Understaffing at Cedar Point hits nightmarish levels...

CP Maverick said:

I'm curious how many suggestions/criticisms in this thread are being made by people who operate a business that relies on low wage seasonal help. Payroll is the single most variable and controllable expense. Suggestions here have pointed in the direction of increasing payroll by 50%-100% in order to adequately operate the park.

I'm one. We hire hundreds of seasonal summer staff and its been a tough go of finding quality summer college age help over last few years. LIfeguards have been our biggest challenge. We have tried bumping up salaries but have had little success with that.

Assuming Cedar Point continues with its first weekend in May opening schedule with limited staff, they should operating following the Friday night Halloweekends philosophy. Just have select rides and food options available and promote it as such.

That's why just raising the wage to $18 per hour won't solve the problem. They would just get a marginal increase in workers with much higher payroll expenses.

Dvo said:

^I can attest to that. Our group went on quite the walk trying to find an open ice cream stand. For the record, we never found one.

Yet both yogurt places were open. Actually got some and it was apparent I was the only customer for a while.

Both Freestyle locations adjacent to them were closed , but the only 2 other freestyles opened has massive lines. I realize most people had already paid for daily drink deal or season drink plan and was probably the reason they don't care about staffing those vs other locations. Still a heads scratcher why 1 ice cream place wasn't open in lieu of Yogurt.

Becuase that yogurt place probably has a significantly higher margin. With an ice cream cone you pretty much know what you are getting and how much it costs. Try getting the same amount of food at that yogurt place and that bowl will cost you $15. Made that mistake with my boys 2 years ago and will never go back.

CP Maverick- I do. Sort of.
It’s a much smaller scale, but we vend and exhibit at the Ohio State Fair. I’m not in charge of hiring for our operation, but I work with the occasionals and do some training. The total gig can go as long as 15 days total. We pay over minimum wage in an effort to attract and keep quality workers. Not much, but more than the t shirt trailer up the midway pays.
And every year it’s the same. We have a small list of “regulars”, high school and college kids who come back every year. And over the years that list can grow or shrink. After all, everyone grows up eventually, right? Then after that there’s the annual search for newbies. We take recommendations, cousins, neighbors, and interview walk ins. We also have a few adults who maybe are teachers looking for some extra coin. We try to nail down the list early in the season, like around now, but things can change between now and mid July .
We also lose a few after the fair opens. We get those that decide it’s not their thing or have poor (undeveloped) work ethics. Some get fired. Some walk in and announce that they’re going need this/that/many days off. In the end it works out, I suppose, and everyone leaves exhausted and ready to go back to their real lives and school work.

As for the business end of it, our payroll is the biggest expense without a doubt. It’s the thing that kills us every year. Our product prices can be set to turn a reasonable profit, but add in the Fair’s take, taxes, equipment, overhead, off season storage, and random overhead items and it’s tough. You hate to run short, and our manager tries to give everyone as many hours as she can. But on slow or rainy days (remember, the outdoor amusement industry is solely dependent on weather) she takes volunteers to be cut. Usually she has takers. Some years the fair does better than others. If it’s ghastly hot or rains everyday or if there’s a midway accident it can impact attendance.
The good news is that we are a commodity group and one of our main goals is to educate and promote the product to the public. It’s nice to make a profit, but if we break even it’s almost ok. If we lose our shirts we get a good talking to and risk losing our jobs for the future. That rarely happens though, somehow it works out. The numbers at the end of the run are always interesting and when I see what’s spent on payroll (including mine) my eyes fly wide open and my wig blows off.

I don’t know if that helps or how many parallels you can draw to CP’s dilemma. I’d be in favor of raising wages to improve service, but CP is naturally profit driven and if for some reason there’s a bad season they could be upside down. (Well,.... not really, right?) I’d hate to see that.

The problem is not wages or hours. The problem is the same one faced by every factory and employer in the country: drugs! The applicants are there but the prospective employees that cannot pass a drug test is staggering. And it is getting worse. Until we solve the drug problem we will not solve the shortage of qualified employees.

