Monday, July 20, 2015

RUDE People

Lavon, Texas
Weather Conditions; Sunny, 98 degrees

As gate attendants at Lavon Lake we work 4 days on and 4 days off. Our hours are 6:00 A.M to 10:00 P.M.

The gate house we spend our days in is 14 feet by 18 feet. A very small building!

There are parks on this lake that have even smaller gate houses.

We deal with a lot of different people on a daily basis. We have many different ethnicities visit the park.

I’m not a prejudice person. But I do have a problem with one class of people and find I’m having a harder time dealing with them. My patience is growing very thin!

These people are known as RUDE people. That’s right, RUDE people.

Here’s a fine example; last weekend this park was very busy with people coming in for the day. Many families coming in to use the Day Use Area. They were here to picnic, swim and play outdoors.

In between these people coming in to enjoy that area, we would have a camper checking-in.

The checking-in process doesn’t take but a few minutes when advance reservations are made.

There were several cars in line waiting to pay the fee and enter the park, a truck pulling a fifth wheel and a couple of cars behind that.

As each car pulled up to the window, we took their money and gave them a pass to enter the park. Because some of the park is off limits to visitors due to flooding, we must inform each visitor of those areas before allowing them to enter.

The process takes about thirty seconds per car. No Biggy!

The fifth wheel pulls up to the window and gives us his reservation paperwork. It only takes a minute to check him in. While checking him in, a woman from the car behind him, get out and walks up to the window and asked the man how long he would be.

The man looked at her and said, I don’t know I have reservations and I’m just trying to get checked in.

I told the woman it would be just a minute and if she would get back into her car we would be with her when we finished.

The camper, Dawn and I all had a look of disbelief on our faces. She had only been in line a few minutes.

We finished checking in the camper and the woman pulled forward to the window. She had her arm out her window with money in hand.

Dawn took her money, handed her the pass and began instructing her of the flood area information when the woman began driving forward and telling Dawn she has been coming to this park for years and was trying not to be rude and didn’t need to hear Dawn give her any information.

With that she drove off into the park.

This woman looked to be in her late forties, early fifties. She had several teenagers in the car with her.

People want to know why young people act so entitled. This is a prime example.

This park normally has 38 camp sites but with the flooding damage, only 11 are usable at the current time.

On weekends hordes of people pull up to the gate house and ask to drive through and look at the park.

On weekends and holidays we don’t allow people to drive through the park.

This afternoon a car pulls up to the gate house and the male driver said he was going to drive through the park and look around. We get that a lot. People tell us their going to drive through the park.

I explained to this man that we don’t allow people to drive through on holidays and weekends. I suggested he come back during the week for a free drive through.

He said he would pay the fee and drive around the park. I explained to him that if he paid the fee he would be limited to the area he could drive through.

He said he understood and would stay out of the posted camping areas.

I sold him the Day Use Pass and opened the gate.

Half an hour later the man is driving through the posted camping area like he owned the place!

People get very upset when we tell them to stay out of the camping areas. We explain that if they were camping here they wouldn’t want hordes of people driving by looking at them.

Besides the fact the roads are not able to accommodate that kind of traffic.

STUPID people are on my very last nerve!

Now I’m really ranting!

We have people drive up to the gate house and just stare at us. We ask how we can help and as they look at the pricing sign posted on the building, they ask how much is it.


Are you kidding me?! You are looking at the sign!

While the lake was flooded by 12 feet of water all the boat ramps and most of the parks were closed.

People would pull up to the gate house and ask when the parks and boat ramps were going to be open.

Our response was when the water recedes. Then the question was when is that going to happen.

Do people really think we can predict how long it will take for 12 foot of flood water to recede?

People would stop at the gate house with boats in tow. We would have to break the news to them that ALL the boat ramps on the lake were closed due to flooding.

They would then say, does that mean there aren’t any boat ramps open?

Why yes, All boat ramps are closed means there aren’t any open!!!!!!!!!

This was on a daily basis, many times a day.

The park has five different restrooms throughout the park.

But some people would rather wait and take a leak at the park entrance before they leave.


This picture was taken from inside the gate house. We see this all the time. Sometimes they just stop in the street to take a leak.

We’re amazed at how many people don’t know their left from their right.

We issue the Day Use Area passes and tell the visitor to turn to the left. Almost half of those people will turn to the right!

This park is equipped with tire spikes at the exit. You can exit but not enter.


The sign says warning, Do Not Back Up, Severe Tire Damage.

We watch people pull up to the exit, everyone gets out of the car and walk over the tire spikes. They will step on them and make sure they go down.

Everyone gets back in the car and they drive over the spikes to exit the park.

Parking in the Day Use Area is spars. But some people think they need to take several spaces!



This is just the sample of what these gate attendants deal on a regular days business.

Copyright Notice All text and photos found on cruzin2some.blogspot.com is copyrighted and may not be published, rewritten, distributed or downloaded without permission of the owner of cruzin2some.blogspot.com. All Rights Reserved. ©cruzin2some 2010

Friday, July 10, 2015

July 4th Mayhem

Lavon, Texas
Weather Conditions; Sunny, 83 degrees

I haven’t posted anything lately because not a whole lot has happened.

Due to the flooding most of our park closed. All the boat ramps have been closed too.


The camping in this park is to a minimum. We normally have 38 camp sites, but due to the flooding they were forced to close all but 12.
 
Dawn and I worked the July 4th weekend. We expected things would be slow since people couldn’t get to the lake.

The Lake Manager decided to open our picnic area on Friday, July 3rd. Our park would have the only picnic area open on this lake! We only had 30 out of 45 picnic tables above water.


We were instructed to allow only thirty cars into the picnic area. Those thirty cars were allowed to leave and reenter the park as many times as they wished.

At 6:15 A.M on Saturday, July 4th people were pulling up to the gatehouse ready to use the picnic area.

By noon we had literally hundreds of people in our picnic area. Remember we only had thirty picnic tables available!

The hundreds of people were brought in by those thirty cars that had passes to enter the park.

People were parking along the road to the park entrance and some even parked over a mile away at a Dollar General.




The cars with the thirty passes were shuttling people into the park over and over. I know that one car came into the park at least two dozen times. With each re-entry there were four to six people in the car.

At 8:30 A.M I made my required rounds in the park and was stopped and cussed at because the grass was tall. The grass in the picnic area was knee high.




A minute later, I was stopped by another man and cussed at because the restrooms were filthy. 

Really people, grown men cussing someone out in public!!!!!

Later in the day, Dawn fell in the parking lot while trying to direct traffic. This wouldn’t have happened if grown adults could park without mowing down signs and blocking traffic.




She fell on her elbow and busted it up good.

One of the volunteers here at our park is a fire fighter. He was able to perform some paramedic moves to get her elbow cleaned and bandaged.

We turned away at least fifty cars because we had already sold the thirty passes. Those people were not happy!

Thank goodness we had the Park Rangers keeping a close watch on this park.

Around 5:00 P.M three young girls knocked on the gatehouse window and asked us to call an ambulance. They said their seven year old cousin had hurt himself.

We made the call and a few minutes later an ambulance, fire truck and police were in the park. Thankfully, the emergency was not life threatening.


Our picnic area closes at sunset. By that time, most of the picnic area was empty. The Park Rangers came by and ran the remaining people out.




We thought the day would never end!!!!!!!


Copyright Notice All text and photos found on cruzin2some.blogspot.com is copyrighted and may not be published, rewritten, distributed or downloaded without permission of the owner of cruzin2some.blogspot.com. All Rights Reserved. ©cruzin2some 2010