Higher Up in the Park’s Upper Management

by Charissa Nasrallah

Every Thursday, employees were required to come into work a half hour early for a staff meeting where everyone was required to watch a short film on how to be safe at work, most of them pointless to the people who were ordered to watch them.  Once, after viewing a film on the proper way to lift heavy objects to avoid back complications, I lifted a bag of feed using the instructed technique and blew both my knees out.  After that, I came to the conclusion that the people who were making these safety films were probably not people who had done any serious amount of manual labor.

Sometimes I wished instead of watching the same safety films over and over, more people could speak at these meetings, instead of having to sit there like a mindless drone and be told what to do.  It disturbed me the common workers had such little say in what went on in terms of future goals and projects at the park.  It also disturbed me there were supervisors at the park who did not listen to what their staff had to say, especially since some workers at the park had experience and education in their fields than their supervisors.  It seemed to me it might be in the best interest of the park to restructure the chain of command, and make it into more of a web of people. 

The majority of the major decisions about how to run the park were generally made by people who did not work there, and that never made much sense to me.  The Kyowa people had known the importance of consulting a council when making important decisions.  The people higher up in the park’s upper management were also not as skilled as the Kyowa when it came to distributing their resources amongst the members of the tribe.  Recently all the superintendents of the South Carolina State Parks were granted a $10,000 increase in pay for the following year.  Since there was no way that any superintendent could work harder than all the common workers who were all repeatedly denied any substantial raises, I did not agree with this.

It is probable accurate to say I did not agree with several things the people higher up in upper management did during the time I was involved with the park.  I knew I didn’t have all the answers on how to run the park, but neither did they, and the most disturbing thing was they rarely fixed their mistakes.  Last year they had decided to do away with all the trashcans in the South Carolina State Parks, promoting their pack it in - pack it out project.  This project was originally designed to help reduce the raccoon population feeding on the trash, but it backfired because it resulted in increased amounts of litter left lying around.  Still it continued.

When the people higher up in the parks upper management allowed my supervisors dismiss me after reporting the violation, I was determined to not  let them get away with it.  If I had, it have might prevented other common workers from coming forward in the future with any other reasonable concerns.  I may not have had the political connections or influences that the people higher up in the park’s upper management may have had, but I did have the truth on my side.  I also had the benefit of common worker comrades who kept me well informed about what was happening at the park.  

Once the people higher up in the park’s upper management got word that the US Department of Labor had been contacted concerning my dismissal, all of the park’s departments straightened up their acts to pass inspection.  The ZepLemonex disinfectant was still being used to clean the cages in the Animal Forest, but now all the employees were required to wear gloves and a mask when handling it.  The masks were the type exterminators wear when going in to fog a house, and there were a few employees who still smoked their morning cigarettes while wearing them.  The people higher up in upper management instructed the Animal Forest employees to use a big machine to suck up the disinfectant so it would no longer get flushed into the marsh.  Since the procedure was so difficult, employees were only required to clean the cages once a week once again.

It was great being able to receive first hand information about what was happening concerning affairs at the park, until I received word that a good friend of mine was fired for rumored reasons that he had been leaking information to me.  This friend was probably nothing other than a simple “common worker,” like myself, in the eyes of upper management, but he had known more about the history of the park than anyone currently working there, and he had worked at there for over eight years.  He had been fired by a new person  in upper management that was hired to be the head of the Education Department at the park.  The head of the Education Department had disagreed with him taking two days off to be an extra character in the historical movie “The Patriot.”

I was extremely angered when I got word of my friend’s termination from the park.  I knew he had many good friends there that did not see him go and I couldn’t help but feel responsible.  I vowed I’d do all that I could to prevent the people higher up in the park’s upper management from treating the common workers like dispensable objects.  Sometimes I entertained myself by imagining the spirits of the dead alligator or the Kyowa Indians helping my cause by haunting those who didn’t respect the opinions of others at the park.

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