Break Rooms

[hobie16]

From MiceAge http://www.miceage.com/allutz/al053006e.htm Scroll down a bit.

Pssst, Wanna New Job Mates?

While Disneyland barrels ahead towards a very busy summer and a winter season full of more construction, there's that pesky little problem of Cast Member staffing. It hasn't improved folks, and in fact those turnover numbers just keep rising. In the past year Disneyland has turned over 15,000 hourly CM's! At a cost of just over $1,000 dollars per Cast Member to recruit them, bring them on board and train them, that's a staggering figure. It's literally a revolving door in most departments, and many CM's are only sticking around for a week or two before they decide this just isn't for them. With all of the rules and hassles Disneyland throws at its Cast Members, both hourly and salaried, there just aren't enough starry-eyed folks out there who have always dreamed of working at Disneyland no matter the cost to fill the hundreds and hundreds of open shifts each week.

The Human Resources department's answer has been to hold a non-stop parade of "Job Fairs," something that used to only happen two or three times per year, but that now happens a couple times per month. With Disneyland wages now starting at $8.20 an hour, what strikes fear into TDA's heart is the plans up in Sacramento to raise the California minimum wage to $7.75, effectively making Disneyland jobs minimum wage again. But to try and prove to themselves that it isn't just as simple as raising the wages and treating the CM's better, the HR department has been sending out letters to recently departed CM's asking them to take an online survey about why they left Disneyland.

The survey offers wages as just one of many reasons why someone would quit working at Disneyland, with commute time, parking, and scheduling also offered. The folks in HR don't quite understand that Disneyland requires an hourly CM to put up with a great deal of hassle, and with record crowds all demanding their piece of the magic with a smile, there's not a whole lot of fun to be had working for the mouse these days.

But maybe they do understand, even if they don't want to admit it? It seems that after hundreds of salaried TDA folks were trained to work the rides this past spring in case of a strike, only a couple dozen have actually requested to keep their job knowledge up to date on the ride they were trained on. We've told you about the infamous "Cross-U" program before, but almost all of those salaried folks begged out of the program now that the strike talk is over. The TDA folks simply found it too distasteful to work inside the park, and they don't even have to deal with the packed parking lot shuttles, the bad cafeteria food or the smelly break rooms with broken furniture and no air conditioning that hourly CM's deal with every day on the job.

In sharp contrast to the rest of the Resort, every floor of TDA features a couple large "Kitchenettes" with gleaming kitchen facilities that are cleaned regularly, just sitting there to be used by whichever TDA staffer wants to. There are also additional break rooms on each floor with vending machines stocked weekly, working air conditioning, cable TV, coffee makers and free tea and hot chocolate, and stylish, functional furniture. Then there's the staffed coffee cart down in the TDA lobby serving up pastries and freshly made espresso drinks, and the Eat Ticket cafeteria right across the courtyard that is always well staffed to handle the big lunch rush. Did we also mention that HR arranges for 15 minute chair massages by trained masseurs regularly for TDA staffers?

The average CM break room in Disneyland bears little resemblance to the TDA version, with non-functioning HVAC units, vending machines that go empty for days at a time, grimy walls and floors, broken chairs and couches with the stuffing pulled out of them, and old microwaves and refrigerators that never have a cleaning staff touch them. Needless to say, with that type of break room environment TDA also fails to offer chair massages to the hourly CM's working in the park.

And HR wonders why the average tenure of the hourly CM's has dropped from eleven years in 1980 to less than five months today?

[darph nader]

Walt must be rolling over in his grave! Gee whiz ,treat your employees like s**t,and guess what you get? S**ty employees.Sad to say the trickle down theory applys here.Guests will start to see it ,and stop going. Revenues will fall, then the "SUITS" will wonder 'why?' Employees are like "guests"(customers) It's CHEAPER to keep them than get them.

[WhirlWindSpin]

Walt must be rolling over in his grave!

11,000 RPMs at last check. It was 15,000 before Eisner resigned.

[felinefan]

Gee, and I used to complain about how bad it was at Knott's. If Knott's contacted all former employees, the response to their begging us to return would be a resounding HELL, NO! (along with other phrases along that line).

[goose]

There's things that really make me shake my head when it comes to cast member food. Why...oh why do they give us the white plates that can't go in the microwave? How freaking hard would it be to buy some plates that are allowed to go in the microwave? This is ridiculous!

Also...

I heard a funny story from a guy that worked a few shifts at Eat Ticket. He told me that not suprisignly, the TDA workers tend to be more rude than the peon cast members. He also told me that if the Eat Ticket runs out of coffee mate, they HAVE TO go get more coffee mate immediately. If that means going to the nearest store, so be it. Keep in mind, the Eat Ticket is only open about 5 hours a day.