liked what we did,” Marilyn says. “But Workamping with family made it easier and more fun. Although we all missed our grandchildren, who have always lived close to us, we didn’t get lonesome because family shared in our adventures.”
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