Alaska the Second

SKAGWAY, LOOKING DOWN BROADWAY TOWARDS THE LYNN CANAL WITH CRUISE SHIP ON BROADWAY DOCK. HARDING PEAKS/GLACIER TO THE RIGHT.

SKAGWAY LOOKING NORTHEAST. CANADA IS ABOUT 20 MILES UP THAT ROAD.

4th OF JULY. FIREWORKS SHOT OFF BOATS IN THE CANAL. AMAZING

I WORKED LUGGAGE CREW A COUPLE OF TIMES. THIS IS LUGGAGE BEING PULLED ON TO LAND VIA A TUGBOAT.

LOWER DEWEY LAKE

BETHANY AND I AT THE KONE COMPANY, MY JOB ON FIRDAYS AND SATURDAYS.

KONE COMPANY

CANYON CAME TO VISIT FOR A WHILE, LET ME RIDE HIS MOTORCYCLE. HUNG OUT AND WENT TO HAINES ON THE FERRY.

I haven't blogged in a long time for a lot of reasons, so I apologize if this blog seems like a book that skips several chapters. I'll try to be be comprehensive...or at least make up for it later.

I just got fired for the first time (wrote this the beginning of July). I'm up in Alaska working again, and summer here has turned into a series of dilemas. The kind that build character I guess.

I loved my job up here. I toured mostly 50 and 60 somethings around Alaska and the Yukon in a tour bus that we were supposed to call a "coach". Really the only difference between a "bus" and a "coach" is that a coach has a bathroom onboard, which I got to clean out at night - but aside from that and management politics, the job was great. I had an engaging, entertaining, and funny tour going; I learned the history of everything in the area very well, and people liked me and thought I was funny. I even got good comment cards from the people in my groups when they went back to their cruise ships at night, which is something they have to go out of their way to do.

But it all went wrong. Here's how:

As part of my job description every time I picked passengers up or stopped to let passengers off for any reason I was required to get out of the bus, open a luggage compartment, and remove a step stool to put out in front of the stairs for any of the elderly people with frail knees or what have you. I dutifully performed this service for my passengers, but occasionaly I would forget to put the step back into the luggage bay after all of my passengers had boarded. Once in a while, a little old lady would remind me about the stool, still sitting at the bottom of the stairs, and I would get out and fetch it. Other times I would remember it just as I started the engine of the bus. But twice, I completely forgot.

You see, the problem with these step stools is that when you get back in the driver's seat of your bus, you don't see them in the rearview mirror (which I always checked) as you're getting ready to leave again. They're much too short. Incidentally, you don't feel them either, when your bus quietly overtakes the feeble aluminum legs and turns the step stool into a flat piece of useless garbage.

So I ran over two step stools early on in the season. You have to understand that EVERYONE who drives for Holland America (or any other bus company up here for that matter) runs over a step stool, but most people simply don't report it. They discretely throw the thing away after the deed has been done, steal a step stool from upstairs in the mechanic shop or from another bus in the yard, and no one knows any better. The mechanics just have to keep replacing step stools that mysteriously disappear overnight.

My folly was in reporting my smushed step stools to the safety manager. I filled out "incident reports" as required by company policy. It didn't seem like a big deal either. I would get stern warnings, (an overly common occurence when one is working for Holland America) and wouldn't think anything more of it. If anything, I thought that perhaps the managers would look on me as someone who was reliable and honest.

Silly me.

The nail in the coffin came about a week ago when I was pulling out of the bus yard and allegedly scratched the mirror of the neighboring bus. I did not see, hear or feel anything when this happened, but another driver, Carolyn, reported that she had witnessed it happen. I'm not going to deny that it happened....sure enough there was a scratch on the backside of her left mirror with blue paint on it when I checked that night. There are hundreds of scratches on most of the mirrors in the bus yard, but the blue paint indicated that it happened recently. And I was the bus parked next to it pulling out of the bus yard...but it struck me as odd that there were no marks on the outside of MY bus to prove that there was any kind of contact. And the mirror had a scratch but did not move. The safety manager even came out with a camera to take pictures and mentioned the same things. But I got blamed for it anyhow.

