Man, who knew that one little story would strike such a nerve?

A week ago today, JHM ran “Cast Members at DAK’s Kilimanjaro Safari don’t think that WDW management is being very fair-i to them,” an article that detailed how difficult how tough it was to work at DAK’s “Kilimanjaro Safari” ride.

Well, that piece produce a tidal wave of response from WDW cast members. Which is why I decided to reprint a number of their notes as part of a rebuttal article, “The Cry Babies who runs Kilimajaro Safari is complaining again? Well, cry me a Kali River …”

Well — as you might expect — that article also got the folks who work at Walt Disney World writing in. So — this morning — I thought I might share a few of these e-mails with you.

Of course, we got another pile of letters from folks who said that their job at Disney World was at least as tough as working at “Kilimanjaro Safari.” My favorite, though, was this one from Chris T:

Dear Jim,

I was a College Program last year (Fall 2003) and I worked as a busser at Magic Kingdom’s Plaza Pavilion as a busser. I can understand that everyone thinks that their job is so hard and that they have it worse than anyone else, so I won’t say that mine was the hardest.

One of my roommates worked Kilimajaro Safaris as a driver. Everyday he would come home complaining about work and blah blah blah. The whole time he was complaining I was thinking “Yeah if only you did my job!”

Well in November, my roommate pulled extra hours as a busser at Plaza Pavilion. That day I went in a couple hours before him and got off a couple hours after him. When I got home he was laying in his bed in pain. He said he had not worked so hard since he had been at Disney. He said my job was about ten times worse than his job as a driver at KIlimajaro.

I’m not hear to complain about how hard my job was, or that mine was the worse out of all jobs because I know that there other jobs like custodial that are harder than mine. I’m just saying that maybe the Kilimajaro drivers should go out and pull extra hours at a place like Plaza Pavilion or Cosmic Rays to see what it’s like to not be sitting in a truck or handing out fast pass tickets all day long.

Sincerely
Chris T.

Then — of course — there were those who took a more pragmatic approach. These folks were the ones who sent me the e-mails that broke down who got paid what, what the built-in hazards for various jobs at Disney World might as well as how difficult it was to work with people who constantly complained about how difficult they thought their job was.

Here. Let’s let this WDW cast member explain:

Dear Jim.

Just read the letter from the Safari Cast member and I have to say boo hoo. I also work at DAK in attractions and all attractions cast members have an almost equally level of problems.

As far as pay … Well — first of all — Entertainment gets paid that 45 cents an hour more and is not worth what they go through like being abused by guests who have no sense of respect for them. Trust me there are at least 10 times as many characters who are injured and put out of their job for days or even weeks.

Security has to deal with guests who think because they paid $50 dollars and can treat us anyway they want, and have to deal with emergency calls and so on. Transportation has hundreds of more guests to deal with and they drive 8 hours each day.

I am not totally unsympathetic but crying changes nothing. There are other job classifications that have harder jobs and get the same pay. It’s not strictly management’s fault.

I have friends who drive Safari trucks and have no complaints. I also know a couple of their managers too. The problem with the union is they are too weak. Which is why we end up with lousy contracts. For instance, my medical insurance went up $3 a week and now — for some reason (that) I don’t understand — they decided to start having us pay 10 percent of our hospital stay. And this is an HMO!

(Mind you), I’m not complaining. I pay it and still love my job. It shouldn’t really matter what you’re paid but that you like your job. Everybody that works for Disney thinks they should be paid more even if their only job is to smile and say hi. We all consider ourselves underpaid.

Yes, driving a Safari truck may be hard. But it’s not the hardest job. The hardest job is going to work and listen to some of your fellow cast members complain every day when all they have to do is transfer. I say: suck it up or find another location to transfer to. He or she should be so lucky that they are not on the college program. Because (those poor kids) only get paid $6 an hour for the same (work that the full time cast members do). And — if anyone should be paid more — they should.

Then there were the folks who tried to put the whole thing in perspective. Give me a little historical background as well as offer up some psychological insights.

Our old buddy, Big Mike, perhaps did the best job with this sort of letter. Which is why I’m happy to share his note with you folks today:

Dearest Jim,

First off, I must say that if you weren’t around here, I would have to head off into the nether regions of the internet to find a good bit of insider info.

I read, with a smile, the articles regarding the Kilimanjaro complaint and the subsequent anti-Kilimanjaro rebuttals. I read with interest on how our Kilimanjaro safari host or hostess complained bitterly about his/her conditions and how he/she was paid only $6.70 an hour to perform these functions. I also read with interest about the “suck it up” articles.

These two stories indicate 2 things to me: the length these respective CM’s have worked at Disney and the typical decreasing morale level that can be found as the years go by as a Cast Member. So let’s, based upon my opinion and observations at the workplace, examine a Cast Member’s career and their differing levels of morale as time goes by.

