I began this journal when I got hired as a Spanish-language ski instructor at Vail – an unexpected, undreamed experience for someone who didn’t try the ski bum experience post-college, but was fortunate to try it two decades later!   It was a fun and rewarding experience, in which I had the joy of sharing my love of the wintertime outdoors with lots of kids – most of whom, being from tropical countries, were relatively new to skiing and to snow.  As a perpetual overachiever, I also put immense energy into this job and role as a teacher.  Kids and their parents loved me and gave me high marks.

I signed on for a job that included housing, and when none materialized I wound up in a compromising situation that involved harassment and assault by another ski school employee and retaliation by ski school management.  Overall, I observed high levels of dysfunction in the ski school, including mishandling of my own onboarding and missing equipment/uniform, poorly-trained supervisors coping unprofessionally with stress, supervisors frequently contradicting one another, undefined protocols to handle foreseeable situations, inconsistent and sub-optimal class composition, and administrative hiccups with scheduling, paychecks, paperwork, etc. Other Vail ski school management practices expose the company to liability:  displaying apparent bias towards guests, disregarding well-being of sick and injured children, and – in my case for one – failing to protect employees.  Though some level of chaos is to be expected in a ski school environment, the issues I observed and experienced are avoidable or solvable.

Original journal entries are in regular font, and later commentary is in italics.

Apply (November 18 – 22, 2013)

Apply online by uploading a resume.  Interview process consists of a 10-minute phone call each with phone screeners named “Con” and “Jesse”.   They seem impressed with my resume (top schools, former business exec, Spanish fluency, extracurricular experience teaching in various settings).

Hired! (November 25)

Receive an email offer of a job as a “part-time bilingual ski instructor”!  Features of the job include: 

• $9.95 per hour
• ski pass
• slopeside gear locker
• half-price food on the mountain
• commitment to work at least 15 holiday days during the season

I call to discuss the offer.  Jesse (who turns out to be one of the school supervisors) informs me that I have been assigned to teach Spanish-speaking adults, which sounds fantastic!  He surprises me by asking if I can come on board full-time instead of part-time.   

I accept the change to full-time… based explicitly on Jesse’s assurance that the resort provides employee housing for full-time employees.  As I explain candidly to Jesse, I am currently staying transitionally with a good samaritan in Gypsum, having fled a violent situation in Oregon to re-start life in Colorado.  The next step in my bootstrapping progression is to move down to Denver after the New Year, where another generous supporter will put me up while I get established.  Therefore:

• I can do the part-time ski school job without employee housing, as I can continue living in Gypsum until around the new year.  My part-time work obligation of 15 days will be completed by the time I have to move out.
• Changing plans to remain in the valley for the whole season as a full-time employee means I will need the employee housing that comes with it (non-resort housing in the valley has long ago filled for the season).  Saying yes to full-time is a one-way decision for me, as I will thus forgo my Denver housing option.  But, a fun job in the valley through April is an exciting offer which gives me more time to line up work in my field in Denver for afterwards!

Jesse seems sympathetic to my unfortunately complicated situation (though I will later question whether he was sincere). He is anxious to address an acute shortage of Spanish-speakers and female instructors for the coming season (most kids of both gender prefer female instructors).  We agree to change my status to full-time, and he says he will adjust the offer.  I’m told I will receive employee housing details within a week or so – well before my Gypsum housing situation expires. 

I will learn weeks from now that Jesse never actually documents my employee status as full-time.

Season Day 1 / Training Day 1 (November 30)

Several hundred of us first-time instructors pile into a hotel conference room for orientation (introductions to the ski school supervisors, slide shows and videos, presentations on rules and regulations, facility tours, Q&A).  There’s an infectious vibe of anticipation in the room, with all of us first-timers giddily looking forward to what the initial presentation describes as the experience of a lifetime!   We can see a few tantalizing snowflakes today through the windows.

I soon realize one of the reasons Jesse and Con must have been so excited to hire me:  as a 40-something, highly-educated, white-collar woman, I am not part of the majority demographic of 20-something aloof stoners, nor the other sizeable group of older retirees.  I also realize that I’m a fairly unique case in that I haven’t come to Vail with other seasonal worker buddies, don’t have a significant other or resort-employee friends in the valley to creatively room with, and am a true outsider with limited connections. Being the odd man out often has unanticipated adverse consequences, and my ski school experience will illustrate that.

My first-day-of-school excitement is quashed when, at the first break, Jesse seeks me out to pull me out of orientation.  He sends me home, explaining that Human Resources has mixed up my onboarding paperwork.  Evidently, HR scheduled me for a physical fitness evaluation for two days AFTER orientation; however, Jesse says he is prohibited by HR from allowing me to attend orientation BEFORE the physical fitness test (even though orientation involves merely sitting in a chair).  

Jesse is strangely unapologetic, and becomes abrasive when I ask him for more information. There will be no other orientations for me to attend, and no way for me to get the information I miss.  He adds I can’t even go to this evening’s barbeque and party, which is where everyone meets one another and establishes social connections. I am left baffled as he tells me to “not worry about [my] mistake”, abruptly turning away to go back into the orientation room.  I’m confused by Jesse’s demeanor and assume that it reflects stress from being overwhelmed in his job. 

Being excluded from orientation is particularly problematic for me:  I don’t know any other instructors, from whom I could otherwise get a brain-dump on what I missed.  Jesse refuses (“as a matter of policy”) to give me contact information for any instructors so that I might get in touch.  Furthermore, being two decades older than the mainstream instructor base and living an hour drive down-valley (i.e., I can’t hang at the bars in Vail at night) means I also don’t have ongoing access to tribal knowledge about the ski school job, personalities and politics – which functions to informally fill in information gaps for my peers.  Alone among new hires in being excluded from orientation, I won’t fully recognize until later the Kafkaesque impacts this mistake by Jesse/Vail will have on my ski season experience.

Day 2 / Training Day 2  (December 1)

Attend and pass the “Fit to Ride” physical fitness evaluation appointment.   It consists of rudimentary exercises that would be difficult to fail: standing on one foot, 10 pushups in one minute, touch your toes, walking stairs for a couple minutes.  

I learn that this is the first year Vail has implemented physical screening for incoming instructors – which arguably somewhat explains the HR mistake with scheduling.

I also learn that I was one of the last instructors hired this year.  Most seasonal workers got hired months ago, and were able to secure housing when private apartments were plentiful and employee housing wasn’t full.  There are a few other people like me waiting to be assigned employee housing… but I will only learn later that there is a housing wait list, and that Jesse never placed my name on it. 

Day 3 – 4 / Training Day 3 – 4  (December 2-3)

On-snow training will show us techniques for explaining skiing skills to students, as well as cover important basics about how the scheduling system works and how to fill out the voluminous daily post-lesson paperwork.  

My group of five is assigned to a trainer who primarily uses the day to brag about her private client list, how much she makes in tips for week-long private bookings, and how often she has traveled overseas with clients.  As first-time instructors, most of us will never teach a private lesson.

When one of my irritated group-mates openly questions the relevance of this information, he is chastised and silenced.  We leave the day hoping and expecting that at some point someone will formally explain how group lesson scheduling works for new instructors like us.  But that never happens.

Day 5 – 6 / Training Day 5-6  (December 4-5)

Indoor training for halves of two days.   We meet the supervisors and fellow instructors in our “pod” – a given ski school age group (3-6 years old, 7-14, adults) at a given base area (Gold Peak, Village, Lionshead, Beaver Creek).   I’m in the Lionshead 7-14 pod, having been switched from adults to kids without explanation. Fortunately, I’m thrilled to get to work with kids.

I have been asking all the fellow instructors and supervisors I meet about housing ideas, as I’m starting to worry that Vail hasn’t yet delivered on its promise of employee housing.  I’ve simultaneously been looking on Craigslist for seasonal apartment shares, but the two that I’ve shown up to apply for (along with several other hopeful tenants) both chose a roommate in their millennial bracket.  Jesse and Con both brush me off in irritation when I inquire again about housing, saying that it’s “not [their] responsibility” to arrange housing for me.

Day 7 – 8 / Training Day 7-8 (December 6-7)

Our final two days of training are practicums, where we learn how to explain ski techniques to beginners.  My group lucks out with an effective trainer who listens well and answers our many eager questions.

With no housing having materialized, I have begun sleeping on the floor of my friend’s empty office in Edwards.  I am supposed to move out of his Gypsum place in two weeks anyway, and the office location is 30-60 minutes closer to Vail (depending on weather).  On a ski school work day, I therefore don’t need to burden my host with taking care of my dog, since my door-to-door time is short enough for me to do it myself.

We are supposed to pick up our nametags from Chris in his office… but it turns out that I am the only instructor for whom a nametag wasn’t made.  I’m so happy to have this (supposedly full-time) job that I don’t make waves.  I wear a nametag with someone else’s name for the next two weeks.

Day 10 / Training Day 9 (December 9)

Audit #1:  Nine level 3s and 4s

I follow around a long-time instructor who is frazzled with a group of nine 8-10 year old kids of fairly disparate skiing ability.  Half of them speak only English; half of them speak only Spanish; the instructor speaks no Spanish.  Although I’m supposed to be silently auditing his class, he decides to divvy it up and trust me to take the Spanish-speakers off on my own on the mountain.  I have a fantastic first class and am happy to realize that I love this job! 

Day 14 / Training Day 10 (December 13)

Audit #2:  Seven level 3s

This is the most helpful day of training thus far.  I follow a fantastic instructor who handles his class calmly and effortlessly, leaving plenty of time for me to ask questions.

Still no luck with the housing conundrum:  I’ve now posted and responded to numerous ads on Craigslist, put up flyers all over the ski school and admin buildings, and asked everyone I meet.  It doesn’t seem that Vail will deliver on its promise to provide housing for me, despite knowing that I have by this point forgone my Denver housing setup based on that promise. 

Day 17 / Training Day 11 (December 16)

Our final training day involves a helpful recap of teaching techniques.  

