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Recollections From Schlitterbahn Galveston Island
(Finding my feet on a slippery road):

My time working at Schlitterbahn Waterpark came about in 2009, when I moved from Columbus, Ohio to Galveston, Texas. My mom was set to move to Galveston and I went out there ahead of her, anxious for a change and a new adventure. Her mother-in-law and I rented a unit in a four-plex house from a gay couple who lived in the full-size house next door. Galveston's historic East End is full of old Southern style houses, all blocks away from the beach (Galveston is an barrier island off the Gulf Coast - basically a giant sandbar).


About a month after we arrived, I learned through the grapevine that a guy my age on the same block was searching for a job just like I was, and I was invited to come along with him and his girlfriend and spend the day driving around and applying at various places. He was mentally slow in some way. His girlfriend didn't seem to have any kind of impairment, but she came across as simple-minded. She wore a cross necklace and alluded to her faith in conversation. I got the the impression she might have seen being with him as sort of an act of pity to be a good Christian. In any case, I enjoyed their company.

One of our many stops was Schlitterbahn, on the west end of town. I had already heard of Schlitterbahn because it was a big tourist attraction on the island. It was a very quick process with a short application and I hardly thought anything of it. Soon afterwards I was interviewed and hired as an "Admissions Cashier". I don't know how things turned out for the people who took me job hunting, but they were not hired at Schlitterbahn and I never heard from them again.

As an Admissions Cashier, I rarely worked the ticket windows as the title suggests. It just meant I was in the Admissions department, wore a light blue shirt, and was authorized to work the registers. Most of the people the public would interact with were Admissions Cashiers.

It didn't pay well but in my experience that's not unusual for jobs in the Southern states. It suited me because I was intent on gaining valuable skills and experience through employment, and getting paid to be educated instead of paying for it. It was a high volume tourist destination and I was pleased to have a people oriented job that allowed me to work on my social skills. I appreciated the culture because it was easier to talk to and get to know people, at least superficially. I like feeling like part of a group and this contrasted with other work environments that I found more alienating because of how indifferent people can be. In the admissions department especially, everyone was encouraged to be friendly and make conversation with the guests and each other.

In retrospect it's obvious that a big reason I stuck with this job and put my heart into it was that I was seeking a sense of belonging. I wanted to connect with people. I saw the limitations of the superficiality, but I felt equally limited by unstructured social situations based on going to the same school, drinking, video games, etc. I believed I could ultimately transcend all of it by becoming more practiced at behaving in a way that provoked interpersonal connections, allowing me more access to people I could relate to based on values and shared sense of purpose.

As an example to illustrate the strain and confusion of the process I was in, I recall that there was a girl I worked with occasionally who I appreciated because she seemed very much on the same page as me with trying to make conversation and spread a good vibe amongst everyone. It was a big contrast to the cliquish behavior that other high school age people tended to exhibit. One day I asked her where she lived and if she'd like to hang out some time. It was a bit of a walk between our houses not prohibitively so. This didn't go over well. She muttered something about us not really living that close which gave way to awkward silence.

I don't think it had anything to do with me, except that I underestimated the power of the culture surrounding us outside the Schlitterbahn bubble and perhaps was expecting too much of someone her age (though I can't have been more than 3 or 4 years older than her). No doubt if people from her school or neighborhood knew about us hanging out, they would be asking who her new boyfriend was. Any sort of vibe we had between us would simply not compute and likely collapse once it brushed up against the "realness" of the street culture on the island. But I don't regret my boldness at all. Live and learn.

Schlitterbahn is German for "slippery road". The park included an entrance area leading into an open area with a wave pool in front, a central shelter/locker area, and three sub-parks extending out from there, also with German names, including a convertible indoor area ("Wasserfest") which remained open in the colder months. When I came to work I would report to the Admissions and Accounting Office to clock in. It was pretty secure since that's where all the cash was kept. You would go up to a nondescript brown door, press the buzzer, and flash your badge to the camera. If someone was paying attention you would be let in quickly. Or, you might be stuck in the buffer room between the two doors for a minute with other staff waiting for the second door to unlock. The office would fill up with people reporting for their shift and we would all stand around waiting to recieve our assignments. It could be a bit awkward, at least for me. At the end of the shift we would return to the office and balance out the till, if we were assigned to one. There was a heat press which was used to dry out cash that people had been swimming with in their pockets. Some of the bills in circulation had a burnt color because someone had left them in the press too long.

One thing I was regularly assigned to was the concessions windows, of which there were four or five in the park. This could be very easy or very difficult depending on the location and the day. When the windows were very busy, especially when I was new, it felt like I was constantly on the edge of screwing everything up. I took the payments, filled the drinks, and gave the orders to the people in the Food and Beverage department, who wore dark blue shirts. It could be awkward getting stuck in there without any kind of introduction, with people who didn't necessarily know what was going on any better than me and had a whole different orientation than I got in my department, to work together on what was sometimes a very stressful job.


