I'm not to sure about all the campgrounds around the United States but at ours, kids have to be accompanied by an adult if the are under eighteen years of age. Common sensr would also tell you that you should want to watch your own kids so that they don't get hurt or damage any property. We recently had a young child riding a bicycle notice our dog, and the little boy came straight on our campsite and tried to approach our dog to pet it. We have a two year old Siberian husky who has not been around little kids and is a bit skittish around them. We quickly grabbed our dog to make sure that there would be no accident. Being nice we chatted with the boy for a few minutes and let him pet Zoey (our dog). The boy (which we don't know his name) told use that he was a few sites down with his grandparents. We had ended the conversation and the boy went on his way. Every few minutes the boy would return and try to find a way to approach us again. Some times he would just come right up without saying anything and just sit there looking at us.

Lucky for the child we are not any kind of creepy child abducting crazy people. But it led me to think as a concerned individual. What is the proper child courtesy, and what is the proper way of handling a child that just walks on to your campsite and keeps returning?

Well, after a few days of this I began to get a bit annoyed and had enough. After the boy left our site to go riding his bike (unattended) I walked down to his site and told the grandfather that we had a small dog that was skittish around little kids and would appreciate that he would not come on our site unattended and with out permission.

All this made me wonder…….. How would you as a parent (or as a grandparent in this situation) want to be approached about this problem ( yes for me that child was a problem) with out offending you but making sure you realized you have to talk to your child about courtesy, permission, but most important of all your child's safety and approaching

strangers.

Enough is enough

So we all live and we all work and for the most part it’s a never ending cycle. Many people work at jobs they enjoy, and the majority of us work at a company we learn to tolerate. So the question becomes when does enough become enough? Until recently work has been pleasant and suddenly we ran into a situation that made us a tad uncomfortable. Certain situations have arisen and, feeling concerned, we decided to voice our concerns to upper management. We wanted to make sure we would not be suspects in these matters had they not been disclosed to management.

So we are now starting our search for winter work, but in case things get worse we want to keep our options open for a sudden departure. So… what are some triggers that could be considered the straw to break the camels back?

Concerns

In my last post, I expressed some frustration. Well, the frustration blew up beyond the drama I mentioned, and Artur and I felt it necessary to talk to our manager.

The campground we are at has a “sister” campground a mile up the road. Our campground is managed by an “Assistant Manager”, and her supervisor, the “Manager”, oversees both campgrounds and is located at the other campground. He makes appearances at our location (and has proven to be a very knowledgeable and competent manager), but mainly our Assistant is in charge.

Well, Artur and I have grown less and less confident in our Assistant Manager, but up to this point have given her the benefit of the doubt. I won’t go into many details regarding our concerns with her, but it all came to a head during the holiday weekend. (Ok, so you don’t think we are whiners, one of our big concerns is theft…) Our campground was rather busy, and now was the time for everybody to pull together as a team. That didn’t happen. And we were both discouraged beyond what we could take. So, we vented….

First, we wrote a professional letter outlining what we liked about our jobs and the campground. Then we outlined our concerns with “management” – and how the concerns were growing. The letter was only to serve as a reference, we planned to meet with the Manager and discuss the concerns face-to-face.

It took a couple days, but we were able to sit down and discuss the situation with the Manager. It took almost 2 hours, but we got it all out. Artur and I were calm, professional, and highlighted the points that 1) We don’t want to leave, and 2) We aren’t trying to take over management. We were very successful in getting our concerns voiced – and I felt so much better getting it all out in the open – but we were unsuccessful in persuading the Manager that a problem existed. He listened and said he would look into everything, but he didn’t convey any type of concern himself in the issues we were bringing to him.

It’s now been several days since the discussion. Our Assistant Manager seems to have made some improvements (which leads me to believe that some action has been taken). Artur and I really do like it here and sincerely expect to fulfill the entire timeframe we committed to, so we hope the improvements continue. We will not, however, compromise our general happiness and comfort. If the situation declines further beyond where it was last weekend, we will look for other positions. We chose this lifestyle to reduce our stress – and that is what we intend to do!

But now the question becomes (to avoid these problems in the future) – How do you work for ourselves to support this lifestyle???