Vail fail aka stevens pass wtf?

[bamboocoreONLY]

I anticipate a huge move to the Ikon pass for a big chunk of those who bought epic this season. I've never seen so many tourists complain about issues on their social media pages.

[The SnowShow]

I anticipate a huge move to the Ikon pass for a big chunk of those who bought epic this season. I've never seen so many tourists complain about issues on their social media pages.

Ugh that would suck. Everyone should stay on Vail because it’s like nothing else on earth.

[Dshack89]

^seriously???
That's the dumbest thing I ever read.

Just to offer a different POV, I own a blue-collar "dirty jobs" business and have come to realize that I can't solve staffing issues by just throwing more money at employees. Sure, pay matters. But just as importantly, my employees need to feel respected, that they will be taken care of, and they need to not wake up in the morning just hating going to work. It's the little things that matter and add up. As an example, I let my techs take their company van home at night. If I take away that "perk" and make them drive to our shop to start/end every day...I would have mutiny.

It seems to me there was a delicate balance where employees where "taken care of" in non-financial ways just enough that they were ok to deal with mediocre pay. Now that Vail slashed and burned and optimized everything, that balance is gone. And I do wonder what wage it would take to bring that balance back. Probably a very high wage now.

[bamboocoreONLY]

Just to offer a different POV, I own a blue-collar "dirty jobs" business and have come to realize that I can't solve staffing issues by just throwing more money at employees. Sure, pay matters. But just as importantly, my employees need to feel respected, that they will be taken care of, and they need to not wake up in the morning just hating going to work. It's the little things that matter and add up. As an example, I let my techs take their company van home at night. If I take away that "perk" and make them drive to our shop to start/end every day...I would have mutiny.

It seems to me there was a delicate balance where employees where "taken care of" in non-financial ways just enough that they were ok to deal with mediocre pay. Now that Vail slashed and burned and optimized everything, that balance is gone. And I do wonder what wage it would take to bring that balance back. Probably a very high wage now.

Very true. My wife works at a vail owned retail store in Breckenridge and is an ASM who makes a pretty decent livable wage and she still wants to quit purely for her miserable work conditions. It's sad as she does like the people she directly works with, but then Vail comes back and says "oh you gotta work Christmas? Well, we won't give you holiday pay but thanks for providing our guests the experience of a lifetime!"

[::: :::]

“ASM”?

[Name Redacted]

I worked for Keystone back in '97, they had just been acquired by Vail Associates. I lived in employee housing across the street, I was 18/19 yo. Took two gondolas to work (off the clock!). Got one free meal at the Outpost restaurant every day, and that was about all I could afford, so I ate one hudge meal a day. It was a day job so I snowboarded every night. at least they had night skiing. I think I made like $9 hr.

Monthly rent for employee housing where 4 dudes who didn't know each other were packed into a shitty 2br apartment w/ bunk beds was ~$400 a person IIRC. We were too high/tired/dumb/drunk to ever sit around and figure it out at first, but one day we realized that VR was making ~$1800 a month off of us renting employee housing that was barely livable, in 1997! That's like $6K in todays numbers! Ok, not really but it was pretty fucking exorbitant for the times. A nice apartment in town would have cost us at least half what they were charging.

In the summer, I moved into a tent and got a different job. Saved up some money and moved into an apartment with some friends, and things gradually started to get better. If I had stayed working for Vail, I probably would have died of alcohol poisoning or suicide.

So lesson learned, don't work for Vail, you are just a means to an end for them, they'll even find a way to profit off their own employees.

[Dee Hubbs]

“ASM”?

Assistant Store Manager.

[Bunion 2020]

Just to offer a different POV, I own a blue-collar "dirty jobs" business and have come to realize that I can't solve staffing issues by just throwing more money at employees. Sure, pay matters. But just as importantly, my employees need to feel respected, that they will be taken care of, and they need to not wake up in the morning just hating going to work. It's the little things that matter and add up. As an example, I let my techs take their company van home at night. If I take away that "perk" and make them drive to our shop to start/end every day...I would have mutiny.

It seems to me there was a delicate balance where employees where "taken care of" in non-financial ways just enough that they were ok to deal with mediocre pay. Now that Vail slashed and burned and optimized everything, that balance is gone. And I do wonder what wage it would take to bring that balance back. Probably a very high wage now.

Excellent post.

[wolfelot]

Great article on Stevens situation from Everett Herald. Not much new, but they do a great job laying it all out.

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/at-st...taff-shortage/

Ooooof not a good look!

Here is their stock price over the past three months. It’s gone down a bit, perhaps not anything extraordinary. If it doesn’t tank before the end of the season why would Vail do anything to address the issues?

[muted reborn]

So what I'm gathering from the articles is that Vail has been treating their employees like shit for years and therefore can't retain them - but the Vail CEO is using COVID as a convenient scapegoat (and COVID is making their situation worse, yes) instead of tackling the underlying problem.

What a bunch of corporate ghouls.

