Gossip

An easy way to lose friends here is to stand in someone’s way of making money.  Another is to throw something at a person’s face.  Within two weeks of the season, there was a drunken incident that turned ugly, and I have heard reports from those involved and those who observed.  Everyone mentioned forthwith will be anonymous, although anyone familiar with the incident will surely know the players in this drama.

Two of my friends, whom I will refer to as Thelma and Louise, had a difficult time adapting to the social environment that comes with seasonal work.  This was their first experience working in a national park, so I gave them advice and listened to their qualms——issues for which I mostly had sympathy.  They worked the breakfast and lunch shift with coworkers who have been employed here for years.  Seniority and favoritism is institutionalized here.  Newcomers are at the bottom of the barrel, and assimilation into a well-established unit is by no means easy. 

The best strategy, I believe, is to be nice to those in charge even if you detest them.  Eventually, you can get what you want, or at the least be left alone.  The last thing you want to do is end up on a senior member’s shit-list.  Unfortunately, Thelma and Louise soon found themselves on too many of such a list just by speaking their minds and choosing to question the status quo. 

During one shift, a few senior members were making fun of a former coworker who suffered from a neurological condition.  Thelma and Louise overheard this discussion and were offended by their remarks and so made their opinions known.  The senior coworkers initially apologized to Thelma and Louise, but behind closed doors and presumably outside of earshot they began talking behind their backs, saying things like:  They should go back to where they came from.  Thelma could hear everything that was said.  They couldn’t take this type of treatment anymore, so they quit and moved to a different department.

Thelma and Louise were known for being rowdy and a bit odd at times.  Despite their usual youthful antics, they are harmless and, at most, misunderstood.  We are living in isolation, so gossip spreads quickly.  When word got out that Thelma and Louise quit, the gossip-spreaders began to form their own opinions of the two girls without truly understanding the situation.  I asked a friend who was in with the senior members, and I also asked the girls about the situation so as not to make assumptions, and I sympathized with their plight.  The crew they were working with is known to be stubborn if you cross them, and I commended Thelma and Louise for speaking their minds about an issue they were passionate about.

This was only a pretext for what was to come.  A few nights later, Thelma and Louise were accused of stealing toiletries left behind from someone who quit.  Whether this accusation is true or not seems irrelevant when you consider the outcome.  A new character enters the scene.  I will call her Mary; she was the one making the accusations.  I only worked with Mary once and was only able to form an opinion of her based on minimal evidence.

 

She has a spunky personality, and she seemed to enjoy the outdoors.  I bumped into her in the park a few times while out on a hike and another time while photographing the sunset at a remote outlook.  She told me that she worked in a national park before.  She also revealed that she once attended college but chose to drop out.  From another source, I heard that she smoked weed the day before we were drug tested and claimed to have found a solution for doctoring the results of the saliva sample.  I got the impression she wasn’t the most responsible person in the world, but then again she seemed to have a plan to save up money to replace her totaled car by picking up any extra shift available.  She was a hard worker, and she seemed sensible despite making a few irresponsible and ill-timed decisions.

One night she started throwing bottles of shampoo at Thelma and Louise during a drunken rampage.  The two girls locked themselves in the bathroom and called the Park Rangers.  When I later questioned witnesses, they said that was too extreme and overly dramatic.  Apparently, the situation could easily have been handled by our security guard, who would have gotten everything under control with only minor consequences.

The Park Rangers arrived at the scene, and Mary spit in the Ranger’s face.  They threw a bag over her head, and she kicked the Ranger and screamed, “You’re hurting me.”  She was promptly arrested.  While she was in handcuffs, Thelma and Louise came out from their hiding place and yelled derogatory terms at Mary while she was defenseless.  I heard this the next day from both Thelma and Louise.  Thelma pulled up a picture on her phone of Mary’s mug shot at the county jail.  Her hair was messy, and she lowered her eyes and hung her head.  She was charged with assaulting a police officer, and bail was posted at over $5,000.  The story spread throughout the village.  Despite the vacancy, work resumed as normal.      

I have worked a few seasonal jobs alongside a cast of questionable characters, but my first few weeks at Bryce Canyon have been filled with drama.  The incident with Thelma and Louise was only the beginning.  A coworker who waited tables alongside me was recently fired when the company decided to read his background check.  It turns out that this fellow had multiple DUIs and a few arrests for physical assault.  Perhaps the most shocking fact about that entire situation was the discovery proved to be no shock at all.  It is a true, but unfortunate inevitability that criminals can infiltrate seasonal work.

In addition to multiple firings due to criminal activity and the usual excessive drunkenness and failed drug tests, there was a bloody car crash, the details of which I will not describe, and a missing person case. 

A housekeeper didn’t show up for work the previous two days, and her roommate revealed to me potential clues left behind.  The housekeeper is an older woman who happens to be very spiritual and was experiencing real estate issues with her family.  She was last seen a few days ago driving out of the park in her own car, and she has left all of her belongings behind.  On the desk, her roommate found a newspaper with random doodles of shapes, a prophetic phrase dealing with the wrath of the gods, and an address in the nearby town of Tropic. 

“You have to follow this lead,” I said to the roommate.

“I’m going there tomorrow,” she said, “But I’m not sure what I’m going to find.”

“You have a unique opportunity to solve a mystery here.  The outcome could be full of intrigue, or it could be completely mundane.”

We have a small cast of characters that we see every day at work or in the employee dining room, so whenever something noteworthy happens everyone will know about it sooner or later.  Secrets are worth holding onto, but they are worth even more when they are divulged among the small band you trust.  I’ve been advised to stay out of the drama, and I do not care to cause any problems, nor do I wish to be the subject of a stranger’s discussion over breakfast.  However, I have vowed to myself to investigate the details of strange incidents to more accurately describe the social network one finds at seasonal jobs.

We are detached from the normal goings-on of the rest of the world, so gossip becomes the local news.  There is a good chance someone else is listening to your conversation in public areas, and there’s an even better chance that someone will watch you make a fool of yourself.  I witnessed a hulk of a man pound on someone else’s door, imploring that he come out from hiding so he could smash his face.  I was walking with two friends from the dorm rooms to the canyon rim during a moonless night to watch the stars, but we hung back so that we could be the first to witness a breaking story. A hotel concierge approached us on the trail on his way home from work and asked us: “Are you here for the show?”