^Are you basing that on anything, or just generalizing? I do agree that drugs are becoming more prevalent, but to say that's "the" problem is a pretty strong statement. It's more a confluence of things... unappealing wages, unavailability of a local workforce this early in the summer (likely the biggest), and some other factors... not excluding drugs.

Sounds like someone is smoking something.

The bigger problem is lack of applicants. The few that do apply, probably don't want to work 60 hours a week.

Does CP really give Whiz Quizes? From the stories I have heard they probably shouldn’t once they move into housing. :D

^^ The time commitment is probably the biggest issue with finding applicants. That kind of time commitment to a summer job is not feasible in the eyes of many college students these days. Also, if they were able to relax the working schedule from 8-4, 10-6, 4-close (trying to remember my KI times from 15 years ago) they could probably get more local people to work there. A server at Outback on 250 might be able to take a 8-12 or 2 schedule and still be able to work the dinner crowd in the evening.

Also, not solely relying on either the College, right out of college, or international crowd would help them find more employees. They aren't directly within a major Metropolitan area so don't have that overall workforce to delve into (like they do in Charlotte, or Cinicnnati, or just about every other park in the chain), so they need to get more creative.

If "Whiz Quiz" means a standard urine drug screening, yes they do. I don't care what people do on their own time to be honest. From what I remember, workers who work in the food department are not drug tested. I don't know about the games department. Obviously they are going to test ride operators. Being honest, I feel like Cedar Point has lost a lot of good workers these past few years due to many underlying issues. I strongly believe once mid June hits, the park will be fully staffed which will in turn allow more returning employees in the future. The reason why I feel like this season will have more staffing is due to the constant advertising of employment on social media and the positive feedback it received. 2017 was a bad season for staffing. In July of last year, CPShores was so understaffed that they closed down Muffleheads and only had 2 bartenders at Schooners. Like I have said many times and I will say again until something is done, the employee housing needs updated ASAP if they want to retain a lot of these employees.

Better housing would definitely help. That's a big part of the reason I never bothered to work there when I was younger, as exciting as the park would have been for me.

My statement on drug testing is not generalizing or smoking something. It is from experience and conversations with people in human resources including folks from CP.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2016/12/13/health/drug-use-teens/index.html

Seems to be down, more than Steel Vengeance.

I remember (a few years ago now) attending CP for several days during the first week. I wasn’t surprised to see a lot of locations closed and the park was slow anyway, but I mentioned it to a nice young lady who worked at Donut Time. She said “we don’t have a lot of employees in yet and it would be nice if we could keep the ones who did show up” I asked what that meant and she said the drug use in the dorm was so bad they were hauling them outta there on a nightly basis.
A funny thing too was some of these people thought it was ok to invite their entire family or a bunch of friends to stay with them when they visited the park! Once discovered they were out of there, too. I’d think there would be some kind of ID checkpoint but somehow they got around that.

When I lived in Bayside back in '14, they were hauling the dopers out all the time. Wasn't unusual to head to work with some people cuffed and stuffed at the entrance with their bags of "stuff" on the roof of the cruiser.

I was Whizz-quizzed 3 times least season, and once already this season...

At least they stay on top of it.

RCMAC said:

XS NightClub said:
If your looking at that shortsighted than yeah, the extra money made is worth it.

If you look at it long term what damage are you doing to your brand, before Cedar Point is seen as just like a six flags park?

By whom? Enthusiasts?

Simply go to the non-enthusiast posts by people on facebook, it’s a hell of a lot worse than it is on Pointbuzz.
Also, I notice that CP has disabled the facebook reviews and star rating section on their page.

1000 years of force said:

When I lived in Bayside back in '14, they were hauling the dopers out all the time. Wasn't unusual to head to work with some people cuffed and stuffed at the entrance with their bags of "stuff" on the roof of the cruiser.

Drugs have always been a problem in Bayside.

^ YES! As soon as I saw Bayside, I immediately thought of Jesse and how "excited" she was.