As work-environments go, ours is pretty out of the ordinary.
We run an RV Park and live onsite (that’s not the weird part—although it certainly has its interesting moments). It’s a small park—just 105 sites, around 65 of which are occupied by long-term folks—which functions almost like a mini-town within our already-small-town. And we only hire from the tiny pool of park residents.
It’s a small crew, eight part-time people in addition to ourselves, and all of us live here. As a consequence, our team works together, lives practically on top of each other, and (because apparently that’s not enough time together) tends to hang out with one another as well. (Oh, and I shouldn’t forget dates one another—there’s been a fair sampling of that dynamic over the years, into the bargain.)
What this means (one of the things it means, I should say) is that when there’s any tension or discord among staff members, it gets amplified exponentially. Fissures in the team blow up into factions, and scheduling becomes gruesome, trying to keep people separated who are rubbing one another the wrong way—because they’re already practically tripping over one another just in everyday small-neighborhood life.
It also means that when the crew is the right mix, an incredible closeness builds up. Right now we’ve had the same crew in place for 18 months (a remarkable record for us, given that everyone here is on wheels!), and although there have been some of the normal human tensions that spring up just in the course of being people, this crew has stayed tight.
Last Thanksgiving Jon & I said that we’d have a turkey-day feast in our park clubhouse for anyone who didn’t have other plans—and the whole crew showed up to eat, and to offer up a Thanksgiving prayer together. At Christmas time we had a dinner & staff party for the grownups (& spouses), but we also had a Family Day in the clubhouse—trimming a tree, baking and decorating Christmas cookies, making ornaments, and stringing popcorn & cranberries for the tree. Everyone came—even the crew members without kids were in there, frosting cookies, hanging ornaments from the ceiling, and stringing popcorn together, along with laughs.
This team also pulls together to help each other out. Chicken-noodle-soup from scratch when one is sick. Regular rides to the grocery store and to church for the one without a vehicle. Lessons on budgeting and other tenets of adulting, for the one who just got out of an abusive/controlling relationship. Dinners for a teenage son of the one who has to work late at his other job.
When the custody-sharing ex-husband of one went to jail (meaning she no longer had any kiddo-less days in which she could get her work-hours done), her coworkers stepped in to divide up the days and provide her with free kid-care for the two days a week that pay for her rent and utilities. Her kids are little, and lively, and that’s no small commitment as an ongoing arrangement.
I feel Blessed to see this kind of old-fashioned Community in action. I feel Blessed to be a part of it. It’s not perfect—because we’re not perfect—but this is Community to be proud of.
We did have some rumblings recently—frustrations by one party being taken out on a second party through negative talk to third parties. And those are times when my “Boss” role and my “Group-Mom” role tend to blur together. We can’t afford to let things go sour (if it can be helped—which ultimately isn’t up to us) because we know from experience how miserable it is when the group doesn’t get along. I can’t force someone to behave differently, but I can (and do) at least deal with them directly on the subject. In this case what followed was a heartfelt apology, to the team at large and the maligned party in particular—and I have hope (not unfounded, I think) that the rift may be on its way to repairing.
The other thing that came out of that conversation was a reference to a (half-)joking comment by another member of the team, to the effect that it would be lovely to hang a punching bag in the shop, for blowing off steam when frustrations pile up. Andy wasn’t talking of work-frustrations when she made that remark, and when her comment was repeated to me this week, I stopped to ask myself if maybe we couldn’t actually do something of the sort. For almost every member of the crew, I could name some frustrations they’re dealing with. The shop isn’t the place for it, but we do have a little shed behind the clubhouse…
The upshot is that, after polling the team, I ordered a punching bag yesterday. I found an inexpensive one that’s freestanding on a base, so it doesn’t need to be hung up anywhere, and (although our folks said they’d put in the $5 apiece to cover it) Jon & I figure we’ll call it our early Christmas present to the team.
A Community Punching Bag may be an unorthodox response to interpersonal pecking, but what of it? Tallying it up, two staff members have admitted anger issues, another has a demanding live-in grandparent, several have kids (every parent could use a punching bag from time to time!), three have troublesome exes… Hell, whose life doesn’t have its frustrations? We may have a line out the door when we set this thing up!
Kana's Chronicles 
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