Understaffing at Cedar Point hits nightmarish levels...

Pete said:
they have a responsibility to the share holders to maximize profits

There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer.

Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management

The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value

Across his years of work, Steve Denning presents a decent case that management's derailment in the 70s to maximize profit and thus shareholder value is a leading cause of the failure of a number of larger firms. He doesn't say firms shouldn't deliver value to the shareholders, but rather that delivering a top notch customer experience will deliver better long-term results.

Many of Ouimet's moves have been in this long-term arena, like the Breakers and Express refurb and expansion.It doesn't make good business sense to undercut all of that long-term goodwill with poor staffing and customer service on the busiest days of the year, when the most # of people will witness it and then report it all over social media.

When I was in traditional customer service and retail/fast food management, we had a few figures to work from. Less than 5% of dissatisfied customers will tell you they got bad service, but 100% will tell everyone else they know. It was also 10 times harder to win back a disappointed customer than to get a new customer.

I suspect social media has changed some of that ratio, but the potential reach of unhappy customers has changed from a couple dozen at worst to the potential for something going viral and being seen by the thousands and being picked up by a media outlet that turns it into millions.

My son works at CP, and he received an email from his manager stating that they expect crowds this Saturday to be as busy as the were last Saturday. They also said to prepare to spend an hour on the causeway, so to leave early so they wont be late for work.

On a side note, for the weekend of 10/6-10/8 he was paid $2.00 extra an hour and this weekend they are paying $1.00 extra per hour. This is on top of this hourly rate which is already $1.00 more than what he made during the regular season as they get more for working Halloweekends.

That doesn't make any sense! I have it on good authority that they cannot predict crowd levels, nor is there a staffing issue that needs to be addressed!

But seriously, glad to see they're finally addressing the issue. Hopefully that continues into the future.

I don't see how this addresses the issue. What is gained by paying the current workers an extra dollar or two an hour? That won't fill any more boarded up food stand windows or open any of the unstaffed rides. They need more workers. Having the same number as last week will not do any good.

It reduces turnover and/or no-shows, presumably. It doesn't solve the issue, but it demonstrates that they're finally doing something to work toward solving it.

Joe E said:

To me the highlight of the rides staffing issue was despite TTD, Power Tower, windseeker, sky ride , and good chunk of kids area rides not opened, there was still not 4 extra people available to get Blue on Gemini going. That's an easy 1000 PPH capacity with not that much more staffing. Magnum was running only 2 trains all day, which I suspect was due to a skeleton crew and wanting to avoid a train slamming into safeties virtually every time.

Hey Joe - haven't seen you or seen you post in ages! Hope you are doing well.

This might be the IROC nonsense coming into play at Magnum. When I worked there, we'd open with three trains every day and only go down to two if we were consistently sending 12 or more empty seats per train. If you were one person short and had four checking restraints instead of five, oh well still three trains. If one person had to check the whole unload side while the other dealt with special access or lost and found or ran to the lift to deal with a guest who took off their belt, no big deal. Still got it done and usually hit interval too. Now it seems like with three trains they won't even start a rotation by temporarily removing the fifth person on the train to push the rotation around. They'll start it from the crowd position and leave that spot unmanned for 5-10 minutes and create a clusterf^%* in the station. Given the crowd, it's really inexcusable to not have a ride like that running at full capacity. They could have combined the Fastlane/crowd person into one and put them at the bottom of the stairs to police the merge point and maybe stop the line for a bit here or there so the station wasn't packed.

It's one thing not to hit interval every single time with a short crew, but one person less shouldn't be the difference to cause the ride to set up often. You have like 30 seconds beyond interval point before it reaches the setup point. It's like an eternity in most situations. When they had those bins up therefor a couple yeas, it was bad, but without them, not setting up the ride should not be an issue. They probably set up more in a few hours these days than we did in a week and it's mostly because 1) they can't skip someone slow and come back to them 2) one person can not help another person that's stuck by finishing their unchecked seats 3) they always walk back and double check and then sometimes walk by a third time to get into some wacky clearing position 4) they don't clear simply front to back, no one clears until everyone is clear and then they clear around starting at unload 2 and going all the way around to dispatch 5) they don't have to make the run under the lift to release the safeties when they do set up so it's not as big of a deal to them.

Get someone with some operations sense to give IROC the boot. CP set the standard for decades in safe and efficient ride operations. Now they're taking training from people with Six Flags and small park heritage that have no clue what they're doing.