[fastfred]

lots of good stuff here

as said it isn't just about money, it's working conditions and how you are treated, as an employer, it's a big concern to make sure everyone at work is happy

why do you think the d-bag robbie katz is out the door? he created this mess and jumped ship, he saw this implosion coming

I know some people breck ski area, one guy was telling me how he creates operating manuals based on the "success" of breckenridge, so every ski area has too implement the way breckenridge or vail do things, how the hell does that translate to some ski area in washington or new hampshire? They think it does.

Every ski area is unique and different and clown car driver rob katz thought they could make every ski area like mcdonalds the same

Another person I know at the ski area a few years ago shit canned a ton of middle management people here in town, friends none the less, the next week on monday over the phone that person was fired, didn't see it coming

You can't run a business without knowledge, that piece of shit katz whose only job was to make the private equity company (I think it's black rock or black stone) who is the majority shareholder of VR money, that's all he was suppose to do, that bitch katz could barely ski

They tossed all their knowledgeable people to the curb thinking that snowmaking is just a button you can push in broomfield, there is no HR department in breck anymore, log into an app?

[dunderhead]

It Comes down to culture, community, and respect. If you are gonna try and get people to commute well over an hour, to work for lower pay while freezing their ass off you better have all of the three.

Stevens had a vibrant culture and community where workers were valued and respected. Vail spit in their faces thinking they could bring their Colorado college ski model to some snowy ass pass in the Cascades and are now paying the price. Washingtonians are a little freer thinking that to roll over and submit to some corporate over lord.

This is corporation 101. Purposeful destruction. Clear out higher paid middle and upper management then replace them with loyalists. Cost cutting exercise that may have worked in a different time and in different places.

[AdironRider]

The no HR department thing is mind blowing to me. For a business predicated upon onboarding thousands of seasonal workers in a very short timeframe it seems like such a boneheaded move it’s hard to wrap my head around it.

Whoever sold that app must be the greatest salesman in the world.

[toast2266]

I wonder how much of this is growing pains of recent Vail takeovers. So Vail comes in, buys a place, and rams through their corporate thinking. Everything goes to shit and Vail makes a bunch of money.

But over time, do the local managers at these hills find ways to right the ship and make the local situation more palatable (despite their corporate overlords)? Or is it forever fucked as long as Vail is at the helm?

[The AD]

Excellent post.

I agree. Corporations have been slowly chipping away at every benefit they can (and in this country that means damn near everything) for quite a while. You'd think more people would be upset about it and rally behind the workers, but instead too many are saying "if you don't like it find a job somewhere else" because they have also had their benefits cut. Misery loves company, I guess.

[hofman]

I had a similar experience to Nameredacted above but not with Vail. It was like something out of Dickens. In the employee housing you were not allowed to use any cooking devices. Therefore you had to buy all food from the resort owned stores. You did get something like 15% off but in the inflated restaurants and mini market. Many people ended up having NEGATIVE checks. That is after working all week minus their food and housing costs the checks would show that they OWED money to the Corp. I left quickly after realizing that I could get another job at night and ski all day and actually make money.. But like above most were too drunk/high/dumb to realize what a bad deal they had.

Most people stayed because of the free pass.. They fronted you a pass but charged a weekly fee for its use with the idea that if you stayed the whole season you got the money back at the end. On the last week of the season when it was quiet and overstaffed, they would fire people for some trumped up charge like stealing food from the restaurant where they worked or for cooking in the employee housing. Therefore, no pass rebate and you lost the full price of the pass that you thought was free.

When I went back a few years later it was all foreign employees in those jobs. I can't even imagine the raw deal they got with the visa being dangled over them. I am wondering if these staffing shortages are due to covid in the fact that they can't bring in foreign workers? Or not as many?

[goldenboy]

Things are nearly as bad here in Crested Butte, with several lifts closed and we all hiked the Headwall yesterday since they couldn't open the lift. At least patrol got us the hike access. The Blevins article linked somewhere above gets to many of the issues. They need to pay more, they need housing (none is provided in CB- at least the Whistler, Summit, and Vail resorts have some employee housing), and they need to be treated better. People hate the app that they're required to use. Lifties generally have to download- they don't even get a run at the end of their shift. I'm sure Vail had to buy an ACL somewhere so they said no more skiing. When I worked for CBMR years ago under the Waltons/Calloways it was pretty fun, the pass was a big perk, there were free shift meals (even for the non-food jobs), etc etc. Of course they'll keep getting my money though, I have no other pass choice.

[leroy jenkins]

Just to offer a different POV, I own a blue-collar "dirty jobs" business and have come to realize that I can't solve staffing issues by just throwing more money at employees. Sure, pay matters. But just as importantly, my employees need to feel respected, that they will be taken care of, and they need to not wake up in the morning just hating going to work. It's the little things that matter and add up. As an example, I let my techs take their company van home at night. If I take away that "perk" and make them drive to our shop to start/end every day...I would have mutiny.

It seems to me there was a delicate balance where employees where "taken care of" in non-financial ways just enough that they were ok to deal with mediocre pay. Now that Vail slashed and burned and optimized everything, that balance is gone. And I do wonder what wage it would take to bring that balance back. Probably a very high wage now.

