My camp host quit in week three, and then I learned what she'd been doing

I've got a 40 site park, mostly nightly, and I'd been running it with one live on site camp host getting a free full hookup site plus 1,400 a month. On paper she cleaned two bathhouses, met arrivals, and handled the after hours phone.

She gave two weeks in early June. What she was actually doing, which I found out by doing it myself for nine weeks: two bathhouse cleans a day at peak, not one. Escorting maybe half of arrivals to their site because the numbering on the back loop is confusing and I'd never fixed it. Chasing generator use after 10pm. Selling firewood, which I'd never tracked separately and which turns out to be about 6,400 a season at nearly all margin. Running the laundry coin box. Talking down a guest dispute roughly weekly.

Replacing her cost me two people at 1,400 each plus one site, so call it 2,800 a month plus the lost site revenue of about 1,600 a month in peak. My labor line went from 1,400 to roughly 4,400 in season. That's about 13k over the season I didn't have budgeted, and it came straight out of what I'd planned to spend on gravel.

What I'd do differently, plainly: write down what the host does, task by task, with the time each takes, while she's still there and happy. I priced the position at what she'd accept instead of what the work costs. When she left I discovered I'd been buying about 55 hours a week of hospitality labor for 1,400 and a site, which was never going to hold, and it was a matter of when rather than whether.

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0tylerbrooks9PassivePRO5

The firewood number is the part I keep rereading. 6,400 a season at almost all margin, running through a person you were paying 1,400 a month and not tracking as its own line. If she'd been the type to put some of that in her pocket you'd never have known, and I don't think that's a knock on her, it's a knock on the system.

The back loop numbering is the same kind of thing. You paid a person to walk half your arrivals to their site every day for years because signage would have cost a few hundred dollars once. I'd want a list of every task the host does that exists only because something on the property is confusing or broken, and I'd price fixing each one against the labor it eats. That's the version of this I'd want to own, where the park works and the host is pleasant rather than load bearing.

My camp host quit in week three, and then I learned what she'd been doing

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