EBJD1041 said: They also said to prepare to spend an hour on the causeway, so to leave early so they wont be late for work.

Time is money and in this case much more due to an hour of burning fuel idling on that causeway. This kind eats into the the extra buck and hour they are offering. Compensating these low wage employees for that hour would be the right thing to do.

Can you imagine if they had opened Steel Vengeance for Halloweekends as some dreamed/wished?

I made the tongue firmly in cheek joke a while back about an off-point parking garage for next year in response to complaints about how long it took to get out at the end of a busy day or when a storm rolled in, but seriously, what course of action could they take to get employees on site faster? They don't have a backstage, employee only access route.

In the past they have offered college kids free housing at commons in addition to the free shuttle from their campus for Halloweekends work. Are there employees riding a shuttle in from commons this year? Are they all doing pre-open to post-close, or else they are also stuck in this backup, with CP paying a driver and burning gas as well.

When I left last Saturday afternoon, I saw a couple of cars pulled over onto the shoulder, hoods popped in what appeared to be an overheating situation. I'm sure with that kind of crowds you probably get someone running out of gas, and a couple fender-benders are too be expected.

Is CP having to allocate extra staff to causeway issues because of the backups?

Cargo Shorts said:

EBJD1041 said: They also said to prepare to spend an hour on the causeway, so to leave early so they wont be late for work.

Time is money and in this case much more due to an hour of burning fuel idling on that causeway. This kind eats into the the extra buck and hour they are offering. Compensating these low wage employees for that hour would be the right thing to do.

Wow, it would be great if my employer gave me money for sitting in a traffic jam on my way to work. Com'on man, that's ridiculous, everyone in the working world has to leave for work early enough to get there on time taking traffic and other factors into account. Does Walmart pay their employees extra if they sit in a traffic jam on the way to work?

I've been following this conversation. My take away? CP is caught between an extremely busy time of year and a time of year when it's hard to find staffing.

Agree with Pete: employees need to allow sufficient time to arrive at work. I don't get paid to spend two hours on CTA buses and trains, I'm expected to show up on time.

I also agree, but I would be less inclined to take a job at $8/hour that was an hour away. So it's not so much that employees should be paid for travel time, but that their pay should be high enough to make such a commute worthwhile.

djDaemon said:

It reduces turnover and/or no-shows, presumably. It doesn't solve the issue, but it demonstrates that they're finally doing something to work toward solving it.

I would be inclined to think that there will be more no-shows this weekend. If last weekend was as bad for the workers as some posters have noted, then why would I come to work this weekend when the park has told me to expect the same crowd level as last week and they are cutting my pay by $1/hr compared to last weekend.

According to EBJD's post, they weren't paid extra (beyond the additional $1 for all hours during HW) last weekend. They were paid an additional $2/hr 10/6-10/8, no additional money last weekend (again, beyond the aforementioned $1/hr bump), and will get an additional $1/hr this weekend.

Perhaps not paying any additional rate hurt them last weekend, so they're reinstating the additional pay.

An extra $30-40 bucks wouldn't get me to come back for the weekend. Another $100, that might do it.

You're right dj - I didn't catch the date of the $2 bonus. I thought it was for this past weekend.

I'll add in on the Magnum staffing issue that Joe and Matt mentioned. Not entirely sure what the staffing requirements were when you worked there Matt but I can say for sure that nowadays, the difference in Magnum staffed to run 3 trains versus 2 trains is a single person. That person being the load 2 position. Without them, load 1 and load 3 each check 3 cars. I guess the feel the third load person is required to run 3 trains. Even though the unload side only has 2 hosts regardless of number of trains. If you didn't have the IROC procedures or roof columns to get in the way, it could be done pretty easily.

To me, Magnum is run pretty wacky operationally. With the addition of IROC and the updated controls, it's far more difficult now to meet dispatch intervals and operate efficiency with minimal setups. I even question the seat assignments of the load hosts. One is checking two cars, the second is checking three cars, and the third is checking one car. The thought is that since the load 3 host is also responsible for closing the gates, they don't have proper time to check more cars. I can say from experience that is not the case. Expecially since with IROC, you aren't supposed to check seats until gates are closed. So the load 3 host always ends up getting back to there position early and waiting around for the others. And you can't go help the other hosts after you're done, that's a no-no as well.