I’m exhausted by my sleeping conditions – the floor of an office building on ski school days, and the extra bedroom of a house where I feel I’ve overstayed my welcome on off days.  None of my efforts to resolve the housing puzzle bear fruit:

• I’ve emailed Bobby, the head of Vail ski school, and received a blow-off reply. 
• One supervisor tells me I should call Joey (a female supervisor in another pod), who will surely help me.  I leave her a message, but never hear back.
• I ask Cathy, the administrative head of the Lionshead ski school, who says she has “no thoughts” on the matter.  
• I ask the administrative assistant, Haley, for help, and am greeted with indignation, as that’s “not her job”.  
• I ask the Human Resources department, who shocks me with the information that my supervisor, Jesse, never specified my official status in the system as full-time, and so I’m definitively on my own for housing.
• Chris (a Lionshead supervisor for a different pod) emails me contact info for someone who he says he knows will definitely rent me a room.  But, it turns out that the person will not take a dog.

I overhear a new snowboard instructor chatting about how her supervisor got her off the housing wait-list and into an apartment (she has the money to be paying for a hotel all this time).  I didn’t know there was a housing wait-list, despite having raised this issue with every single supervisor I’ve met.  After asking around and being sent back and forth trudging between the Human Resources building and ski school building several times, I finally figure out that Cathy (who I’ve previously asked about housing, and who didn’t mention a wait list) in fact maintains a housing wait list.  I get my name on it, but am told that any available housing will likely go to the incoming Argentinean instructors, since “they don’t live here and don’t have housing.”   But, I don’t live here either and I don’t have housing either!  Moreover, I keep getting told what a crucial resource I am, given the panic over shortages of Spanish-speaking instructors combined with massive uptick in Mexican tourists in town.

At the crowded post-training happy hour for instructors, someone grabs my braided pigtail as I’m walking out the door. Todd is an older, long-time instructor who’s lived in Vail for decades.  He has seen my housing-needed flyers, and offers to “help me out” … on the condition that I don’t have a boyfriend.  Ever the optimist, I interpret this to mean he wants to avoid a roommate-tenant with drama or a chronic visitor.  Having uncovered no other options at this point, I agree to visit his apartment the next day to firm up an agreement.  

Day 18  (December 17)

Free ski clinics are offered periodically to instructors.   Today’s lesson is a serious, content-rich day of very insightful coaching by one of the senior instructors at Vail.

I visit Todd’s apartment to firm up details on renting the spare room in his apartment.  “You’re lucky – I won’t make this uncomfortable for you,” he says, in what I tell myself is not a suggestive tone.  He stresses that his estranged wife can’t know that I’m living there.  The situation seems sketchy, but at this point I’m not able to see another choice.

It’s a full moon tonight.   After dark, I join a small group to skin up the mountain and ski down in the moonlight.  Magical!

Day 23 / Teaching Day 1 (December 21)

Private lesson: Two level 4’s

On the first day of work, there are not enough kids for all of us instructors.   The group lesson supervisor tells a few of us that we are now on “private available status”, and to report at midday at Eagle’s Nest on top of the mountain.  Once there, I overhear an experienced instructor say he just checked his schedule and he’s been booked on a private in another location.  We newbies decide to go inside and check our schedules.  We discover that we have been booked on privates that meet at the base area in 10 minutes.   There isn’t enough time to get there, so we all arrive a few minutes late.

My first-ever ski lesson is a private lesson with two American sisters.  It being a small world, we are tickled to realize their father is a professor at my graduate school alma mater!  

The girls improve dramatically in just one afternoon.  We do the standard “Chair 2 lap” – the ski school route for the first time off the bunny hill.   One girl gets an altitude headache, so we descend to Mid-Vail for hydration and rest.  When she’s better, we have just enough time to go back up top and practice skills skiing down to Chair 2, then back up to Eagle’s Nest where their dad has arranged to meet us.     

I move in to Todd’s extra bedroom in West Vail tonight.   It turns out the heat doesn’t work on the ground floor where I stay – it’s 55 degrees.   He lives upstairs, which is heated with a gas fireplace, so had been unaware of the problem.  He also reveals that he never locks the front door and “can’t find” a spare key to give me. 

Day 24 / Teaching Day 2  (December 22)

Group lesson: Four level 2’s, 3’s and 4’s

Today there are again not enough children’s ski school students to absorb all the new instructors scheduled to work.  Jesse tells us first-timers to stay in the group lesson check-in area for a while, in case there is a last-minute need for another instructor. 

Another experienced instructor contradicts this directive, advising us to go inside and check our schedules (nobody thus far seems to be able to get the scheduling app to work on a phone).  I decide to do just that – and am surprised find out I’ve been booked on a private lesson that meets in 10 minutes.   I arrive at the appointed meeting point 5 minutes early, but Con admonishes me for being “late”.   He tells me he gave away “a week’s worth of private lessons” to someone else because of my failure to be in the private lesson meeting place.  He doesn’t care that Jesse explicitly told me to stay in the group lesson meeting place, that I’m not in fact late, or that the two locations are merely 30 feet apart, and Con could see me standing there, as he silently booked me on a private lesson.

Now I’m standing in the private lesson meeting area, without a private lesson.  Con barks at me to stand there and keep checking my schedule.  

I take out my phone to once again see if I can get the scheduling app to work… and some unidentified supervisor I’ve never met races up to me, wild-eyed and frazzled, barking at me to zip up my coat.  I find this bizarre: I can’t get my phone in or out of my inside coat pocket to check my schedule without using my coat zipper, and I can’t store the phone in an outside pocket because the battery dies in the cold.  Others explain that this strange rule was explained in orientation… the orientation which I was prohibited from attending.  What other important information am I missing, and will be blamed for not having?

By mid-morning, the private lesson supervisor tells the rest of us we are not needed, and a group of us decide to go change out of our uniforms so we can “free ski” for fun together the rest of the day.

Just then, Jesse finds me, saying he needs to split up a group of eleven Level 2’s.   So, I take the gondola up top, and get assigned my first-ever group ski lesson:  3 non-English-speaking Mexican girls, and 1 non-Spanish-speaking American boy.

As I’m skiing with my four kids on the bunny hill, a fellow instructor skis up to me with a message:  one girl’s father has asked that someone come find me on the mountain to make sure the girl eats nothing from the cafeteria (she is an ultra-orthodox Jew).  He wants to meet us in the cafeteria and bring his daughter’s kosher lunch.

At lunchtime, however, there is no sign of the father.   The girl is so hungry she starts to cry.   I find Jesse in the lunch room to ask if he has any contact info for the father, so that we can find him and get the lunch – but Chris inserts himself into the conversation and jumps down my throat, insisting that I should simply feed the girl some potatoes and “call it good”.  I tell Chris that I’m not in a position to contradict such an unusually explicit directive from a child’s parent and from the child.  Chris asserts that “potatoes are kosher” (which is, of course, not true in this case).  I reply calmly that I don’t intend to get into a religious debate with one of the resort’s guests.  Turning back to Jesse, I ask again for help finding the father.  Jesse ends the conversation by sneering his stock phrase answer to most questions from most instructors “I don’t know what to tell you.”

So, I go back to console the hungry girl, who watches enviously as the other students devour their meals.   Her father finally arrives, and interrogates me in a panic: “you didn’t give her any potatoes, did you?!?”  I assure him that she’s eaten nothing.  He takes his daughter away, explaining that she can’t eat at our table, where others are eating non-kosher food. 

Upon learning that we spent the morning on the bunny hill (standard practice for Level 2s), the father is very upset and demands to speak to Jesse.  Jesse attempts to placate him, to no avail.

After waiting at length for the orthodox girl to finish her lunch, our group returns out to the snow.  We spend the afternoon on the bunny hill, because the boy in my group still can’t snowplow to a stop and continually crashes into people.   As I told Jesse at lunch, I suspect he’s autistic, but was not given any information about him when I was handed the class.

One of my girls can already parallel turn, and was put in a class two levels too low.  Though Jesse told me to “deal with it”, the disparity is unfair and entirely unnecessary.  I take the initiative to snag another instructor passing by and officially hand her off to him (there’s a paperwork procedure for this) so she can have a better day.

Eventually, Jesse checks in on classes on the magic carpet, and barks at me for not having progressed further.  I once again explain the situation to him, and he decides to take the boy off by himself for the one hour left in the day.  Next, the orthodox girl’s family ski up to us on the hill and take her away to ski with them.

So, I started the day with a class of eleven.  Four of them were given to me.  I sent one up to a higher level.  Jesse took the autistic boy.  The orthodox girl left with her parents.  At the end of the day, I rode the gondola down with just one student – who is stoked to have wound up in a 1:1!

Back at the base area, the autistic boy’s father seeks me out to thank me for being so patient with his son.  He tells me the boy is in fact autistic, which he told Jesse that in the morning.  But, Jesse didn’t inform me, nor did he take measures to put the boy in an appropriate class – more importantly, Jesse missed an opportunity to pre-emptively guide the boy toward a private lesson, which would be better for someone with a developmental disability (and more money for Vail).  Now, when I suggest a private lesson for tomorrow, the father is excited about that idea!  Things apparently didn’t go very well between Jesse and his boy, but the son (who his father says never likes teachers) is evidently very fond of me.  He’d like to book privates with me for the rest of the week.

Just then, Jesse walks up and rudely thrusts his hand in my face, saying “I’ve got this.”   Converting group students to privates is something we are encouraged to do… but Jesse manages to somehow turn a private week of lessons into no lesson at all – the boy doesn’t come back to ski school at all after Jesse speaks to the father!  It seems that Jesse has effectively communicated to a resort guest that ski school doesn’t work with autistic kids.

I go home to my 55-degree bedroom.  My friend has driven an hour into town to drop off a space heater and blankets for me to use.  I show my landlord the thermometer indicating it’s 55 degrees, and he insists the thermometer must be broken.  With the heater running all night, I wake up to a 67-degree room – much better!

Day 25 / Teaching Day 3  (December 23)

Group lesson:  Seven Level 3’s

My girls from yesterday return and seek me out in the check-in area.  Their mothers are all ecstatic to get to speak in Spanish with someone and understand what’s really going on.   Even the orthodox girl comes back (apparently her father has accepted that she indeed is in an appropriate level class).