Typically Jim every cast member fresh out of casting goes to Disney University for “Traditions”. Traditions, in the way past in the Disney golden age (the good old days), was a few days long and introduced the newest members of the Disney family to the Disney culture, its time honored practices and beliefs, and its willingness to go the extra mile for every guests of every day of every year…all with some perma-grin attached to your face. Nowadays, Traditions is only the better part of a day, if even a few hours, but it still manages to give the newbies some insight as well as a morale boost before they hit the chaotic frenzy known as Walt Disney World.

Now, fresh off of our Traditions tour and with freshly minted perma-grin chiseled onto our faces, we enter the chaotic frenzy ever willing to make the visit magical “for each and every guest.” This is where the fun begins…

Let’s take a side detour or a minute and look at our 3 writers. Case A, or the disgruntled Kilimanjaro Safari worker, exhibits behavioral signs of someone that has been working there between 1-2 years. Why do I know this? Well, first of all, he/she gets paid $6.70/hour which tells me he/she has been there for this length of time.

Secondly, he/she shows all the classic signs of a CM who has lost that shiny luster from Traditions and realizes that this isn’t as great as I once thought. To rebut what someone said earlier, it is not as easy to leave a high-stress job like Kilimanjaro as you might believe. I know people that used to work there…Cory and Elton for whom I mentioned in the first article. They left together and said that even though they hated it there and they couldn’t stand the lack of hours and overtime as well as the high-stress “wear your ass out” attraction Kilimanjaro is, it was hard for them to leave because they had developed friendships with people there who shared in their misery with them.

Thirdly, not being paid appropriately for an extremely hot and repetitive job like Kilimanjaro takes its toll and the worker begins to exhibit resentment. Imagine, you work your butt off for a week at Kilimanjaro and come home to a paycheck of roughly 260 gross and 215 take home. Wow, after you pay the rent and car insurance, if you have a car, and pay the utilities and the cable…oh, wait I can’t afford cable…you have no money, you are drained, and the resentment and hate starts to grow much like it did to Anakin Skywalker. Ok, sorry, I had to use the “dark side” perspective. And finally, the tedium of work and losing friends to termination and the introduction of cast destroyment, oh I mean cast deployment (the computer), and the “move bodies” mentality of management takes its toll and over time produces a disgruntled cast member. While this is not always true, I have observed that this is true for about 90%+ of all cast members, especially after 3 years or more of time with the company.

Case B, or the CM who “sacrificed” (sacrifice is the Iraq War, not working at Disney) of him/herself at Great Movie Ride for $6.35/hour instead of $10.50/hour at home (trust me, go home, make $10.50/hour and save Disney for visits), is a classic example of someone who is fresh out of Traditions and has an unbreakable belief in Disney (I do too, but only in the Walt Disney school of thought—not Eisner’s culture he has created there). Unyieldingly defensive of the product and “gee, this is so great” mentality overwhelms his passionate drive to ensure the best service humanly possible.

While I agree with this mentality in order to succeed, the Cast Member’s unwillingness to understand that $200 bucks a week “ain’t gonna keep the smiles” going for a whole long time. Also, the fact that he believes there are scores of others ready to take the job is frightening, at best. Why would scores of people believe that $200 a week is a good move? Because it’s Disney. Either they have no chance at employment elsewhere and the Mouse will hire them (trust me, I have worked with convicted sex offenders at Disney—child molestation sex offenders) or because they believe in a hallowed institution like Disney and will make the “ultimate sacrifice” to work there.

Working at Disney is a novelty; once the novelty wears off, reality sends a crushing blow almost immediately. Be careful of what you wish for…this is one institution that traps you…and you become institutionalized, afraid to leave what has become so familiar for 6 bucks an hour.

Case C, or the “suck it up” CM, is a classic example of someone who has worked there for a while and just wants to vent at someone letting them know they are not the only ones with a crappy job. The funny thing, is it’s true. I must, based on experience, say that Kilimanjaro is probably one of the most difficult (top 5) attractions host jobs at Disney. The Case C cast member is a person who believes in Disney but secretly resents their place of employment. This comes after many years of working there but is a byproduct of a “not giving into public negativity” mentality of those co-workers around him/her who hate the place and let it be known quite regularly. Case C seems to be pretty straightforward, but this is only my opinion (and besides, what do I know).

Jim, go back to my cast deployment letter. Think about what I said in there. The byproducts of the Eisner regime have been negativity and extremely high turnover. Why? The bottom line. Cast deployment, low pay, overbearing managers…it all adds up after a while. I didn’t mean to offend anyone on this board who posted, but the truth is real and tangible. Working for Disney is not what everyone thinks it is, unless you are an Imagineer or Animator (and even that is tough nowadays).

