Yo! It’s been ages since last I blogged; probably because I have yet to crawl out from under my pile o’ crap. After Sundance there was the SIA show in Vegas, the OR show in Salt Lake, my four-day stint at Snowbird U (go to OnTheSnow.com/news/utah and use the search tool to read all about it), a glorious weekender to Brianhead, another where I dove with sea lions in Cabo San Lucas and then, oh, I fired myself from Deer Valley. No more bending over to the man anymore!

After 15 years, I was so done with their nit-picky micro-management. Granted, DV produces a great product and one that guests should continue to be psyched about. But as for a cohesive, ski instructor team with depth, well, that will soon go the way of the dinosaurs if the supervisors keep it up.

They claim they’re cracking down on policy violators to keep the staff uniform and make their job easier but they do absolutely nothing to make an instructor’s job easier. My supervisors were making my life miserable; I hated going to“work”. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another- from the way you wore your suspenders to the form that wasn’t filled out properly to the time you called in your lunch break. Ugh.
With the amount of bitching taking place among most of the instructors you know it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better and the ski school client will be the loser in this game.
What a weird system- you hate your job, but unless you want the unemployment and recognition for your work, you have to get fired but if you get fired, your ego suffers and it may look bad to others.
I blew off my ego. Every day at DV was something else and another hour wasted in a supervisor’s office reiterating DV’s“policies and procedures” to me. I felt like a soldier in enemy camp trying to avoid land mines whenever I got near the supervisors. Not to mention that there isn’t a single supervisor that actually has a positive, nurturing attitude. Ski school had become a three-letter word- JOB.
But not to fear, I’ll show up somewhere else. If you’re in the market for a lesson, drop me a line. Both The Canyons and Alta are possibilities for next season. I’ve met with both supervisors (actually I started talking to the Canyons back in January).
Off to ski Alta. Pray for snow!