The group lesson check-in area is chaotic.  Dividing kids into groups is done arbitrarily.  I make a point to try to subtly aggregate the non-English speakers into a single class, so that they can go with a bilingual instructor – this is a novel, but welcome, approach among the seasoned instructors.

As the number of Spanish-only students has increased at Vail, its instructor-blind policy of refusing to assign Spanish-speaking students to Spanish-speaking group lesson instructors has become incompatible with the objective of delivering excellent ski instruction.

Vail wants Spanish-speaking guests wanting a Spanish-speaking instructor to pay for a private lesson. But, as a practical matter, Spanish-speaking guests aren’t made aware that they can collaborate with others to get a group private lesson (i.e., children of a few different sets of parents who coordinate to buy a lesson). So, they wind up in the group lesson pool, and understandably expect that their lesson money buys a high-quality Spanish-language ski lesson for their non-English-speaking children. 

Supervisors inconsistently and sporadically enforce the “no-guaranteed-Spanish” rule in the chaotic morning lesson yard – even when it would be relatively easy to aggregate the English and Spanish students into separate groups to provide both groups with better instruction.

I wind up with seven girls from Mexico, Venezuela, and Argentina.  It’s a cohesive Level 3 group.  We spend all day on the beginner hill (Chair 3).  

The orthodox girl is still struggling with turns.  Her parents decide to take her at lunch because they are back to believing the class is too easy for her.  With her out of the group, we can now go onto harder terrain.  The other girls now report to me that she had been spitting on them and telling dirty jokes all morning, when I wasn’t looking.

We have a little hiccup on the steepest section of our last run – one girl balks at the top.   A friendly ski patroller offers her a lift, skiing down with her perched high atop his shoulders.  Though she doesn’t need the help, it’s a fun and exciting experience for everyone to be rescued by a tall uniformed hero, and the girls giggle about it the rest of the day.  

On the gondola ride down to the end-of-day meeting point, I attempt to fill out the “Epic Academy” paperwork, which evaluates all the students and gets entered into their online account overnight.  There’s only time to fill out 3 of the 7 duplicate forms, given how much time it takes.  After waiting for all the parents to pick their kids, I return to the admin building to fill out the rest of the paperwork.  Some random supervisor chastises me for not showing up with all the paperwork already done. 

Rules are preposterously in conflict with one another. For example, instructors must wait until AFTER every kid in their class gets picked up before going inside to submit paperwork, no matter how long it takes for parents to show up. However, we must submit paperwork inside BEFORE a particular (though fuzzily-defined) time.   

By the time I leave the locker room, it is 4:45 and I’ve missed the bus home.  As will be typical for me, days begin in the locker room at 8:30 (report to duty at 8:45) and end at 4:45.  That’s 8.25 hours.  We get paid for 7.

Nobody I ask around the locker room seems to yet know how and when we get paid.  We have all found that supervisors are never in their offices, do not respond to emails or voicemails, and are intolerant of ad hoc questions in the hallway.   A few days later, I will find a two-week-old check in my name, lying loose on a counter full of papers in the admin office.  By the next pay period, it will become clear that paychecks are issued on particular days and filed in a bin by last name.

At home, Todd announces he intends to do nothing about the broken heater.  I finally get up the nerve to take a shower.  Nerve is required because there’s no lock on the bathroom or bedroom door, and also because it’s 55 degrees in the bathroom.  Todd is outside the door when I’m done, noting that I “smell good” and that it’s “nice to have a woman in the house.”     

Day 26 / Teaching Day 4 (Christmas Eve)

Group lesson:  Six Level 4’s

All my girls (except the orthodox one) return today.  Jesse comes over to me and my assembled gaggle in the morning corral, and orders the group be split up (though the policy is for returning students to be with the same instructor if at all possible).  The parents are irate.  The two Venezuelan 7-year-old cousins in matching pink ski jackets start chanting “Laura, Laura, Laura” and clutching both of my legs.  Jesse – scowling at me as if this is my doing — ultimately acquiesces to them and their parents, consenting to the same class composition as yesterday.

Through no fault of mine, Jesse has lost face in front of me several times now:  (1) promising housing he didn’t deliver, (2) messing up my first-day paperwork so I can’t go to what will turn out to be a crucial orientation, (3) failing to accommodate an autistic boy, (4) failing to heed an orthodox parent’s instructions to him, and now (5) being overruled by a couple of loud 7-year-olds.  Men who lose face often retaliate against the woman whom they blame for their embarrassment – and Jesse seems to follow such a pattern.

Part of the day is a severe whiteout that sends us in for a long lunch. Today there isn’t much learning accomplished, as I spend a lot of time getting them over their fears and coaching them down the same slopes that yesterday they skied just fine.

As we’re waiting for the chairlift, one girl announces that her ankle hurts. On the ride up, I ask her a ton of questions to figure out what’s going on (did she fall; how long has it been hurting; has she ever broken anything, to know what it feels like; is she just tired and needs to rest).   She gets off the chairlift just fine, implying her ankle is fine, but is now crying, saying it hurts even more.  I start by calling her mother, and asking her mother what she thinks – the girl placates her mother by reporting she’s just tired, but then hangs up the phone and tells us she’s injured.  Her cousin teases her as being a drama queen, telling me that this happens “all the time” back home.   I can’t persuade her to move now, so I have no choice but to call ski patrol. 

Ski patrol arrives with a sled, and does their evaluation with me translating. They think she’s just tired, but recommend giving her a sled ride down to Eagle’s Nest, in order to be safe, and where we can get out of the storm anyway.  Once at Eagle’s Nest, the girl suddenly insists she’s ok to keep skiing.  We continue on the rest of the day with everyone doing fine.

One of the demanding aspects of this job is that I in particular am consistently allocated some of the most “high-touch” students.  Since I am the only fluent Spanish speaker (the Argentinian college students on staff are all allocated to private lessons), I usually teach kids from Latin America – and they are for some reason almost all girls.  First, they are less well-dressed for the cold compared to American ski school students, which causes a cascade of problems.  Second, unlike American girls, Mexican and Venezuelan girls don’t grow up doing sports.  Because they’ve usually never experienced rough play and injury, they have no personal reference point to decide whether they’re really hurt after falling on skis.  If ski school were to track injury incidents, I am sure that my kids would show a higher rate of ski patrol calls and parent calls, as well as false alarms that don’t trigger a call but do take a chunk of time out of the day.

Today, I pre-filled all the paperwork during lunch, so I can have it done by the end of the day.   This turns out to be the only feasible way to get it complete, as other instructors have also figured out as well.  But, that means we are all extrapolating assessments of our students’ progress before we’re halfway through the lesson day.  

Jesse announces that he anticipates low turnout for lessons on Christmas Day, and that we should approach him if we’d like the day off.  However, when I ask if I could take the day off, he responds with an indignant “no”.

Day 27 / Teaching Day 5 (Christmas Day)

Group lesson:  Four Level 4’s

Today I have three “returns”; the others are skipping Christmas Day and will return the following day. 

(We get paid a small incentive for every next-day return – though in reality, we get paid for returns sporadically, as the data entry process is inconsistent.  If kids skip a day and then come back, there is no reward.)

Over a week now of the same handful of us instructors working with one another in the chaotic morning corral, we have developed a grass-roots system of student allocation.   The instructor pool heartily agrees that it’s sensible to cobble together Spanish-speakers into one class, since there is a bilingual instructor available (me).   One other group lesson instructor speaks rudimentary Spanish; all of the other fluent speakers have been placed into the private lesson pool.  Instructors generally feel they aren’t providing great service to non-English speaking kids in their classes, and jump at the chance to hand over those kids to me.  However, that can mean putting students of disparate levels into a single class.  I talk to the parents and kids about this trade-off each morning.   For the most part, they prefer a Spanish-language class over an appropriate-level class.

Chaos in the morning check-in are comes from many sources.  Parents try to negotiate on the fly for the instructor their kids want.  But, as a group lesson instructor, I can at any time be pulled off a tentative group and redeployed elsewhere – so all that real-time wheeling and dealing to get their kids in my class can sometimes be futile.  Today, this is what happens.  There aren’t enough students for all the instructors, so even though I have returns and am thus semi-guaranteed to work, the newbies like me are sent home.  (It still counts as a “work day” toward my minimum work day requirement)

Jesse isn’t at work today, so will never realize that his anger toward me for having asked for the day off was entirely misplaced.  But, I’m happy to wind up getting to spend Christmas Day doing a lovely hike with my dog in this spectacular valley!    

I have noticed that many instructors have Vail Ski School business cards, and ask one of them about it.  Evidently, this was something new instructors were offered during orientation (the orientation I was excluded from).  I order my own business cards online, and will find them useful to give to potential private clients.

Day 28 / Teaching Day 6  (December 26)

Group lesson:  Five level 4’s

I have seven Level 4 returns today, but none wind up in my class because some of them skipped Christmas Day.  Their parents are pretty upset that I’m clearly available, standing at my appointed greeter spot in the check-in corral.  Jesse won’t bypass the rigid return rules so they can be with me, despite a recurrence of the wailing chants of “Laura, Laura” by the little girls.  Despite the parents’ annoyance, Jesse puts the Level 4 girls into a large non-Spanish-speaking Level 3 class.  

“Why doesn’t he like you?” one of the resort guests asks me in front of the others.

Today, I have an English-speaking group for the first time:  a handful of pre-teen boys.  We make it around the Chair 2 lap once before lunch and once after lunch.  Super fun day!

In the evening, I take my dog out to a dog-friendly bar to meet for drinks.  I’m grateful to be out of the house, because my new landlord is perpetually stoned, drunk, and increasingly touchy-feely at home.  Indeed, when I get home late, Todd is waiting for me.  “It’s cold down there. Why don’t you come sleep up here?”  I politely decline and sleep fitfully behind my bedroom door that has no lock. 