During their half hour break, staff could order discounted park food and eat in a little shelter area with picnic benches. While still very new, I was working at the window for the staff line, repeating the orders back to the girl making the food as I got them. I still don't understand why it was done this way. There was no way to keep track of the information. I am very soft-spoken, because I am very affected by other people's speech and thus I am hyper-aware of how my own words are coming across. If I hear my own words vibrating through my head at the same volume as I am hearing someone else speak, I feel like I am speaking just as loud as them even though I am not.

This was a new situation and I felt very uncomfortable barking out orders to someone I had never met. She did not speak good english, was making the orders for both the staff and one of the customer lines, and was getting overwhelmed because she was not getting everything I said. Before long the supervisior, an older woman who was clearly not new to food service, stepped in and told me I needed to speak up because the orders were getting delayed and the staff only had half an hour to eat. This stressed me out even more, but at least now there was no ambiguity about how I was supposed to approach things and I was able to push through the discomfort and get the hang of it.

Some of the snack bars were relatively remote, which mattered because you were not allowed to leave, especially if you were on the register. If any help or restocking was needed, you had better recognize this ahead of time because it might take ten minutes or more to get someone out there. The supervisors had walkie talkies but if there was not one around I could dial dispatch on the phone. Having a dispatcher was pretty important given how spread out and complicated the park's operations were.


Being assigned to the remote locations gave me more confidence to handle things on my own, and I started to improvise wherever I could get away with it. I got fed up with the inadequacy of the verbal ordering system, where we would start losing track of things when it got busy, exactly when you don't want that to happen. Inevitably, once a line of people had started forming, someone's order would get lost in the shuffle and they would start complaining. Often this was because their order had been given to the wrong person, so that person might be complaining as well - there was no way to keep track of who had ordered what. All I could do was tell the people making the food to remake what the people complaining said they ordered. This could lead to even more mistakes because now extra things were coming out the window out of sequence. What's more, I knew it would also screw things up if I called out all the orders at once, so I had to retain all the information, give it out to the food service people at the right pace, keep tabs on who was still waiting impatiently, and keep the endless line moving at the same time. Sometimes I would get serious attitude from certain people making the food, who felt like I was just mindlessly ordering them around, and I never helped them because I was specifically told I was not supposed to be handling the food in any way. These situations arose long after I had lost any hesitation when it came to calling out orders.

Sometimes the lines just became too much to handle and a supervisor had to come sort out the issues and help us get back on track. But I was determined to get the hang of it, and soon resorted to writing my own tickets on the reciept paper. In this way I was able to keep my head above water and avoid getting shade thrown on me by the food service people.

By the second season I had no trouble doing the work could focus more of my attention on interacting with staff and guests. My favorite assignment became standing at the gate to greet the guests and check/put on their wristbands. This also involved checking their coolers for alcohol or glass containers. If someone was determined to sneak something in, they could, but a big ice chest full of beer was not going to fly. The people assigned to greeting wore lanyards with scissors attached to cut the loose ends off the wristbands. It was satisfying saying goodbye to the very last guest as the night ended. We would shut the gates once we heard the head of security say "park is clear!" over the radio.


Schlitterbahn had an international work program which I think is a common thing with theme parks and the like. The people were mostly from Asian or eastern European countries. It contributed to the international vibe the park had with all the tourists in the summer. Naturally the international staff tended to be more receptive to interacting for its own sake, and I'm sure the experience wouldn't have been near as interesting if I was only working with locals.

There was a guy from eastern Europe (I forget if it was Bulgaria, Romania, or Ukraine) named Viktor who I liked working with at one of the concessions stands. They quickly made him a supervisor since he spoke good English and obviously had management experience. He was kind, though also a very intense personality. I played along with his challenges for me to make my "killing" face.

A Russian girl named Anna (pronounced "Anya") was also often greeting at the gate with me. I've never worked with anyone else I found so attractive. I talked to her whenever I could, and she was very friendly. I also enjoyed the company of Joyce, the elderly lead greeter.

It was quite a variety of social situations I could find myself on different days. On the other extreme, I recall another day at the snack bar working with three high school girls. I was getting tired of how cliquey they were being with each other and I sort of played the joker and butted in on their conversation: One of them was saying, "When I get home, I'm going to get into my sun dress..."
"What's the matter, you don't like your uniform?" I interrupted. She turned away.
"Usually, when you're trying to talk to someone, you'll be looking at them...," she said, not even addressing me. I was acting above it all but I may have felt slightly hurt by that. I almost tried to persist and call her out for her indirectness but thought better of it. Once again, I was expecting too much. Negative interations were rare, however, and even this was valuable in terms of understanding where different people are at and how to approach them.

