Diane Lewis

Diane Lewis Diane Lewis

12/04/2022

It’s a bummer that it is this way. On the flip side though… the parks jobs I’ve seen in my state are a joke. Overworked, underpaid, absurd job requirements… it’s like someone made it their job to make these jobs as difficult to acquire as possible.

12/04/2022

Yeah, what's weird is that I have a friend who works in National Parks (has the education and experience for the jobs) and had to go through 20+ interviews before he finally found a job that will last him May through September. (He's a great guy and well-spoken, no reason that he would have realistically flubbed 20 interviews.) It seems like the parks have issues because, like every other corporation in America, they realized less staff means more money saved.

12/04/2022

Low pay, crappy housing, dealing with horrible tourists who are incredibly entitled… lines on trails in peak seasons. Traffic jams. Fires. Dealing fed vs state laws… Trash from tourists. All things that will make a park employee bitter year after year. (Speaking from experience).. Hard to go back when there are so many other life options out there that pay better and you don’t have to deal with tourist entitlement!

12/04/2022

I bring extra trash bags with me on hikes. I always manage to fill at least one and take it out. The most annoying thing is picking through burnt out beer cans and other random s**t that people try to burn in a fire circle. Like you clearly could have taken that out with you, putting it in the fire and leaving it in the

12/04/2022

Totally. I meant trashed, not just leaving trash, to encompass a lot. People started cutting down live trees in my favorite local wilderness area. They have fires in bad spots and try to burn things that shouldn't be. Toilet paper everywhere. And yes, trash. Towels, coolers, all sorts of s**t. Really bums me out. Some of it comes from ignorance, but I just don't get it.

Also saw a kid trying to feed a ground squirrel a gusher in Glacier. I told their mom uh don't do that and was met with, "really? I had no idea." Right after I watched them go off the trail, onto Alpine flowers, next to a sign saying to stay on the path.

12/04/2022

I tried to apply to some seasonal jobs this summer in national parks and forests, but I agree, they seem to want to obscure the job postings for some reason. Like they were only open for a week and they weren't posted anywhere besides USAJobs, so you just kinda had to be in the know about them. And don't get me started on the low pay. I would love to do it but I've got a college degree to pay for.

12/04/2022

Getting a job with the NPS is way too difficult for what you get in return. It's absolutely no surprise they find themselves in this situation.

I got a degree in earth science naively thinking it'd help me get an NPS job.. Turns out, in order to compete with the other applicants, you need years of experience to even be considered for a seasonal position. A degree does f**kall for you til you have at least a couple years of experience. Once you get a seasonal spot, I've heard it's much easier to return and get another seasonal, but getting that first one is insanely competitive (for example, after speaking with a superintendent about it, I learned I was in the running for a position among 700 other qualified applicants just a couple years ago, and this wasn't even a popular national park).

So say you do get it.. this leaves you having to jump jobs every year when the season is up, and you have to do this for 5+ years before you can get lucky enough to be considered for a permanent position, which starting pay is usually around 40k depending on what job you're going for, and you'll probably have to live on site somewhere (or you'll get extremely lucky and find housing within 30 min of said park - most of which are isolated tiny towns), and chances are that particular park/on site living situation does not allow for family/wife/husband.. So then what? Live single for a decade til you gain the seniority to get a decent position?

I respect those that put up with the bs of how the NPS is run because of the amount of passion it must take to stick through this dogs**t process. Sure, some people slip through the cracks and get lucky with good positions early on, but that is easily one out of thousands odds.

I gave up on that dream when I realized how glamorized it is. It was a good job 50 years ago. Now they just rely on naive college students to work seasonally for peanuts with a skeleton crew of permanent employees holding up the framework.

12/04/2022

Traveling seasonally is just a different set of sacrifices. Most jobs I've had are incredibly physically demanding and the pay is....varied. But honestly it was the best 3 years of my life & now I have friends all over the world. Unfortunately it was not sustainable so I'm back within the confines of 4 concrete walls knowing there is a better life out there.