Day 29 / Teaching Day 7  (December 27)

Guest services activities (no lesson)

This morning, I find my uniform jacket missing from my locker, along with the driver’s license and some cash in a pocket.  I snag another jacket from a pile of unclaimed jackets on the floor for the day so I can work.  After work today, I’ll convince Jesse to convince HR to finally give me the email address of the locker-mate I’ve never met, Rachel (strangely, as “a matter of policy”, they don’t give locker-mates one another’s contact info). 

It will turn out that Rachel took the wrong jacket, and instead of returning mine to the locker, she will put her own jacket back in the locker, leaving me with a permanent swap.  I won’t find out until end-of-season uniform returns that I’m responsible for the jacket with the serial number I was originally issued.  And it will then be unclear whether Jesse knew I’d be held responsible for jacket and didn’t care, or if he was unaware of his company’s uniform policy.

In the morning chaos of group lesson check-ins, Jesse tells me I don’t have a class, despite having three returns (which, according to the senior instructors, is sufficient to justify carving out a class). 

Two instructors lean in and ask, “Why is Jesse picking on you?” 

After all the classes have left to go up the mountain, three 10-12 year-old sisters arrive late.  Jesse asks me to accompany them up to Eagle’s Nest, see if there’s a logical class to stick them in.  Their mother asks me to make sure they get into separate, appropriate-level classes, rather than be lumped into one class.  The girls reiterate to me that they are very different abilities and don’t want to be in the same class.

I find Chris, the supervisor in charge at the moment, up top.   I report to him that I have three late-arriving Level 3 to Level 5s.  He’s obviously frazzled about whatever’s been transpiring before I show up.  He barks at me to take a lap with my “class” (even though I explain it’s not a class, just three kids Jesse asked me to ask Chris to place in other classes).  

After doing a lap and waiting by Chris for a while again, another instructor shows up with her class.  Chris announces that my “class” is going to merge with her Level 3 class.   The middle girl pipes up to tell Chris that she’s better than her sisters and would rather be in a more challenging class.  He ignores her, so I repeat her words so he can hear, “She says she’s better than her sisters and would like—“   But, Chris starts screaming at me, startling all the kids and instructors gathered around.  “We don’t talk like that about students!  Stand over there!”  he yells at me (ironically, given that I’m the instructor who pushed for a shift to non-judgmental language about ability in the check-in yard).  I shrug apologetically at the three startled-looking girls, and watch him stuff all three into the Level 3 class against their continued protestations, against their mother’s request, and despite their observable ability differences as they proceed down the mountain away from us.

Chris makes me wait there idly for a long time.  After all the classes appear to have checked in and gone off for the day, I ask if he still needs me around.  He starts berating me again, until two long-time female instructors step in.  They tell me that Chris is known to be an asshole, and has yelled at them baselessly as well, so not to give it a second thought.  Chris stomps over, barks at the two of them to leave, and once he’s alone with me, lights into me again.   He announces that he’s “writing me up”, and starts screaming about how the other day I “refused to feed potatoes to a child”.   Stunned at what now seems more like anti-Semitism than mere ignorance on his part, I remind him that it was an orthodox kid whose parents had gone to extreme lengths to communicate to ski school three times that she can’t have anything from the cafeteria, period. 

He yells back, completely losing all composure.  He invents the story that I had asked him what was kosher in the cafeteria (I didn’t ask this of anyone, nor would I need to since I’m extraordinarily well-versed on the topic myself, and had had a conversation only with Jesse about finding the girl’s father).  He invents the story that just now I said “I’m done; I’m going home”.  Despite my best consultative/facilitation techniques to calm him down and return to facts, he won’t let me finish a sentence, screaming “Go home!”

I ski down the whole mountain, tears welling up despite my best efforts.  At the bottom, I run into the other two girls who were sent home when they tried to intervene in the altercation.  They offer to go talk to Dan (Chris’ supervisor).  Dan happens to walk nearby at that moment, and they call him over to complain that Chris was harassing me without cause and embarrassing himself in front of ski school guests. Distraught, I recount to Dan what happened, and he assures me that he’ll talk to Chris and that I won’t be blamed for Chris’ behavior.  Evidently, Chris did get reprimanded for this and other improprieties, as he becomes impeccably polite to me and other girls for the remainder of the season.

After some time getting the swelling down in my face, I report back up top as required for “private available” in the afternoon.   There are too many instructors, and none of us are needed.   I ski down with a woman instructor in her 50s, at whose prompting I explain what happened this morning with Chris (many have now heard of his crazed screaming in front of instructors and students this morning).   She says that Chris did the same thing during training with her group, and that they as a group of newbies actually gave him a real-time “talking-to” about his bad behavior (going so fast that he misses information; jumping to incorrect conclusions; speaking disrespectfully to new instructors 20 years his senior). 

I find out that all first-time instructors were assigned a senior instructor “mentor” at orientation (the orientation I missed).  I will ask my supervisors about this several time, but I will never be assigned a mentor. It seems that I am the only instructor who slips between this crack as well.

When I get home, my landlord is drunk in front of the television again, lounging in a cloud of pot smoke with his pants partway off.  I’m exhausted from the day, but find the energy to go out all evening to avoid what is becoming a creepy situation.  I wait to come home well after he’ll be asleep. 

Day 30 / Teaching Day 8  (December 28)

Group lesson:  Eight Level 1’s

In the morning chaos, typically the instructors who are hungover stand off to the side to avoid needing to deliver high-energy greetings.   Those who adhere to protocol and step forward proactively to greet guests are sometimes effectively punished – by being asked to shuttle kids around the mountain (meaning you don’t get put on a class and don’t get paid).  

Today, Jesse is particularly frustrated at some of the aloof instructors who are hanging back.  As he walks past a group of them, his frustration boils over audibly, saying “…people standing around looking STUPID!”  Some nearby parents overhear this and look appalled.  There is at times a profound contrast between the expectant joy of incoming parents/students and the gruff anxiety of the ski school supervisors to whom they entrust their kids in the morning.

Today is my first Level 1 class.  I head up the gondola with eight kids (seven girls and a boy).   As soon as we get off the gondola up at Eagle’s Nest, the boy feels very faint and says he’s having trouble breathing.  We’ve been reminded each morning to take sick kids to a dedicated room in Eagle’s Nest, where there will be staff to do intake and assessment of sick kids.  However, I find the room unstaffed.  I track down a random red-coat supervisor outside and ask him what to do – he tells me he’ll take charge of the boy and handle it while I proceed with the day lesson.

Out on the bunny hill, I start doing basic drills with the rest of the kids:  no skis on, one ski on, two skis on, etc.

But, after a few minutes, Jesse brings out the sick boy to me, chastising me for having followed instructions on how to deal with a sick kid.   Within a few minutes, the boy is doubled over, wobbly and saying he feels faint again.   Per policy, I am not allowed to leave the kids alone on the snow to take this boy inside to the sick room; but, per policy, I am not allowed to send a sick kid alone into the sick room.  Wrangling together the other seven kids, getting their skis off, and shepherding everyone inside together would take several minutes.   Meanwhile, my boy looks like he needs urgent medical attention.   I grab the closest red coat supervisor, Steve, and ask if he can run my boy into get medical attention.  But, he responds that he’s on his way to lunch and doesn’t have time (even though the sick room is on his direct route to lunch).  It’s only after I stress that this kid is extremely ill, and I can’t take him in myself without leaving the class alone, that he reluctantly concedes to take him inside.  Strangely, Steve asks ME where he needs to take the sick boy and what to do.

Turning back to my class, there is now another kid lying flat in the snow, crying.  I sit down and talk to her, my face flush with the snow in front of hers – she won’t stand up and won’t say what’s wrong.   Her mother, who has been watching the class, comes over and explains that she has a developmental disorder and “sensory issues”, and that this behavior happens a lot.  The mother recommends that I ignore the girl’s tantrum, not cajole her into participating, and let her sit and watch the ski class. 

Another kid is crying constantly, saying she misses her mom.  But, she doesn’t want me to call her mom or send her home.  Meanwhile, another girl who is clearly not a Level 1 (i.e., “never ever”) skier continues to self-sufficiently lap the tiny slope we’re practicing on, quietly executing parallel turns. 

After a lunch break, the sick-kid counselor brings out the boy with altitude sickness.  Unfortunately, he has missed the entire morning, and thus doesn’t know how to even put his skis on.   The rest of the kids are otherwise ready to progress to the magic carpet slope.  No supervisor on duty is willing to deal with the issue of splitting the class, so I repeat the morning’s lesson in compressed fashion for the boy, with the other kids getting restless and annoyed.

Despite being only 11 years old, the sick boy is about 5’7”.  He’s just gone through a growth spurt, and has very little control over his gangly body.  He can’t do a snowplow at all, though he’s trying very earnestly (and starting to get very self-deprecating and frustrated).  Today the little practice slope is densely crowded with ski school classes, guests, and tourists on foot – it’s mass chaos.  On one run down the little practice slope, my sick kid again can’t stop, and is smart enough to intentionally fall down before he otherwise runs into one of the many tourists who refuses to clear the area. 

One of his loose skis glides to a stop next to a group of teenage girls lounging in the snow.  He starts crying and throws his other ski, out of frustration that he still can’t do a snowplow.   He feels stung that one girl gave him such stink-eye, and tearfully apologizes as she icily walks away.  I try to mitigate the tension by going after her to ask her if she’s ok (hoping she’ll say something nice to the poor boy), but she says “leave us alone” and goes to lie back down with her posse out on the crowded main ski slope.

I tend to my boy, who is threatening to walk off and quit skiing forever because he “sucks”.  This is a pivotal moment for him on many levels, and I put my all into explaining to him why he should keep at it and not draw conclusions yet.  Just as I get him settled back down, the teenage girl’s mom comes over to us to chastise the poor little boy (though she didn’t see the non-event).  Her daughter cowers in the distance, embarrassed, as her mom makes the little boy start crying again.  I can’t leave my kids, so I’m stuck in place with the woman as she works herself into an angry state over the crowds at Vail and apparent lack of supervisors (nobody is answering the ‘always-staffed’ ski school line when I call, and there are no red-coats anywhere in the crowded ski school zone).  When I finally see a red-coat in the distance and wave him over, the mother complains to him that it took me too long to find him (rather than complaining to the supervisor that he wasn’t available in the area)!  The supervisor tells me he’ll “handle it”.  I make the mistake of trusting him to do so.