The locker rental window was a motonous but also kind of interesting assignment. Guests made a payment plus a deposit in exchange for a key and a locker token. The token was supposed to be kept in the locker, and if they returned both together they got their deposit back. This system was intended to prevent anyone from returning someone else's key and stealing their deposit. Being on lockers involved repeating the same two or three tasks and short interactions all day. I was struck by the range of reactions people could have to the exact same situation. The interesting part was that there was over a thousand lockers, and I could control the distribution of the incoming crowds by knowing where each locker was located. The wall of the office was covered with a honeycomb of numbered slots for each key, made from stubs of PVC pipe. I saw that if the person in the locker window simply gave out keys in numerical order or starting with the keys that were was easiest to reach, those areas became too crowded because all of the people who had just rented lockers were going there at the same time. By understanding what the numbers meant about how far away and how far off the ground the lockers were, I could distribute people evenly, stagger them based on the time, create clusters intentionally to encourage socialization, even give short people lockers lower down or otherwise assign them based on my impression of what their wants and needs might be. This assignment usually went until after the park was closed, since turning in the key was one of the last thing guests did before leaving. Then the keys all had to be put back in the right slots, which sometimes took quite a while and required having other people sent in to help.

Another skill I learned was directing foot traffic, which I would sometimes get detailed to do while working at the gate when the crowds were especially large and the lines extended into the parking lot. I would stand there to answer questions, give directions, and shout out clarifying information to anyone coming in about which line was for what, how long the wait would be, and so on. A more tricky but interesting part was directing people to reposition or consolidate the lines when more space was needed. Perhaps because they saw I was good at stuff like this, I occasionaly was stationed at the top of the actual waterslide attractions to tell people when it was safe to go down during times when not enough lifeguards were available.


I was well liked by the supervisors in my department and I remember writing a letter asking for a promotion. However, I was moving out of the state soon and I decided not to submit it. It was only a dollar raise and the added responsibilities seemed like more of a hassle than valuable experience. "Lead cashiers" would cover for people's breaks, deliver cash drops, take guest surveys, and help balance till sheets, and occasionally handle complaints, as far as I could tell. From there you could get promoted to supervisor, of which there was four or five of in the accounting department. This was only a dollar raise as well. They were all young people, mostly in college, so it came across as an internship for people going into business or accounting. There didn't seem to be anywhere in the company to go from there, as the salaried department managers were like an inner circle, all of them over forty and probably hired directly into that position.

The young supervisor team was a fun crowd and a lot of over-the-top banter would take place in the office. They all came to the staff appreciation parties where there was a dance floor and the park director would serve up food for everyone. Dancing was a good way for me to be expressive and get attention. If I'm giving it all I've got, my dance style tends to be spastic with a lot of jumping and flailing. But for certain songs there was clearly a prescribed dance style and I had to try to imitate the more flowy, grindy moves coming out of Southern Black culture. Because of my dancing, which I would also do while greeting, and because of my overall enthusiasm and dedication (I would like to think), I was singled out to be invited on an unofficial night out with the supervisors. We hit the clubs on the Strand in downtown Galveston and there was plenty of crazy dancing and hilarious trash talking.

My experiences with the supervisors was very validating, because, despite any alienating encounters I had during my time at Schlitterbahn, I had made a real connection with the people who really seemed to be going somewhere. I remember reading an article posted on the wall of the office about the design philosophy behind Apple Computer, Inc. and how this is used in other corporate environments to create a similar user experience. In essence, it said the idea was to create a consistent, optimized, and personable experience, such that people enjoy navigating the environment and feel comforted by the images and other stimuli associated with it, because it all becomes percieved as one big package from which they know what to expect. It was true that in my role especially, I was the face of Schlitterbahn,and I took pride in the craft of creating first impressions and appearances. It was part of why I loved greeting, which I'm sure others might see as a pointless job. The article gave a bit of extra inspiration toward that end. I was also an "information specialist", who knew all the ins and outs of the park and could answer any questions people might have. These experiences have served me well in other work environments, but more importantly they have refined my ability to make friends, create memorable impressions, and influence others in a positive way. Part of me may strongly dislike the idea of putting aside my individuality to be a cog in a machine conforming to someone else's standard, but this was voluntary and temporary, and was a gateway to expanded possibilities in my life. I was grappling with the limitations of my newly acquired adult freedom, and I'm grateful for what the corporate culture of Schlitterbahn had to offer me during this time.

Matthew Estelle
2023


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