I wish I had mastered a trade. That is the best way to work seasonally with good pay

12/04/2022

It took a local fast food joint a year to hire a "biscuit maker" at 14 an hr in the rural southeast. Parks jobs paid horribly before,but now that low wage jobs have doubled their pay in the last 2 or so years.. It takes so long for any Hr to adjust,much less federal govt HR. It seems like it will be rough for many years for yall.

12/04/2022

I fully agree. The Park Service has high standards but isn't willing to staff or pay to the levels to get the kind of candidates it used to. Either the bar needs to be lowered, or the government needs to make the bar worth jumping over. Some rules are well intentioned but implemented haphazardly, other rules are deliberately designed to discourage people from making a living in the government.

The people NPS could get in 2019 settled down over COVID, and they aren't going to be lured back by high stress work and low wages. The people who are left really love our jobs, but there's a LOT of burnout right now.

12/04/2022

You can try private ventures.

My girlfriend worked in Stanley, ID for a summer. Probably made more than most parkies and had her own room at least (which beats out a ton of parkies). It was definitely basically have a pulse kind of hiring. There's a fair amount of private businesses surrounding national parks and forests or even on NFS land.

A lot of ski resorts have a brisk summer business and provide housing. Just be careful because the housing is all over the place in terms of quality. I've lived in several towns with resorts, but generally stayed away. Businesses would hire you in a heartbeat, but finding housing (especially a short term lease) has become terrible.

12/04/2022

You mention that seasonal workers don’t exist anymore…. I would love to do seasonal work but it feels like the process to do so is purposely difficult, the requirements unreasonably demanding, the work load excessive for the return, etc. Maybe I am just doing it wrong but it sure seems to me that the powers that be are making things harder than they need to be in that regard.

That having been said, I’m always chill to park workers and respectful to the parks! They are a huge blessing we take for granted!

12/04/2022

I'm not sure how much people are aware of this outside the Park Service, so I wanted to make transparent an internal issue we're going through right now.

Across the board, almost all divisions in almost all parks, we are seeing major hiring problems. The Park Service cannot fill positions, some parks are going into seasons with half or less their normal staff. I work in a large, recognizable park and we are short maintenance, interpretation, law enforcement, and medical staff. We will be down ambulances, trash service will be less frequent, there will be fewer educators to staff buildings or lead programs, fewer hands on deck to handle emergencies.

This is the byproduct of a lot of issues, from the ongoing unpleasantness, to the fact that the majority of front-line jobs are held by seasonal workers who simply don't exist anymore, to low pay, to some ongoing HR issues that limit the applicant pool. Overall we're hiring from a smaller pool than ever, for more jobs than ever, and we're going into Spring and Summer with staffs smaller than 2019, with higher visitation than ever.

I will not suggest you cancel visits, but be aware that services might not be as fast, and that facilities might be closed or have reduced hours. Be aware that you might be on your own if you're visiting during peak season and get into trouble. Be ready for more traffic jams, longer lines, and fewer services. Please be ready to pack your trash out as much as possible because less than ever will we have staff to clean up litter. Be especially careful if you're doing anything that could cause a fire, because fire staff are just as short staffed as everyone else and a lot of the country is in a pretty major drought.

We want to go back to normal, but we don't have the staff to do that yet. We already deal with a lot of people at their worst, on their worst days. We don't get paid much, but we love our jobs for the most part. This situation isn't going to get better until next year at the earliest, and if there isn't motion on the root causes for this staffing problem, we might not see improvement then either.

I'm not acting as a representative of the NPS here, but I hope you'll listen to this bottom rung, currently furloughed, tired Park Ranger all the same.

So TLDR: please be chill this summer. We know this might be your one chance to visit these amazing places, but we're basically b***d, we're going to be tired, we're going to be dealing with a lot. We want to help, but we need you to help yourselves too.

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