As we finish out day, my kids tell me that they didn’t think they’d like ski school, but they love it!   The frustrated boy with altitude sickness says he is going to pray about getting to have me as his teacher tomorrow.  There are hugs and accolades all around.   

In contrast, when we get back to the base area, the supervisor who told me he would handle the irate mother now gives me a talking-to about “not seeming concerned enough” about the teenage girl my kid’s ski came near.  Though he didn’t observe the incident, he doesn’t want to hear from me what happened, nor did ask the boy what happened.  He makes the bizarre claim that I “should have called ski patrol”.  (First, ski patrol deals only with injuries, and not with guest service complaints. Second, the supervisor was the one in a position to (inappropriately) involve ski patrol, since he asserted he would take over and handle the situation.)  It seems clear that this supervisor chose to use me as a scapegoat to placate an irrational guest for something that didn’t happen, rather than establish the facts and accept his own responsibility to have been present and prevent her getting angry in the first place.

Day 31 / Teaching Day 9  (December 29)

Group lesson:  Eight level 2’s

Most of my kids return from yesterday.   We split them into two classes in the morning into what I have slowly lobbied instructors to call “Level 2” and “Level 2.5”.  (Originally, the instructors indelicately referred to kids as “bad 2’s” and “good 2’s”, which I think is inappropriate in earshot of parents and students.  So this is my innovation to keep things constructive in the morning corral.)  

My sick boy from yesterday gets into a class with more boys that is also a bit more remedial, which will be better for him.  He’s sad to not be in my class, but I pump him up and sell the idea that he should be psyched to be in a class with boys, and he ultimately smiles in agreement.

We head up to the magic carpet, and everyone is thrilled to feel like on day two of lessons they are skiing and turning down a real hill.

One of the girls gets sick at lunch, and I take her to the sick kid area.   The counselor on duty is new, and doesn’t have any idea what to do.  I explain that she needs to sign in the kid, call her parents, and watch her.  She’s still uncertain, and asks if I can find a supervisor to do intake instead; I find Jesse out in the hallway and relay that the counselor would like him to do intake.  He snarls at me, as if it’s my fault that some counselor isn’t comfortable in her job, and grunts that he’ll take care of it.

At the end of the day, the parents of my sick boy from yesterday make a point to seek me out.  They are so happy with their kid’s day with me yesterday, that they want to find out how to submit praise for me to the school.   I talk to them for a bit about encouraging him to keep at skiing, despite his frustrations with body control. 

Day 32 / Teaching Day 10  (December 30)

Group lesson:  Nine Level 3’s

Today I have a Level 3 class that includes my star natural-parallel-turn girl from the other day, plus eight non-English speakers.  It turns out the girl is taking Spanish in school, and understands enough such that she tells me not to bother saying everything twice, in Spanish and English.  This makes the day go faster.

One twist I use in lessons is to have the kids decide which food terms we’ll use each day to describe snowplows and parallel turns.  Typically, instructors use “pizza” and “french fries”… but why reinforce unhealthy food choices?!  Today the kids have decided on “watermelon slice” and “carrot sticks”.  Soon enough, I’ve got a head-turning line of deliriously happy kids screaming “trozo de sandia!” and “palitos de zanahoria!” as they triumphantly make turns.

After lunch, a girl from the Dominican Republic falls down in “Porcupine Alley” – an off-piste park for kids, into which we are urged to take our classes.  After talking to her, I decide the girl seems legitimately injured.  I call ski patrol, and then call ski school to let them know. Ski patrol evaluates her while I translate, and determines she may have sprained something in her knee.  They take her down the mountain in a sled. This particular patroller isn’t sure what is supposed to happen at the base, and asks me to get ski school to meet her down there to decide.   I call the ski school office, which says they will take care of it. However, it will turn out that ski school administration drops the ball completely.

At the end of the day, after I wait for all the kids to be picked up by parents, I ask what happened to my injured kid.  The supervisors have no knowledge of the event.  I wander around the ski school buildings, just to check, and am shocked to find my girl sitting alone on a bench in the now-empty nursery school area.  Apparently, after ski patrol dropped her off, the ski school staff left an injured 9-year-old alone for 4 hours.  The poor girl can’t walk, and is still wearing her ski boots after all this time.  Nobody elevated her leg, brought her water, helped her to the bathroom, or called her parents. 

Supervisor Con walks by, and I ask him what the protocol is – he just shrugs and disappears.  I call her parents, who are frantic with worry.  They come meet us where the girl is perched, and I drum up a wheelchair so we can all take her back to their hotel.  I spend over an hour discussing options with the parents in Spanish – what hospital options I know we have in town, how I believe payment works for out-of-towners without American insurance, etc.  I apologize profusely on behalf of the negligent ski school staff, who the parents are disgusted with.  Though I spent a significant effort saving Vail from a liability issue, I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to let the supervisors’ egregious behavior play out on its own. 

It’s now 6pm, and I walk back to the ski school building in my uniform, pushing an eerily empty wheelchair through the crowded village.  A tourist snaps a photo of the arresting visual.

I drive down-valley an hour to my friend’s house in Gypsum, in order to take a shower in a safe, room-temperature house.

Day 33 / Teaching Day 11 (New Year’s Eve)

Group lesson:  Five Level 4’s

Fantastic day with several of my returns!  The natural-parallel-turns girl, plus 3 Venezuelan girls (two sisters and a cousin) and a Mexican girl.

Before lunch, we review technique on the basic Chair 2 lap.   There are lots of Spanish-speaking guests in town at this point, and I commonly hear other instructors barking at their kids in rude, broken Spanish – or in the type of boorish English reserved for foreigners who strike Americans as dumb because of the language barrier.  Ski school was certainly not exaggerating when they said they had a dire shortage of Spanish-speaking instructors.

After lunch, one of the girls can’t find her skis in the massive pile of equipment that has accumulated while we’re inside.  We look for a while, and then I see a gray-coat (a corporate employee, senior to all the supervisors), and ask him for advice.  He is affably resourceful, calling to have some extra skis sent up – the most professional and kind demeanor by a long shot, compared to anyone to date I’ve met in a leadership position at Vail.

My girl finds her own skis at long last, obviating the need for having some sent up from the base.  We wind up with not quite enough time to do another lap, so we go back to the beginner slope and mix it up with some games.

We find some ungroomed powder and natural moguls in the trees off one slope.  Behind me, I hear little girls screeching with delight: “You’re the queen of the world!  The best teacher on the planet!”

Tonight there is a beautiful torchlight ski parade, where we ski school employees ski down a run in a snaking formation to Gold Peak at night, each holding two flaming torches. 

Day 34 / Teaching Day 12 (January 1, 2014)

Group lesson:  Six Level 4’s

It’s a powder day, so like many instructors, I’m open to getting “comboed out” today.   However, I wind up with a class of Level 4.5s, including my star natural-parallel-turns girl (the one who started out as a misclassified Level 1 just a few days ago!), whose family is still in town.

The kids are skilled enough that we can leverage the powder for fun – shrieks of delight and goofy smiles all day long.  Part of my job is to teach the kids how to love the snow, so with a class like this one, we make a point to stop and make snowballs and snow angels, taste the snow, notice animal tracks and point out the beauty of forested mountains in winter. The mountain is vibrating with excitement about the new year, the new snow, and the beautiful blue sky above. 

In the morning, another experienced instructor and I agree to tandem our classes all day, as we have the same level.  Jesse is happy about our route plan, which includes hitting the Game Creek Bowl in the afternoon.  The supervisors made a special pitch in the morning meeting that instructors should branch out more creatively around the mountain and consider the beautiful, long beginner run in Game Creek.

Getting off the chairlift for the last run of the day, one of my girls sees a ski patrol sled rescue pass by.  She freaks out, panicky and tearful, wailing that we just saw a dead body (injured skiers are wrapped in blankets, including over their faces, on a cold day like today – so they do in fact look like mummies).  I gather that someone in her family recently died, and she is traumatized by suggestions of mortality.  It takes a great deal of time to calm her down and pump her up about continuing our descent.  We’re below the only turn-off back to the main lift areas, and are committed to descending into Game Creek (the only way out of Game Creek is to take a chair-lift back up out of the bowl, and then ski down to the gondola).

By the time my girl has a smile back on her face and is ready to ski, we’re running a bit tight on time, but they’re all skiing well and we should be ok.  Then, when we’re partway down the long, beginner run that outlines this bowl, the same girl falls in some powder at the edge of the run.   It’s unclear whether she’s physically hurt, but she’s now hysterically upset and has completely given up.  Despite my best efforts, I can’t get her to try to stand up and see how she feels.  

The other kids are quickly getting cold by virtue of no longer moving, so I appoint one of them “in charge” to get all their skis off, into a pile, and give them a game to play so they keep warm – and keep out of our hair so I can talk to my girl and decide whether to make a phone call.  I sit by her in the snow, give her some extra hand warmers I keep with me (she’s been flailing around in the snow, mittens off, and only with much cajoling will she put on my own mittens).   I call ski patrol, barely able to dial the number as my fingers go numb quickly in this weather without mittens on myself.  The idea of ski patrol induces renewed, screaming fear in the girl. 

Ski patrol arrives, assesses her, and decides she is probably having a panic attack and is in no emotional state to ski.  One patroller makes a point of thanking me for doing a good job with the kids and following their protocol; he notes “let me know if you need me to talk to the ski school for you”. 

A helpful policy would be for ski patrol and ski school to debrief after such incidents – so ski school could evaluate how well instructors are handling on-mountain crises (which often is not well, according to ski patrol!), appropriately acknowledge those of us who do a good job protecting our kids, and identify instructors who are reckless or uninvested in their students’ well-being.  This was one case where proper actions on my part were later punished, which followed closely on the heels of another case where ski school left an injured girl alone for hours with impunity.

Ski patrol takes her down on a sled, and my duckling trail and I weave our way down the now-empty slope.  The upside is that the kids enjoy the best ski run they’ve ever had, an entire slope to themselves, in a bowl with a stunning view on a gloriously picturesque day!