Yea, the saying that people don't quit jobs they quit bosses or cultures still holds true for jobs that pay decently. Probably even more so.


This shit sucks because its going to fuck up the economics of skiing in the USA, perhaps indefinitely. America is facing some potential problems that put the future of skiing in danger already, not limited to climate change, and ski areas have never been exactly extremly lucrative in their own right. It seems to me if there is much chance of cultivating an economic environment conducive to ski areas in general being feasable enterprises in the long run, it will probably be destroyed by this shit.

[The AD]

I had a similar experience to Nameredacted above but not with Vail. It was like something out of Dickens. In the employee housing you were not allowed to use any cooking devices. Therefore you had to buy all food from the resort owned stores. You did get something like 15% off but in the inflated restaurants and mini market. Many people ended up having NEGATIVE checks.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

It Comes down to culture, community, and respect. If you are gonna try and get people to commute well over an hour, to work for lower pay while freezing their ass off you better have all of the three.

Stevens had a vibrant culture and community where workers were valued and respected. Vail spit in their faces thinking they could bring their Colorado college ski model to some snowy ass pass in the Cascades and are now paying the price. Washingtonians are a little freer thinking that to roll over and submit to some corporate over lord.

This is corporation 101. Purposeful destruction. Clear out higher paid middle and upper management then replace them with loyalists. Cost cutting exercise that may have worked in a different time and in different places.

This is a reasonable post except your take on Washingtonians. Stevens culture is separated by a mountain pass. The vibrant culture that you posted about is largely locals and employees from the east side of the pass. The shit show is a product of west side day trippers and that’s the market for Vail with their Epic passes. The urban/suburban west siders are no more free thinking than anyplace else


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[Bunion 2020]

I had a similar experience to Nameredacted above but not with Vail. It was like something out of Dickens. In the employee housing you were not allowed to use any cooking devices. Therefore you had to buy all food from the resort owned stores. You did get something like 15% off but in the inflated restaurants and mini market. Many people ended up having NEGATIVE checks. That is after working all week minus their food and housing costs the checks would show that they OWED money to the Corp. I left quickly after realizing that I could get another job at night and ski all day and actually make money.. But like above most were too drunk/high/dumb to realize what a bad deal they had.

Most people stayed because of the free pass.. They fronted you a pass but charged a weekly fee for its use with the idea that if you stayed the whole season you got the money back at the end. On the last week of the season when it was quiet and overstaffed, they would fire people for some trumped up charge like stealing food from the restaurant where they worked or for cooking in the employee housing. Therefore, no pass rebate and you lost the full price of the pass that you thought was free.

When I went back a few years later it was all foreign employees in those jobs. I can't even imagine the raw deal they got with the visa being dangled over them. I am wondering if these staffing shortages are due to covid in the fact that they can't bring in foreign workers? Or not as many?

Don't suppose you might like to mention the Owner/corp.... Cause that description could have been damn near any of areas that I have worked at or visited on patrol exchanges save 1 and that would be the much cited Bridger Bowl. PCMR wasn't bad to work for and paid a fair wage, this was the Pre-Powder Corp. era, you could also rent part of a condo for 200 a month.

[fastfred]

But over time, do the local managers at these hills find ways to right the ship and make the local situation more palatable (despite their corporate overlords)? Or is it forever fucked as long as Vail is at the helm?

it's fucked unless someone at the top realizes what they have done
are they going to go back and re hire all these people?

the upper/middle on site management types in breck were fired years ago
so take jimmy who has worked at the hill since he was in his mid twenties, worked his way up the ladder and is a manager over seeing snowmaking with 20 years experience, he used to lug guns around and work all night but now he's got a good salary year around job and lots of paper to push

shit hits the fan one day because equipment breaks, so jimmy comes out of his office with his twenty years of experience and starts problem solving with the team
well jimmy was canned and you have a crew with 5 or so years experience, if that, they don't remember or know that there was an abandon power supply or water line that they can use to get things back up on line

fuck boy katz thought they were making hamburgers and the machine was the same everywhere, just need someone to turn a valve and you have snow

[fastfred]

was skiing with a buddy the other day who has worked on the mtn for decades, just smart enough to never climb the ladder
we were talking about all this fucked up shit

the cheapest and easiest thing vail could do that would make them look like hero's is a food line at the end of the day, a buffet feed everyone
warm food in their stomachs after a day on the mountain would go so far

instead katz was too busy jerking off shareholders on an expensed steak dinner at the boulder cork
that piece of shit left a mess trying to squeeze every dollar

meanwhile show up to the st johns monthly free meal and it's seasonal vail employees lined up at the door

[goldenboy]

I agree with fastfred, they lost a lot of local knowledge and most decisions are made in Broomfield.

[Buster Highmen]

Vail removed the run breaks for lifties.
How dumb is that?

A big distinction between Colorado and WA ski areas is a lack of decent grocery stores or towns of any size near the ski area.
WA Cascades have no real mountain towns (and no, Leavenworth, Greenwater and Skykomish do not count) since there's too much snow for towns to develop at skiable altitudes.