The night this happened, I was again unphased. It all seemed pretty harmless to me. I kept getting scheduled for tours the next few days and did a great job on them, until on Monday night I noticed that my name was missing from dispatch for the next day. Shortly after I noticed, I received a phone call from one of the dispatchers saying that I had a meeting with the head dispatcher, Melissa Logan, the next day at 10:30. I was naively unaware of what the meeting might be about. I was pretty sure I was in trouble for some mundane thing (as I mentioned before, you always are when you work for Holland America...just ask Robbie or Evan) but as I said before, this company is in the business of stern warnings about stupid crap.

Much to my surprise, I went into the office on Tuesday morning at 10:30 AM to find Melissa Logan AND Steve Funk. I don't know what Steve Funk's title is at the company, but I do know that he is some kind of regional company officer for the driver guides and that everyone sort of treats him like he's God, so much so that he seems to think that about himself too.

And then Funk laid it on me. Logan just sat to my side quietly. I was being "let go" for safety reasons. I had been involved in three "accidents" with my "coach" and according to company policy, that is grounds for terminating employment regardless of my clean driving record.

I mentioned a few things to Funk in my defense, like some of the other "accidents" that had occured this year that never resulted in termination of an employee. For instance:

1. Matt Johnson, on a highway tour to Dawson City in the Yukon, missed his lunch stop and decided to turn around on the highway. Somewhere in his however-many-point turn on the narrow road, he got half of his coach stuck in the mud and half of it stuck in the traffic lane...with 40 passengers on board.

2. Alyssa ran the side of her coach into a stop sign. A STOP sign. With 40 passengers on board. The paint and metal on the side of the bus is now all scratched up and indented very visibly. Again, 40 passengers on board.

3. Twice drivers have been reprimanded for stopping in the middle of the highway and letting passengers out of the bus to go take close-up pictures of bears. BEARS. HIGHWAY... !?!?!?!?!

4. This girl named Sarah last year tried to swerve when she saw a moose on the road and ended up rolling an E-model coach (a $500,000 vehicle) with passengers on board. She still works for the company. People say this is because last year, Holland America was severely understaffed. This year they are way overstaffed...and looking for reasons to fire people.

This list goes on, but I think you get the idea. After I mentioned a couple of these things to Funk, he asked me "Were you or were you not involved in three incidents in which your coach collided with another object?" I told him I wasn't even sure if I was. He said it was company policy that he not allow me to drive any longer this season. I told him I thought that it didn't make a lot of sense but that the decision was up to him and not me and I tried to stay very respectful throughout the whole thing even though I was a little outraged inside. I shook his hand on the way out and then ducked into an alleyway to call Josh.

In brief, I was in limbo for a couple of days deciding what to do. Wasn't sure if it was worth it to stay in Skagway and just find another job and place to live, or not. I made a few other phone calls, looked around town, and talked to some of my friends here. I considered going home to join the military finally, living here in a tent for the rest of the season, hitchiking to another part of Alaska or anywhere I could find a job, and a host of other options before everything stabilized again.

Its been about a week since I got fired now. I have a new job working for the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad in their giftshop/cafe thing. I HATE retail jobs with a passion. I'm just not that kind of gay at all. I've probably never mentioned on here that I once had a job at Express for about two weeks before I decided to never go back. I hate folding crap and I just don't care about style or cut or size. I have to work very hard to manufacture a sense of urgency in a place that sells clothes or gifts or anything like that because I could just care less about any of it.

But, its a job. And I guess I can handle it until the end of September... and the people I work with and the management seem to be nice. I guess its sort of the opposite of Holland America: Crappy job, decent management. Someday I'd like to have both. And while I'm dreaming of ideal job opportunities, I'd like to do something I care about. And something that allows to me to learn about things that I care about.

And thats all for this installment. Here are some more pictures.

YAKATANIA POINT
CRUISE SHIP ON THE RAILROAD DOCK
ICE FLOATING DOWN THE YUKON RIVER NEAR DAWSON CITY
DAWSON CITY
DIAMOND TOOTH GIRTIES IN DAWSON

SKAGWAY ON MY FIRST OR SECOND DAY? I LIVE IN THE YELLOW/BROWN BUILDING BEHING THE WHITE ONE ON THE LEFT
MORE OF SKAGWAY AS IT LOOKED WHEN I FIRST ARRIVED

DRIVING THE BUS FROM PROVO TO SEATTLE