Getting an injured person out of Game Creek takes time – ski patrol has to affix the sled to a chair on the chairlift, and in this case be very deliberate about it because the poor girl continues to wail and scream about having seen a dead person.  Once at the top, they stop the lift again, take the sled off, attach it to a snowmobile, and make their way down to the gondola.

In the meantime, I call ski school to let them know we’ve got a sled evacuation from Game Creek in the works.  They know far better than I do exactly what is involved in that procedure.

Nonetheless, when we all get down to the base area, I’m met with a surprise. The kids hail me as a heroic crisis manager, and the ski patrol guys give me a huge pat on the back for handling the situation “perfectly”.   But Jesse is critical, disdainful, and dismissive.  He hasn’t bothered to notify any of the parents (who are standing right near him, waiting for their kids) as to what happened.  So, I tell the story, give accolades all around for how the kids were supportive of their injured classmate, conquered impressive big-mountain terrain, and dealt with adverse weather and the novelty of fresh powder.  I take the injured girl’s dad aside and explain her extreme emotional behavior – he confirms that they’ve been dealing with similar issues at home and such a breakdown isn’t surprising behavior.  He’s certain that she’s not physically hurt, just triggered into a tantrum by home issues.

Jesse lights into me.  He doesn’t ask any questions about what happened.  All he knows is that ski patrol brought one of my kids down late in the day.  He makes all sorts of assumptions, and won’t allow me to speak a word to provide him the quite defensible facts.  Incapable of comprehending the difference between poor-quality decisions and unforeseen turns of event, he pronounces it a “bad decision” to take a ski school class into Game Creek in the afternoon (even though this was his express recommendation that morning).   I bite my tongue about pointing out that I actually followed exactly the terrain suggestion he gave us all that morning.  But, I will come to regret not demanding credit for following instructions and dealing superbly with an unexpected event.

At 5:30pm, I’m finally released to go home – and lodging today is a 6-hour drive away, through a snowstorm to Denver.  I sleep in my car in the parking lot of the company with which I have an early-morning interview:  Vail Resorts.  Michael, the CFO, asks for my perspective on the ski school management team. 

I am tempted to engage in a candid discussion about process improvement opportunities for ski school – after all, that is what I used to do for a living!  In my 3 weeks of experience thus far, I see that chronically contradictory directions from multiple supervisors destroys their credibility with the instructor pool, that much of the morning chaos arises out of supervisor decision-making uncertainty, inhibition of peer-to-peer instructor contact precludes grass roots problem-solving in the resulting power vacuum, and the lack of escalation path for unresolved problems and supervisor failures leaves instructors like me vulnerable to a never-ending series of compounding barriers to productivity and even personal safety ….  Vail ski school is certainly the most dysfunctional service business I’ve seen up close, but its failures with process, hiring and evaluation are not unique: lack of clearly-defined protocols for what-if situations, failure to hire people with appropriate temperament for their job, and lack of actionable metrics in place to track drivers of satisfaction/retention/profitability.

With great self-restraint, I bite my tongue about the dysfunction and incompetence that I have already found to be endemic to the organization – that’s a conversation for another time.  I will come to regret exercising such discretion.  (On the upside, I do later receive an offer for a senior-level M&A position!… though the new position sadly evaporates when Vail abruptly pivots strategy and ousts its corporate development team.)

Day 36 / Teaching Day 13  (January 3)

Group lesson:  Six level 4’s

Today I am happy to see a couple of Venezuelan girls from a few days ago, along with their mothers.  They seek out Jesse to ask if I can be assigned to their kids today since they really loved their class with me.  He reluctantly agrees – he is ambivalent about letting parents effectively select an instructor for a group lesson, without paying for an official private lesson.   

We wind up with another all-girl, all-Spanish group representing Venezuela, Mexico, and Puerto Rico.   

Miraculously, nothing bad happens all day:  no altitude sickness, no lost mittens, no crying, no emotional crises, no physical injuries, no cliquish in-fighting, no sitting down in the snow and refusing to continue. 

However, Jesse puts his signature sour mark on the day.  When I arrive at the base at 3:25, he comes up to me to snipe that I “arrived a few minutes too early”.   (We are directed to try to get the kids to the end-of-day meeting point between 3:30 and 3:45.  We’re supposed to manufacture delays to avoid being early, by having kids to do a pre-descent bathroom break, for example.  But uncertainty about how fast the gondola downloading line will move makes it tricky to hit that window exactly.)

In a bar in town, I run into the father of a friend of one of today’s kids.  Evidently, the Venezuelans in town all talk, and word has spread that I’m the best teacher to get little girls over their downhill fears, and to do so in their native language.   This guy wants me to do a half-day private lesson with his daughter tomorrow.  His interest is a nice vote of confidence – but, I believe we’re not supposed to solicit private request lessons for ourselves.  I tactfully deflect his request by suggesting that I might not be working tomorrow, and that there are plenty of great private lesson teachers to choose from.

Day 37 / Teaching Day 14  (January 4)

No lesson assigned (Still counts as teaching day)

I arrive at work in the morning to find that, despite my protestations, the guy from the bar has made a private request for me by name.  I have no choice but to twiddle my thumbs for the unpaid morning, and wait for the afternoon lesson.  The mothers of my 5 returns are irate that I appear to be available, standing around, but am not being assigned to their kids – I do my best to smooth it over, explaining that there are policies above my pay grade.  The kids hug me goodbye before trailing off after their new instructor (two of them are crying).

Accordingly to policy, the private lesson supervisor is supposed to ask an instructor for permission to book them when an instructor-specific request is made.  But Con doesn’t do this.

At 10am, my private lesson gets cancelled by the father (though I don’t find out until 11am).  This is plenty of time to put me back onto a group lesson, as they are all oversubscribed today, but Jesse doesn’t do that.  

When I see the cancellation in my online schedule, it takes me the next 1.5 hours to run to ground what happened (is it cancelled?  Is that a mistake and I still need to show up?).   The admin office tells me to ask Haley; Haley says ask admin; admin sends me elsewhere; they send me to the ticket office; I wait for half an hour in line at the ticket office; the clerk asks his supervisor; finally someone recalls that the father phoned in to say his daughter was probably too sick to do the lesson; the ticket supervisor thinks I might still have a lesson but doesn’t know where I should report to; they say I should ask Jesse; Jesse tells me to meet him somewhere; but then Jesse is dismissive and tells me to “hover”).  I hover for another hour, and then get staffed on an hour-long special project to catch a Level 1 kid up to the rest of his class.

While in the ticket office, the ticket office supervisor is stunned to realize that I have been unassigned to work for several days over the holidays.  He’s been having to actually turn away guests who want to book Spanish-language private lessons.  Yet, Con has declined to staff me on private lessons, even when I had no work and private requests were going unmet.   

It has finally become inescapably clear to me that management is punishing me for its shame in bungling my employment and housing situation.  The antagonism towards me will continue all season… but I won’t learn of the real damage until two years hence.

Tonight, the father of my would-be private lesson girl today calls my cell phone twice, and texts me a dozen or so times.  I realize now that he’s hitting on me, and try to shut it down by referring him politely to the ticket office for rebooking.

Day 38 / Teaching Day 15  (January 5)

Small group lesson: Three level 4’s

Today I find I’m scheduled again for a private request by the same Venezuelan father.   I show up at the appointed time, and find out that the lesson was again cancelled.   Apparently, he booked the lesson yesterday, but cancelled it after I was non-responsive to his overtures on my cell phone.  At this point, I bluntly tell Con explicitly to please not rebook me if there is another request from this guy, as it feels like an inappropriate situation. Con is immediately, surprisingly understanding, admitting that this (male tourists effectively soliciting female ski instructors) is known to happen occasionally.  

Con makes a point to book me on a “good” group lesson today, clearly hoping to make it up to me.  I wind up on a “U4” lesson (a premium group lesson, limited to 4 students) for the first time.  Instructors like these lessons, as the whole process is far less chaotic than regular group lessons, the pay is higher, and the students are often more engaged. 

This winds up being one of my most satisfying teaching days all season.  I have 3 teenage boys from Mexico City who are focused on exorcising the last vestige of snowplowing from their parallel turns.  Their polite and earnest attitude is particularly impressive, given that it is a bitterly cold day, with high winds and very few people out on the slopes. 

Day 39 / Teaching Day 16  (January 6)

Private lesson:  Four Level 2’s – Level 6’s

I get a 5pm phone call last night to do an all-day Spanish-language family private today.  I’m surprised to be offered a family private as a first-year instructor, and happily accept the gig.  Con is the one who has black-box control over private lesson assignments; together with yesterday’s plum assignment, this suggests to me that I’m now on his good side.

The family turns out to be from Brazil – so they are Portuguese-speaking, not Spanish-speaking.  They are surprised that I don’t speak Portuguese, since they thought that’s what they had requested.   After some discussion, we collectively determine that the best language approach for the day is for me to teach in Spanish, with the parents occasionally translating complex thoughts into Portuguese for the kids.  (The father understands and speaks proficient English and Spanish; the mother understands but doesn’t speak English or Spanish; the two kids understand but don’t speak Spanish. So, Spanish is the best common denominator.) 

It’s unclear whether the front desk didn’t understand the difference between Portuguese and Spanish, whether they assume all Spanish-speakers know Portuguese, or whether they understood but neglected to inform the family that there aren’t any Portuguese speakers on staff. 

The bigger challenge is that that the mom is a Level 2, the kids are Level 3-4, and the dad is a Level 6.   We strategize about breaking up the group and the day so that everyone gets some focused attention from me and the opportunity to make progress. 

