Saturday, July 29, 2006

Freaky Friday

Friday's are a campground host's big challenge. Everything weird seems to happen on Friday.

A young woman pulls in and asks for a big site. I tell her that Site 43 is just what she wants. She drives over to check it out and comes back and says she wants the site but there a tent is set up in the middle of the site. What? A squatter!! We hadn't sold the site so I tell it is hers. She pays and leaves to put her ticket on the site's post.

We soon are almost 100% full. I keep Site # 12 in reserve just in case we have problems with the squatter in Site 43. Maybe we made a big administrative error. We make mistakes.

About 2 hours later I have premonition and jump in the trusty Gator to go over to check out Site 43. Sure enough the tent owner/squatter was there and was almost 100% set up. I gave him the bad news/good news. Bad news was that he is going to have to pack up and leave and the good news was that I a place for him to go. He tells me that he came by at 8:30 am this morning and we had the blinds down. True. He said that he didn't knock because he didn't want to disturb us. Talk about feeling bad for a guy trying to be decent. He says that he will take Site 12, reluctantly.

Another premonition hits me in the face and I take off for Site 12. Sure enough. More squatters!!!! They said they were just getting ready to come over and pay us. I told them the site had been sold and that they would have to leave the campground. Good thing they were not armed. They started packing things up, reluctantly.

When I get back to the RV I have another brainstorm. The squatters in Site 12 were friends of the people in Site 19 so I jumped in the trusty Gator and sped up to Site 19. The upset squatters were there talking to their friends. I suggested to them that they share a campsite since Site 19 was pretty big. Problem solved.

Cool. 3 campers happy. One host not sweating. Friends made.

Doesn't get much better than this.

Update: The lady who bought Site 43 and started the chain of problems never showed up to claim the site last night. Go figger. And to further test my problem solving skills Seven accidently sells a previously sold site to a camper who has 3 friends on the way up the canyon for dinner. I put him in a group site that is not fully occupied after bribing the group site honcho with some firewood. Two more happy campers.

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