So I work(ed) at a zoo on an island somewhere in the middle of the ocean that's technically part of the United States. I'll let you guess what that means.
The zoo is run by the state, and the zookeeper are paid by the state.
Us peons in the gift shop are paid by the “friends of the zoo”, or the zoo board. The nonprofit that is supposed to help the zoo.
Apparently though, treating people nicely isn't in their interests. Also, apparently neither is having clean drinking water for the humans or the ANIMALS.
You read that right. The animals are literally drinking non-pottable water, as it is called.
Thats…not fine? At all?
So here's the thing. We got a new zoo director 4 months ago. She, like I, used to work for Disney.
She immediately tried to rectify the water situation.
Then in October, parks and rec rented out the zoo for a day so that local schools could have an animal learning day.
This infuriated the board. They tried to get the local community to fight it. Put up flyers to call the governor. Absolute insanity. You know why they hated it?
Because it was the biggest cruise ship day of the month. How dare they cut into profits for the gift shop to give back to the local community.
So circle back to water. The only reason the nonprofit exists is to make money for the operation of the zoo. That's it.
Well apparently, because of the closure for school community day, they found it “not in the boards interest” to fund clean drinking water for people and animals.
They told the director that they wouldn't be “putting a cent” towards clean drinking water.
First of all, fuck that. Second of all, that's legally questionable as to whether they can actually declare that given their legal function.
So that was a whole thing.
But over the past three months in total they have;
Fired the assistant manager.
Fired all 5 coworkers I actually liked.
Made it seem like I'm unreasonable for thinking this is unreasonable.
Literally locked us out of counting money because it's “the boards money”.
Gone through 4 new coworkers in the past month.
And just generally acted with general disdain for those that work in the gift shop or support anything the zoo director supports.
All this culminated in me contracting asthma again after 14 years of no symptoms, directly from all the stress involved. It's impossible to state in words how infuriating that has been by itself. It's wholly unacceptable that this happened. Any of it.
I'm more saying this to all of you to just show that yes, this stuff happens out in the world. Never accept things just because its easy to not resist morally dubious actions. You are worth more than a dollar and you deserve to be treat with respect and dignity. Period. Capitalism be damned.
Employment wolf, out.