It's a shame that one the busiest days of the year, Magnum is stuck with 2 trains and 1-1/2+ hr waits because they don't have that one additional person. The best part is then that the extra person usually becomes available in the evening around 8 when breaks around the park is done, so Magnum can increase to 3 trains. Expect by that time the line has diminished and the third train is not necessary.

Back to staffing in general, the extra $1 or $2 bonus is nice and all during those 7 or so weekends, but I doubt it's really doing much. If you want to quit during any weekend, the extra $40 or $50 isn't going to stop anyone. Back when the $1 bonus was there, you had somewhere around $1500 earned by that point that definitely would make you think twice about bailing at the end. You'd deal with those weekends because you had built up all that extra cash and didn't want to lose it. Starting a weekend bonus program at the start of weekends I think does very little. It's too late by that point. You aren't gaining enough financially to sway your decision.

I know i'm just repeating what's already been said but I'm astounded this problem has been going on for so long and they haven't successfully tackled or really made much of a dent with a solution. This was a problem years and years ago when I worked there. And they've just seem to let it get worse.

It's obviously mostly a financial issue but it may need more than that. They've got to get creative. Society and culture has changed. The labor pool has changed in terms of what people are willing and not willing to do and for how long. People want more flexibility. The park (and company on the larger scale) has not adapted to that at all. And if they're going to solve the issue they're going to have to adapt to the times and get more creative. Simple as that.

djDaemon said:

That doesn't make any sense! I have it on good authority that they cannot predict crowd levels, nor is there a staffing issue that needs to be addressed!

But seriously, glad to see they're finally addressing the issue. Hopefully that continues into the future.

You should be a comedian. This is purely reactionary. They paid extra for Columbus Day weekend because predictions and models and history all said that would be the busiest weekend. That model didn't work. Those trends say the weekend following will see lower crowds. That model didn't work. They are reacting by offering a bonus this weekend in hopes that less people will be no-shows regardless of crowd size. Even if crowds are only 75% of last weekend, that's still very busy. And as was repeated many times, Saturdays are busy this time of year. If employee satisfaction and retention is low, the same types of "nightmarish" situation will keep happening.

And this is proven by the fact that the trend this year did not match the forecast trends of previous years.

Mr. Potato said:

To me, Magnum is run pretty wacky operationally. With the addition of IROC and the updated controls, it's far more difficult now to meet dispatch intervals and operate efficiency with minimal setups. I even question the seat assignments of the load hosts. One is checking two cars, the second is checking three cars, and the third is checking one car. The thought is that since the load 3 host is also responsible for closing the gates, they don't have proper time to check more cars. I can say from experience that is not the case. Expecially since with IROC, you aren't supposed to check seats until gates are closed. So the load 3 host always ends up getting back to there position early and waiting around for the others. And you can't go help the other hosts after you're done, that's a no-no as well.

You are right, they have definitely made it that way little by little over the years and especially since IROC. Before the platform gates were added in 2002, full staffing was to have two on load side and three on unload. The extra person on unload could deal with special access or parent swaps, etc. In that day, they didn't have the wireless mics so the spieler was tethered by a cord to the control booth and only checked car 1. Then the next person 2 and 3 and then the last one 4, 5, and 6. If someone came up the exit, the person left did 2 through 6. No big deal in all honestly as long as you're not checking the bars, walking back to check again, and then walking to the back to clear as they do now. Grrr it's actually idiotic to watch. In a way, If you discount all the parent swaps, special access, etc that comes up on unload, it does make sense to have an extra person on load if available because they are second in and last to sit down so they can't start quite as quickly, but in reality, it's not vitally necessary and the ride can run just fine with two people on each side. It seems to me that they're not allowed to run three trains being one person short - especially since they start the rotations from crowd control these days.

I wonder how much money the park sets aside for labor law violations. If The post about the irate mother on facebook seems indicative of common occurrences it seems that could add up quickly.

I doubt that mother is stopping at a facebook post.

^^Rotation from crowd has happened pre IROC and makes the most sense.

For example with Corkscrew:

Someone from Controls or Unload leaves to go to Super. The person at Super rotates to either FL+ or Crowd. If FL+, they rotate up to crowd (IIRC). Crowd then rotates to load, load rotates to unload. It's a way of keeping operations efficient and moving, plus also puts rested employees back in rotation.