At the end of the day, I take the dad off one-on-one for a few runs down Level 6 terrain, and saturate him with a lot of technique advice that he’s eager for.   (He only intends to take this one lesson, and would like a lot of things to work on over his coming vacation days here – normally an instructor should focus on one area of improvement at a time).  As a first-time instructor, I am not supposed to be teaching above Level 5, and have had no training on how teach Level 6.   Experienced instructors joke:  “What do you do if your client is a better skier than you are?   You ski behind them!”    That’s not the case today, but still I prudently ski behind my guy, and ply him with history about Vail mountain, its relationship to WWII 10^th mountain division veterans, the story of Riva Ridge (a key battle in the war, honored as the name of Vail’s longest and most iconic ski run), terrain recommendations for his family, and sightseeing recommendations in the valley – all with us two non-native speakers communicating in what we thought was our only common tongue.   As we said goodbye, he broke into impeccable, rapid-fire English, thanking me for a great day with a wink and a smile.

Day 40 (January 7)

I leave today for the annual ice climbing festival in Ouray, Colorado.   Ouray is a world-class ice climbing destination 6 hours southwest of Vail, with a huge, manufactured “ice park.”  

I am planning to attend an avalanche safety lecture tonight before I leave, but it is cancelled.  Tragically, there has been an avalanche death today in the East Vail chutes – a dangerous but popular side-country route with chairlift access.   The young grandson of one of Vail’s founders passed away in a horrible accident.

Day 48 / Training Day 12 (January 15)

Mandatory refresher training day

Today we have a laid-back on-snow day reviewing teaching techniques and procedures.

Yesterday, Vail employees were treated to first-tracks early-morning mountain access. 

Day 50 (January 17)

Women’s demo day

Female ski school employees are invited to test out women’s-specific skis from a variety of brands.   I get to demo 7 different skis, lapping the same groomed trail over and over again to get an apples-to-apples comparison.   What I discover is that every single one is dramatically better than mine!   My skis – the only pair I’ve ever owned – are a few years old, and now that I have some benchmarks, it is clear that they have lost their spring.  I’ve got a back-country setup on them, which I now understand from all the technical information we get today, further impedes responsiveness.  Additionally, I had believed they were “fat” skis, appropriate for powder…. but since moving to Colorado, I have come to realize that they are in fact a moderate width for this geography, compared to a true powder ski.  Time for new skis!

Day 51 (January 18)

On my way out of the apartment this morning, my landlord accosts me, demanding additional rent since he’s “not getting enough out of the deal” (meaning that there’s a rent premium for not sleeping with him).  He demands cash on the spot, again reminding me that there can’t be a paper trail for his estranged wife to discover.   I manage to stay firm that I will pay what we agreed on, and I will do so with a check.  “Don’t fuck with me!” he yells, yanking my arm and pushing me against the wall before I duck and slide out the door.

Rattled, I call in a favor from a friend, who drives to Vail to retrieve my dog from the apartment while we’re at ski school for the day.  I don’t think he’s safe there, and I will turn out to be right.

After work, I meet a friend from Denver who has come up to stay with me for the weekend.  I take her to the apartment to unpack, and Todd is there.  He eyes her up and down lecherously, saying “is this your girlfriend?”  As we leave, he screams “fucking slut” at me and says he’s locking the door behind me (and he has never given me a key).  Thank God I’ve already gotten my dog out of harm’s way.

Over the course of the evening, Todd texts me an escalating series of menacing messages.  My friend is too scared to stay in the apartment with me, and books a last-minute hotel room.  She and I call for a police standby to retrieve my belongings from the apartment, but it’s a weekend night and they are too busy with drunk-and-disorderly calls elsewhere.  After sleeping in my clothes in my friend’s hotel room, I meet the police escort the next morning to retrieve my belongings.  Luckily, Todd has already left for work, so there’s no confrontation. 

The police officers admonish me somewhat cryptically to “really watch out for that guy”, since “he didn’t get what he wanted” from me, and they “know him”.   Once I hear more information about “Todd the God”, and I will come to wonder how he is still employed at Vail Resorts.

Day 52  (January 19)

Finding myself not scheduled to work today, I go into the locker room during off hours to pick up something I left there (hoping by avoiding prime hours, I won’t run into Todd, who may or may not yet realize that I’ve vacated his apartment – the police warned me that realizing I’ve left could trigger violence).  

Instead, I run into Jesse, who asks, “Can you work tomorrow?”   “Not easily,” I respond, tears welling up.  “Actually, can I talk to you?  I just had to involve the police to get out of Todd’s apartment this morning…“   He cuts me off, uninterested as ever in the housing crisis he created for me.  “No big deal,” he snaps, walking away.

Someone else in my locker row pipes up to console me, saying “Jesse does that to me, too”.  It’s increasingly hard to tell if the unprofessional attitude from him all season has been directed at everyone, or more pointedly at me. 

Long-time instructors have a theory that Vail intentionally mistreats its first-time instructors, to ensure a high attrition rate, and thus maintain a constant high percentage of first-time instructors every year – which keeps their margins high because first-time instructors are paid less.

Locker room talk buzzes about a seasoned ski instructor who was caught today going out of bounds.  At Vail, this is a heavily-sanctioned transgression, resulting in a suspended ski pass.   Apparently, there was a hand-wringing discussion about whether or not to punish this guy at all.  “He’s their mule”, people said. “Ski school depends on him.”   Selective punishment of ski instructors’ bad behavior, in deference to their tenure, is a running theme at Vail ski school.  I will later experience this personally when Todd’s subsequent bad behavior toward me isn’t addressed.

Days 54 — 71

I’m back to being stuck in limbo with neither the promised full-time ski school job plus housing, nor accommodations in Denver to begin building my next step of life there.  But, my desperation from the Todd situation results in three couch offers, which I can rotate amongst for the time being.  It is sad and ironic, however, that after fleeing a bad situation back home… I must now deal with similar, triggering issues in the beautiful, faraway place in which I sought refuge.

One of the best perks of being a ski instructor is access to free lessons… so I decide to learn to snowboard!  After two lessons I’m already at a Level 4! 

The snowboard school supervisor, Davey, is excited to see someone so enthusiastic about the sport, and generously invites me to meet him every day during his free hour before lunch to take runs with him and get coaching.  I take him up on this many times.

I note that the way that Davey manages his side of the ski/snowboard school puts in stark relief Jesse and the ski supervisors’ incompetence and lack of professionalism.  Snowboard instructors all respect their supervisor, and find him to be responsive to their needs and eager to solve problems.   He proves that it’s possible to deal with the inevitable chaos of on-mountain guest services and still maintain good manners and a fun, positive attitude.

At a dinner party at Davey and his wife’s home, I meet people who invite me to do the famed Minturn Mile, which runs from the side of Game Creek Bowl down to a fantastic saloon/restaurant in the quaint town of Minturn.  I had done this hike in reverse in the summertime, and it’s fascinating to see it covered in snow!

Day 72 (February 8)

This morning my helmet, goggles and gloves are missing from my locker.  Those of us who were assigned shared lockers are unfortunately unable to protect our gear by using a lock, but this is the first time I’ve heard of anything going missing.

In place of my gear, I find some random street clothes and two rental helmets.  So I ski today wearing liner gloves, no goggles, and no helmet.  I email my locker-mate, who tells me she hasn’t been up to Vail from her home in Denver since December. 

Tomorrow afternoon I find two wet instructor jackets without nametags.  I email Jesse and Dan to tell them my gear is missing and ask who is using my and Rachel’s locker.  Their only response is to say I can just consider it my own locker now (since evidently Rachel has transferred to Gold Peak and nobody told me), and can put a lock on it going forward.  They decline to tell me who was told to use my locker so that I can try to track down the missing gear, and they decline to send out a lost-and-found email to the instructor pool.

Sadly, I have no choice but to buy a replacement helmet, goggles, and gloves.  The $350 expenditure consumes about 1/3 of my ski school earnings to date.

A week later, my missing belongings reappear on the locker room floor.  I piece together that a late-season hire was cavalierly told by one supervisor to use my locker, and he tossed my stuff away because he didn’t know it was already in use.  Another supervisor cavalierly told me to lock it after my stuff went missing, and that eventually sorted things out.  An avoidable absurdity if supervisors showed concern for employee problems and communicated internally to solve them.

Day 84 (February 20)

I am relieved to have heard nothing from my ex-landlord since I removed my belongings from the apartment a month ago, and left some appeasement cash on his counter.

Today, as I’m walking through crowded Lionshead Square in the late afternoon (carrying my new snowboard to be waxed – yay!), he races up to me and starts yelling and grabbing me.   I beg him to leave me alone, but he keeps ranting at me about wanting money.  I try to just put my head down and keep walking silently, but he gets me in a lock and knocks me down.  Struggling under his weight on the ground, I manage to get my cell phone out and call 911.   Simultaneously, three people in the crowd also call 911 (as I will learn later).   Finally, I break away and run into the ski shop where I was headed, and crouch behind a ski rack.  One of the ski shop employees blocks the door, leaving Todd ranting outside.  Police cars arrive more or less instantly.  They arrest him and he spends the night in jail.  It’s a spectacle, and as the police interview all the witnesses, it becomes clear to the assembled crowd that a Vail ski instructor was just arrested for assault.

I will eventually hear other reports about this guy’s renowned bad behavior: 

• Several fellow ski instructors approach me to explain that Todd is well known to be “intense” and “volatile”.  They refer to his old car as “the rape van”.
• An acquaintance unaffiliated with the resort explains that Todd refers to himself “Todd the God” and is well-known by long-time residents as bad news
• A female instructor who had a run-in with him tells me that he sent his 3-year-old daughter to daycare with marijuana packed into a box of raisins in her lunchbox
• A worker at that daycare tells me Todd was asked to not come inside anymore when he drops off his daughter, as he habitually fondled the staff

Ski school management must know what kind of person Todd is, after so many years of having him on staff, and such a widespread negative reputation among his peers.  And yet they found it acceptable to leave me in a position where my only option was to rent a room from him. 

Days 85 – 87

Last night, a couple hours after my ex-landlord attacked me, my friend from Minneapolis arrives for a weekend visit.  I manage to do an emotional about-face and focus on enjoying her long-planned visit!

She gets a hotel in town, and I have the luxury of getting to live in Vail Village for a weekend!   This is where employee housing is also located, and I experience first-hand just how much commute time, gas cost, parking cost, and 2-hour blizzard drives to work would have been avoidable, had I been able to get housing in town.  

