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~Lee~
Group Sales ATL '01
Group Sales TL '02
Park Admissions Supervisor '03
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"The greatest leaders don't take credit for their actions; they don't have to."
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--Megan, Foods Unit 33.
Zones 5/6/7 Forever!!
http://www.angelfire.com/oh4/baseto61/
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/cppride
Back in the day the park had 23 units. The areas were roughly broken in half. There were about 15 to 20 carts all attached to a permenant stand. Each half had two "Section" Managers. One opened and one closed.
On the day that one of the four managers were off (which was four days a week, one for each manager) One manager opened and two closed. It worked well. Also there was one Section for the three sit down restaurants.
Anyway, over the years things changed slightly. By SFO there were less in house units and more out sourced. But the basic chain of command stayed about the same until 2000.
Midway Asst Manager (full time)(1)
Section Manager(5)
Unit Manager(1 per unit, or 1 per 2 small units)
Asst. Unit Manager.(usually one per unit)
Team Member
The system was very bottom heavy and relied on qualified management who could think on their own. Training was key. And the Units ran on commission. On the other hand WOA has become VERY top heavy.
Busch Entertainment Corp. (BEC) is the company and/or wing of AB that runs the parks. When the two parks merged, the director of the SFO "retail" (foods, games, gifts) dept was shipped off to Belguim. At that point the "Reatil" dept broke into two (foods dept and retail {games/gifts} depts). Both departments were headed by the SWO counterparts.
So here you are with a SF foods dept with a SWO director, bound and determined to run the dept as a BEC property with SF funding.
At any rate the org chart for that year was roughly:
2 full time Supervisors
4 seasonal Supervisors
1 or 2 Team Leads (formerly Unit Managers) depending on unit size.
3 to 4 Asst Team Leads, again depending on size
ALL for the former GLP side!
Now all of the jargen change was an adoption of SF symantics. But the dramatic increase of management on the midway was clearly a tool of the BEC model/mindset. Manager for making burgers, manager for oil changing, manager for counter cleaning. Now i exagerate a bit, but the horrible reality was that SFO was recovering from a major lack of quality talent with the potential of management. The prosperity of the 90's hit the park hard because all of the little kiddies in Solon and Aurora and Twinsburg (all traditional employee pools) didn't have to work because mommy and daddy were rolling in it. Plus new growth in the area allowed for easier more competitve job opportunities. Anyway, the park was forced to promote people who weren't ready or just plan didn't have it (another downfall of BEC management seems to be a complete lack of tallent evaluation, but maybe that was just Ohio). At the same time higher seasonals were dropping like flies because long standing bonds to bosses and the park were being shattered. It was bloddy to say the least.
I don't know were i am going with this but i think it's interesting. SF would love nothing more than to have one person manage the whole thing, but that isn't feasable. But as more and more full timers leave, they are not replacing them. I would think that ideally the park FS would run with about 8 or 9 full time staff, but 7 would do. director, 2 managers, two midway Ast managers, asst manager recieveing/warehouse, catering. Hr type would be good, but not necessary. 2001 WOA had 9. Now i believe they have 6. But i could be wrong. No matter how hard they tried SF wasn't convinced that more cheifs was better. Now the problem is better cheifs.
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