What are they thinking ?!

So what happens if Cedar Point simply made a mistake and is actually planning on paying minimum wage? It'll be pretty anticlimactic won't it?

^Because Cedar Point didn't make a mistake, Randall. People in this thread already said they did not, so thats that.

*Sarcasm was used in the making of this post

JuggaLotus said:
A contract is a contract, regardless of whether it calls itself a contract or not.

Yeah, sorry, I forgot the winky to indicate sarcasm. I was poking fun of their wording. But yes, you are correct, the employment agreements are essentially employee contracts.

Its not all about the money working in an amusement park people.... I have a friend that works at Kennywood that sent this to me, this is what it should be to work in an amusment park, not the money.... enjoy....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xykI3kkM9l4

I don't think anyone here is saying its all about the money. Most are saying its about the friends and experience.

MeanStreak'07 said:

Exactly, there are better ways. But, Dickie K sure as hell doesnt want his staff to know he cares. Everytime I walk past the man, I never even get a "hi" or anything. No common courtesy at all. Not to mention, when you walk by his office, he's asleep most of the time. Chief, I may get disappointed and I may get punished...but, it'll all be worth it I guess...for me, anyway. Bleeding blue and red..yeah, ive done that for 3 seasons now...along with sweat, tears, bruises...you name it...and, im tired. A summer job shouldnt be like this. I guess it took me this long to fnally figure out. Theres no way I can take up for that place in the least.

Well..... Ouch ... Thats a good way to think of your employer.

A New Year and new Drama. As of right now I don't beleve we will get paid under minimum wage untill I see proof from the press saying otherwise. I did research tonight on this and the thing with 1400s, and came up with nothing. I've stayed in both Commons and Cedars and thought they were not bad. (I stayed in a college dorm worse then commons in High School).

I simply love my job at the park, I love all the people I've worked with and I thought it is a rewarding expierience. I came in everyday did my job and got the Cornerstone Pin 2 years in a row. I was talking to a couple familys who came from Chicagho and absolutly loved the park. To me, hearing that the guests enjoyed there day was awsome.

Sadly this is still my first job, I've applied for winter jobs and did not get any, I'm glad I know at least I will have a job every summer. I live in an area where jobs are leaving faster than trains from Dragsters launch track, so I am getting beat out in jobs by 40 year olds who have degrees or were making $15 hr.

There have been a slew of posts and links, so I apologize if someone has already posted the one below. I came across it while googling for some additional info. One of the purposes of the hosting site (ccusa.com) appears to be to provide employers with international staff. The info on the page referenced by the link looks rather complete, leading me to believe that it might have been provided by CP's HR department. Note that the wage for most positions is $7.30/hr. If accurate, then the CP web site was in error and we might indeed have an anticlimactic ending to the discussion. Or... maybe it's a conspiracy and they only plan on paying internationals the Ohio minimum wage! ;-)

http://footprints.ccusa.com/we/EmployerDirectoryDetail.aspx?ClientProgramID=982d70d9-f9d3-4d64-ad44-d8967aab21cf

Yep looks like that link just about sums it up. It has specific wage and the bonus amounts listed for each position.

Well that was fun whie it lasted.

Well it will be nice (albeit embarassing) if this all amounted to a "mistake". But, a mistake on the CP website could have been fixed with a few keystrokes. The fact that they took the old/incorrect info down but didn't just make the change to $7.30 suggests there was more to this than just a "mistake".

Chief, the only thing I can think of is that they haven't settled on a new wage yet. Now, whether someone thought they could get away with 7.00 and hoped no one would notice, I don't know. But whether that was in error or not, maybe they are discussing going to 7.50 or more so it is not just a change to minimum wage.

I can't believe they don't/didn't have the wage established. They probably had employment drives over the holidays in Sandusky and the college recruiters...if they aren't already out...will be any day now. I'm sure they had to have had printed materials ready to go that lists, among other things, the wage.

The information that Tom T linked to is pretty specific.

I'm not saying it is impossible that it was all just a big mistake. But, if that is all it was, why not a quick fix to a website? I can go into my website and fix anything in a matter of a few minutes.

Is Dick even aware that a website exists?

I agree though, it is rather fishy that the wage stayed up there as long as it did and then was just removed, not edited. If they had done this a day or two after the page was posted, it would have made sense, but it was what, a week later?

Chief Wahoo said:
I'm not saying it is impossible that it was all just a big mistake. But, if that is all it was, why not a quick fix to a website? I can go into my website and fix anything in a matter of a few minutes.

That's a risky way to deploy anything though. The ideal way to deploy a site, especially when it has a lot of moving parts, is to deploy it first to a staging site as one atomic unit, make sure it all works, then deploy it again to production, again, as one atomic unit. That minimizes risks and unknowns. Remember, for every page on that site, there are likely things going on in the background in terms of metrics, user tracking and what not.

Exactly. And, anytime folks suggest that the park doesn't know what is happening in the online community Jeff (and others) are quick to point out that they pay more attention than you might imagine. That tells me that someone noticed the chatter...sent it up the flagpole...and waited for the response to come down.

"Empowerment" is not a familiar word within Cedar Point so it would not surprise me if Mr. Kinzel is heavily involved in this...whether or not he is aware the website exists. :-)

Apparently the response was, "take it off the website and we'll get back to you on what you are supposed to do." In the meantime, I'd be curious to know how the question is being answered both in HR and on the road. Because, most every prospective employee's first question is going to be, "what does the job pay?"

The likely answer; "we are working on finalizing the pay/benefits program for the '09 season."

Jeff, respecfully, it sounds like you are complicating a rather quick "edit" if that is all that it was.

How hard would it be to change the "0" to a "3"? It said $7.00/hour. It should have read $7.30 an hour. They couldn't do that in less than 10 minutes?

And, if it IS as hard as you imply....why wasn't the error caught until it was already live?

While making a change, I'm sure, is a bit more complicated than opening the page in MS Front Page and clicking "Save", I can't believe there would be that much functional testing for a simple text change on 1 page. I do see them using the typical atomic deploy though (that makes sense and is the procedure for doing it).

Either way, the fact that when the change was made it was to remove the number rather than correct it, is a bit questionable. Too bad Tony can't give us any insight on this. ;)

It's not an issue of easy or hard. It's an issue of risk. I go through that process even for this site. It gets even more complicated in distributed environments when you have more than one server behind a load balancer.

I still can't believe that the change could be anything more than opening up some program, changing the rate, and clicking publish.