Days 88 — 91

Like many women traumatized by aggressive men, I (naively and irrationally) just want the issue to go away.  I decline to press charges, as I’m afraid of further retaliation from both Todd and ski school.  I haven’t been given any work since I first told Jesse about the drama of how I had to get away from Todd. 

At the same time, I’m terrified of running into him again, now that he physically attacked me in broad daylight with such unhinged impunity – and now that other instructors have consoled me by sharing their awful stories about this guy.  The stress of having to modify behavior and worry about which path to the lockers and the bus and which timeframes are safest is something that weighs on me heavily.

To add insult to injury, today my locker is covered with condoms taped to it.  A piece of notebook paper sticks out of the hinge slot, with the scrawled word “CUNT”.   I tearfully approach Jesse and Con, both of whom blow me off.   There’s a default restraining order in place (something to do with the assault having been witnessed and called in by bystanders), which would enable me to now press charges for this harassment… but Vail’s reaction makes me think the best thing again is to sweep it under the rug.

I will come to regret not proactively controlling the narrative of Todd’s actions and demanding the protection my employer was obligated to provide.  It will later become evident that I was being punished by Vail first for being hired by Vail under unusual circumstances and then later for being victimized by a Vail employee. The supervisors were already using aggression to cover up their own screw-ups regarding my employment status, housing, and onboarding. When they saw their own actions put me in a physically dangerous situation, their defense would become painting me as a problem… to an extent that I won’t fully comprehend until I apply to be a returning ski instructor two years later. 

Days 92 – 94

This weekend, Dartmouth – my undergraduate alma mater – holds a reunion on Vail mountain.  Alums from all over the country attend, primarily ex-ski-team members.   I get to ski all weekend with an Olympic ski racer from the 1960s, who I know from last year’s reunion.  I’m thrilled to hear his assessment that my skiing technique has vastly improved in the past year.  All those free clinics I’ve taken advantage of on non-work days have made a difference!

Day 109 / Teaching Day 17 (March 17)

Private lesson:  Four Level 5’s

I still haven’t been given any work since I first told Jesse about Todd’s actions, nor since he attacked me a month ago.  But, I’ve been too rattled by the incident to complain.  

Today, Con desperately needs a Spanish-speaking instructor, because the fleet of Argentine college kids Vail hired over Christmas has returned home now that their summer break is over.  So, he had no choice but to call me last night, pleadingly hoping that I happen to still be in town (despite not having housing locally) and available (given that I might logically have other commitments by this point).

The lesson today is a blast for everyone!   A whole family from Peru:  2 parents and 2 teenage kids.  We ski together until the lifts close, well past the time when lessons theoretically end, and then spend time chatting about terrain and tourism recommendations for the rest of their upcoming week vacation.  Given our focus on ski technique, it’s only as we say goodbye that we discover that the father and I both got our MBAs at the same school.  

Like most of the adult tourists from Latin America, they speak fluent English and only requested Spanish in order to get a native speaker they imagined they’d get along with culturally. Learning something new in challenging conditions is more comfortable in one’s native language, so we conduct the day in Spanish, regardless. 

The lesson sales office could avoid some problems by distinguishing between “fluent” and “native speaker” in the instructor database… as well as between “fluent” and “can yell a few words in Spanglish”– which is the proficiency level of most of Vail’s “bilingual” instructors. Nobody tested or inquired about my proficiency level before hiring me for my language skills. In my case, this happened to work out, given that I majored in Spanish and have used it for business over many years.

Con calls me tonight to tell me the family told him they were extremely happy with the lesson.  He tells me to check my schedule online, as I might now get scheduled.  I hope this means that the powers-that-be are done punishing me for being the victim of one of their employees… but I will be wrong.

Day 110 / Teaching Day 18  (March 18)

Group lesson:  Ten Level 1’s

Today I get to teach a Level 1 class.  These are rewarding in that instructors get to shape kids’ first memory of skiing.  

The snow is very sticky today, and the kids are having unusual trouble getting their skis on due to clumping on their boots and bindings.  My year-old ACL replacement has withstood months of hard skiing, backcountry trips, and moguls – but is aggravated today by some 500 reps of kneeling and standing today to help the kiddos. 

After a very long time getting 10 kids’ skis on, we are ready to take a first run town the beginner area.  But suddenly one girl vomits.  I ask nearby snowboard supervisor Steve if he can take her in to the sick area, but he refuses and tells me to take all the kids in together.  Bizarrely, while he idly stands and watches me, I spend 20 min removing all the kids’ skis while the poor girl lies moaning in the snow next to her puddle of vomit.   Once I have them ready to follow me in and am picking up the girl in my arms, Steve now offers to take her in to the sick area.   So, we spend another half hour putting 9 kids’ skis back on again, and manage to get one run down the magic carpet before lunchtime.  

Supervisors are supposed to mill around the ski school yard to help with these types of situations.  But the truth is that they want to free ski, and they disappear as soon as they can (or refuse to help sick kids in this case, because they want to disappear).  This isn’t the first time I’ve found that no supervisor has been available, or one has refused to help a sick child.

After lunch, the sick girl is returned to our group and we all finish out the day making lots of progress on the magic carpet.  One of my little charges adorably sums up her first skiing experience saying “the only bad thing about skiing is that when you get to the top of the magic carpet, there are big hairy men who grab you”. 

At the end of the day, I tell Jesse my knee is swollen and I may need to take a day off tomorrow.  He callously sneers, “well, let someone know if you’re not coming in so I don’t yell at you for not showing up.”   Despite his nastiness all season, I’m still a bit surprised at his reaction to an employee with a potential on-the-job injury.  I email him later that I indeed do need to take the next day off to ice my knee, but get no response or acknowledgement.

Day 116 / Teaching Day 17 (March 24)

Group lesson:  4 Level 3’s

Great day in a U4 lesson with a set of fun kids!

Day 117 / Teaching Day 20 (March 25)

Group lesson:  Six Level 3’s

I’m sent to the U4 yard give a lesson to my returns.  But only one returning student shows up.  He elects to follow me into a group lesson, rather than being re-assigned to another U4 teacher. 

Consistently through the season, my kids have loved me!  This has a lot to do with the fact that I actually teach a real lesson – whereas many instructors stand around the lesson area aloofly, often without skis on.  They yell at the kids, complain to other instructors, chat with the magic carpet lifties, and simply ski down the mountain without watching kids’ technique, doing drills, or offering coaching.  As there are rarely supervisors in the area to observe lesson dynamics, there’s no accountability to actually put effort into being an attentive, enthusiastic teacher.  Some would argue that such passivity is the only way to not burn out in the job – and indeed I must admit that my intensive approach leaves me too exhausted to do much other than teach and sleep.

We wind up as a group of 6, and have a great day on the mountain.  It will be my last day teaching, though I don’t know it at the time.

Vail is now heavily advertising for spring season workers – including “housing available”.   Meanwhile, I’m told yet again that there is no space for me in employee housing.  Is this more CYA punishment… or false advertising?

Day 137 (April 14)

Tonight is a blood moon and a full lunar eclipse.  I skin up Meadow Mountain with my dog for a fantastic nighttime ski!

Day 143 (April 20)

Closing day!   This year, closing day coincides with 4/20, and is the first year of legalized recreational marijuana in Colorado.   I haven’t seen prior closing days… but my understanding is that this one is wilder than usual.  When the lifts close at the end of the day, there’s a big cheer at the top of lifts 4, 5, and 11.  A few people are so stoned, drunk, and otherwise altered that they can’t stand up on their skis.  My friends and I ski down carefully and quickly to get out of the fray.

Day 144 (April 21)

Employee ski day – a nice reward to have the mountain to ourselves at the end of the season!

Wrap-up (April 22)

Today we are to turn back in our ski school uniforms at the HR building. 

HR won’t accept my uniform, because the ID # on it indicates it belongs to my ex-lockermate, Rachel.  So, it turns out that Jesse never took care of the uniform-swap situation back in January, despite claiming at the time that he had.  

HR puts a debit on my account of some $1000, explaining with exasperation about Jesse that he should have known how to address the issue.  I am told that I must simply hope that Rachel turns in my uniform – and otherwise will find out next fall that I’m prohibited from buying a new ski pass.  I email Jesse imploring him again to fix this problem. 

Epilogue (October 2014)

Receive email from Dan (the supervisor of supervisors) with the returning ski instructor training schedule for the coming season.  Though I’m now living in Denver and hadn’t yet thought about ski school for the upcoming winter, the fact that Dan presumes I’m returning nudges me into completing the online application to sign up. 

After four months without a response, in March I receive auto-reject email that I’m “no longer being considered” for the job.  I hadn’t focused much on the strangely long delay, as I am preoccupied with working long hours at a tech startup in Denver.

Epilogue (October 2015)

I’d like to teach skiing this year, as I have more time in my work schedule in Denver.  I email Con to see if he’s still working in ski school, so I can ask him about options (e.g., “holiday help” structure that I saw many Denver-based instructors use during my year).   But, I’m shocked to receive this email from Con:  “I spoke to the rest of the management team and reviewed your evaluation from the 2013/14 season. Unfortunately, based on the feedback and comments received, we are unable to offer you a position with Vail Ski School this season.” 

Outraged, I reply to Con by email protesting that this makes no sense, as I was an extremely well-liked instructor with high accolades, and reminding him that I endured assault and retaliation after being stuck without housing.  I never hear back from him. 

A new email from Dan says that they are “reviewing [my] performance appraisal from 2013-14 and will be in touch with [me] by the end of next week with more information.”  I never hear back.

2013-2014 season summary stats

Skiing frequency
Season length, in days	144
Season days lived in the Vail valley	107
Total days on snow	75
Days on-snow training with ski school	10
Days teaching at ski school	20
Days free skiing	45
Vertical feet	690,000
Average vertical feet per day on snow	9,200
Days on snow as % of season days in the valley	70%

Ski instructor earnings
Gross wages for season	$1,784
After-tax wages	$1,284
Equipment theft	-$350
Gas and parking on work days	-$574
Net take-home pay	$360
Total hours on the clock	189
Net take-home pay per hour	$1.90