So, please, anyone who reads this letter…don’t throw your life away to work as attractions host for the MOUSE. It will ruin your impression of the place, trust me. It may not happen in a year, maybe no even 5…but as surely as time passes, it will happen.

Y’all come back, ya hear!?

Big Mike

*Disclaimer-it will be worth working for again if they 1., get rid of Eisner, and 2., go back to the old ways of the old days…just my two cents

But then there were the folks who — in spite of all the miserable working conditions that they had to put up with during their days at Disney — wouldn’t trade that experience for anything in the world.

My favorite — out of all these sorts of letters — had to have come from Jonathan D. Who wrote in to say:

Hi, Jim

I’ve read your stories over the last two days talking about who has it tough at Disney World. And as an ex-Cast Member (College Program; Spring 2001), I wanted to put my $.02 in.

For the three months I was there, I worked in Food and Beverage (Quick Serve). Which meant, for me, I was in a kitchen, specifically the kitchen of Restaurantosaurus in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. It was the first job I’d ever had, and I was 21 years old (I was a spoiled child, and I’m very sorry for everyone who got a job when they were 15, honestly).

So, first of all, going from no job at all to standing on my feet for 8 hours a day was a bit difficult. Then one day while cleaning out the hood over the burger fryer I got some Encompass (a cleaning product, if you didn’t know) directly in my left eye, freaking out all the managers who were sure I was going to lose it (the eye…I didn’t, but it was bloodshot for a day or so). Another day, I was wiping down the large freezer doors when one of them came off its hinges and smashed me right in the face, bloodying my lip, nose, and giving me a black eye. And then there’s the various and sundry burns from oil, grease (is the word), hot cooking equipment, etc.

I also did some work as a busser, which meant wearing pink pants and a striped blue shirt (a great color combo, IMO) and doing general bussing-type stuff. Like emptying out huge trashcans that the guests would always fill to overflowing if you didn’t keep your eye on them at all times and replace them whenever they got to half full. Of course, when you’re emptying out one, inevitably one on the other side of the restaurant requires your attention. The trick was to put 4-5 bags in each trash can, so you weren’t
constantly having to replace the bag when you took a full one out (a valuable time saver).

Then there was the fun time that was always had when guests would ask for straws or lids for their little kiddies drinks…but of course, there ARE no straws or lids in DAK (for the safety of the animals, don’t you know). Of course, not having lids inevitably meant that their kids would be spilling drinks left and right (better then a protein spill, though) and while you’re cleaning that up, guess what? Those trash cans are filling right back up.

And of course there was the other routine stuff that comes with bussing, like pointing out the way to the bathrooms (for the guests who couldn’t see the large sign), wiping down tables, and checking lost and found for sunglasses. The best part, though, was the unusual questions you’d get: “Excuse me, where’s the Tower of Terror?” “Well, you want to go out this door here, walk on down the path, take the first left, then head out to the buses and go to MGM.”

But for any wacky guest question like that, there were the great once in a lifetime guests. Like a mother who was there with her son, who happened to have cerebral palsy. They were having such a great time, and it was so much fun to ask them what they’d seen so far, and what they were still planning to see, and to share in the joy that Disney was bringing them.

See, that’s what Disney is, Jim. It’s magic, pure and simple. Magic can’t be expressed in shareholder value, and it’s not a commodity that Michael Eisner can buy and sell. It exists in Disney, and it’s recreated every time a kid gets excited the first time they see that castle, or they meet Mickey or Donald or Goofy. And it’s passed on every time a cast member can do their part (even if it’s just keeping a smile on while telling the five thousandth guest that we don’t have straws or lids) to give a little bit of that Disney magic to someone else.

Whether any of this is easier or harder then any of the other stories you’ll get is anyone’s guess. But Jim, let me tell you…I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything else in the world. The people I worked with there were some of the best people I’ve ever met. People like Gretchen, Cesar, Plinio, David, Louis … managers like Brandon, Rich, and Jake (master of the tough love and the salad cooler talking to).

And best of all, it’s where I met my wife, Angela, who was there working in the same kitchen during the same College Program. So I’d say, as tough as it was, and as lousy as the pay was…it was worth every minute. Every single minute.

That’s all I’ve got for you. Thanks for letting me share my story, and thanks for all the great articles you’ve always got on the site. Later!

Jonathan D.

So — as you can see — there’s still a lot of people out there with strong opinions about what it’s really like to work at Walt Disney World. Which is why I’m giving some semi-serious thought to creating a whole new area at JimHillMedia.com. A place where we maybe could archive all of these great job-related stories.

So — if you’ve got a good or bad story that you’d like to share with JHM readers about your job related experiences at the Disney theme parks and resorts, feel free to toss it my way … and I may post it as part of this new section at the site.