part 2: Seasonal job nightmare
Man oh man. Where to begin lol. This is the Denali Bluffs Hotel and Grande Denali Hotel btw. JL Hospitality Group.
Shortly after part 1 we go to orientation. After orientation which was ran by Julie from HR she says we can approach and ask questions. I approach her and ask very calmly and politely without challenging any of her answers, "What if the water issue goes on for weeks" to which she cut me off and said it won't. I then ask "is this unprecedented that yall have all of the employees fly out and there's no water when we all arrive" and she avoids the question to tell me how tough this past winter was for the area. My girlfriend and I are leaving training two days later and the general manager Chris who was off property for several days with no explanation other than he just did not want to be there while there is no water comes running after us and makes us go to his office. He says that Julie from HR says there were some "challenges". We follow him to his office. He again says that he heard there some "challenges with you all as far as walking to the showers and we don't want you walking there" and how could he help. I look at my girlfriend and she looks back at me and we are extremely confused.
I say "I never spoke to Julie about walking to the showers though." He then says Julie isn't the one who told him this despite already mentioning her name. It was in this immediate moment that I realize he or Julie saw part 1 of the reddit post. We just keep telling him we never complained to any employees about the situation which was literally true and that we have been walking up the road to the showers every day with no problem. He never admits he saw reddit post but you could just tell he did because in the original post I mentioned how the walk was unsafe and then he brings that up again when he calls us into his office. I was with my girl the whole time there so I know neither of us complained. 16k people had seen the post at this point. It was not far fetched that he or HR was one of them. We return to housing that day and there was now a 2nd porta potty. I had mentioned in original post how there was only one and that that was not adequate and up to OSHA standards for the amount of employees we had. More evidence they saw it.
This same day the GM sends a pathetic passive aggressive company wide email about how even though we all "chose this lifestyle" we clearly weren't ready for the challenges that come with it "no matter what has been communicated or how limited of a duration it may be". Keep in mind nothing was communicated up to this point and there was no timeframe for when water would be turned on. We are all accustomed to the lifestyle of remote, seasonal work and yet not a single employee there could say we had ever been asked to go without water in housing that we were paying for.
Somewhere throughout all this, can't remember exactly when, a manger tells us that the employees that live at the small employee housing with the showers were complaining that they didn't have enough water and that we were only to go there once every 3 days to shower all while being asked to report to work every single day. We did not have a scheduled day off until May 12th.
A day or two goes by and one of us really had to urinate in the middle of the cold night so we urinate in the toilet in our room. I had done a google search beforehand to see how much water I had to fill the tank with to flush it. We were NEVER told sewage was off. Just that water was off and that water would be turned on any day now. Turns out sewage was off so we could not flush the urine.
An email is sent out that May 10th they will be turning water on. May 11th, my GF and I are removed from training and made to go into a room with several managers and Julie from HR is irate and red in the face. She says "why do yall think I would I be pulling you aside" and I said I have no idea because at the time I had not even remembered the urine in the toilet. She says that they were in our unit and found urine in the toilet and that we aren't fired but that we are being evicted from housing. My GF asks where else could we stay in order to keep working and HR says that's up to us to figure out and that we have 2 hours to pack all our things and clean our bathroom or we get charged 500 dollars in cleaning fees. Keep in mind the shower was already filthy and full of mud when we got there. They were essentially firing us because there was no way to secure housing in two hours. They also kept telling us we had to leave the hotel where the training was taking place and I kept asking why if we were still employees and she just kept saying "because you have to be gone in two hours" and I said "from housing, but we are still employees correct" and she just kept saying we weren't fired but we had to leave the hotel immediately and leave housing by 2 so we go back.
They say they will only drive us 10 minutes to Healy but not the 2 hours to Fairbanks but Fairbanks is where we needed to go to be able to leave Alaska. They said they will "let us" use a company promo code for the train on the 13th and that we could take the train to Fairbanks but that we had to find somewhere to stay for two days. We book a 2 night hotel stay and are told to wait outside for the GM. We end up waiting 45 minutes in the cold while they keep telling us the GM who lives on site literally a couple of minutes away is on his way. During this wait a woman who says she is the assistant GM sees us with all our luggage and keeps interrogating us about why we were leaving. I told her what is done is done and that we just want to leave and to leave us alone. I then take a phone call and walk away and my GF tells her everything.
This assistant GM tells us she knows first hand that a lot of employees have been using the toilets in their room and that she can't understand why only we were removed. GM finally shows up and takes us to our hotel. He then fucks up and asks "are you taking the shuttle tomorrow?" and we are beyond confused and he says "why would you take the train to Fairbanks in two days when the shuttle is 815 tomorrow". There was a FREE COMPANY SHUTTLE SCHEDULED FOR FAIRBANKS THE WHOLE TIME AND THE HR LADY WAS TRYING TO MAKE US PAY FOR TWO TRAIN TICKETS ANYWAY. We agree to take the shuttle but have already booked a 2 night hotel stay and they refused to refund our 2nd night so we were still out an extra $200 for zero reason other than Julie is vile.