Hey, December 7 is Fit Night at the retail store at Jackson Ski Touring. Expert fitters from Swix and Fischer will be there to fit you to equipment.
Gee. When I was there, you could get fitted to skis any day we were open, by people whose loyalty was to you, the customer, not a specific manufacturer. Everyone on staff knew how to suit a ski and ski equipment to the needs of the specific customer and we took pride in doing so. The only exception might have been the gangly, aging cyclist who worked for us one season, whose last retail experience had been at EMS in the 1970s. Turned out he didn't even know the sidecut on a Fischer Cruiser. Ah well. He moved on. An ill wind brought him and an ill wind took him away.
The difference is between serving the customer and servicing the customer like the bull services the cow.
There's a lot of razzle dazzle in Big Time Nordic. Bonfires, promotions, smoke and mirrors...plenty of smoke unless they've gotten that fireplace reconstructed. You have to feel you're someplace special, someplace greater than you. Someplace someone would bother to homologate.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Before you take a job at Jackson Ski Touring
Remember: they don't care if you are intelligent and knowledgeable, they just want you to be obedient and malleable.
You ski free the way the caddies got to use the facilities in "Caddyshack". In fact there's quite a bit about the employer-employee relationship at Jackson Ski Touring that reminds you of Bushwood.
At the time I was there, at least one member of the board of directors would always come in with glistening mucus dangling from his nose. It gives new meaning to the term rich snot. Winter brings out the drippers. These are the people who always have a hanger, who leave a trail of droplets across the service counter, the floor, your lunch, or wherever else they happen to roam. They're the ones whose sleeves and gloves are always shiny and wet and who seem to have missed school on the day handkerchiefs and facial tissue were presented as polite ways to stem this tide of nauseating nasal flow. It's just an added burden that one of their chief representatives is also in a position of some power over you.
Know your place and stay in it. You are a servant. More and more of the original old guard are dying off, so almost no one really thinks you're lavishly paid at five dollars a day, but the management still wishes it was true.
There's a definite pecking order among the staff at JSTF. They rank on each other constantly in the normal run of things, talking about who is the most lazy and useless. Then, once the management lets it be known that someone is on the way out, the survivors demonstrate their loyalty by taking their parting shots. It's only human and quite hard for our social species to resist. Still, it's ugly to watch and even uglier when you're on the receiving end.
If it doesn't snow, you have no job. If it snows a little you may be able to shovel enough of it into the trail to stay employed. Good luck with that.
The best news is that by working at Jackson Ski Touring you will qualify for our support group for PJSD (Post Jackson Stress Disorder). It's really just a drinking group where people are free to share their stories about their grand experiences in The Big Time.
You ski free the way the caddies got to use the facilities in "Caddyshack". In fact there's quite a bit about the employer-employee relationship at Jackson Ski Touring that reminds you of Bushwood.
At the time I was there, at least one member of the board of directors would always come in with glistening mucus dangling from his nose. It gives new meaning to the term rich snot. Winter brings out the drippers. These are the people who always have a hanger, who leave a trail of droplets across the service counter, the floor, your lunch, or wherever else they happen to roam. They're the ones whose sleeves and gloves are always shiny and wet and who seem to have missed school on the day handkerchiefs and facial tissue were presented as polite ways to stem this tide of nauseating nasal flow. It's just an added burden that one of their chief representatives is also in a position of some power over you.
Know your place and stay in it. You are a servant. More and more of the original old guard are dying off, so almost no one really thinks you're lavishly paid at five dollars a day, but the management still wishes it was true.
There's a definite pecking order among the staff at JSTF. They rank on each other constantly in the normal run of things, talking about who is the most lazy and useless. Then, once the management lets it be known that someone is on the way out, the survivors demonstrate their loyalty by taking their parting shots. It's only human and quite hard for our social species to resist. Still, it's ugly to watch and even uglier when you're on the receiving end.
If it doesn't snow, you have no job. If it snows a little you may be able to shovel enough of it into the trail to stay employed. Good luck with that.
The best news is that by working at Jackson Ski Touring you will qualify for our support group for PJSD (Post Jackson Stress Disorder). It's really just a drinking group where people are free to share their stories about their grand experiences in The Big Time.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
JSTF: From Taliban to Oral Roberts
Upping the ante on destructive superstition, the Jackson Ski Touring Foundation has now taken Olympian Charlie Kellogg's skis hostage and will execute them if enough people don't donate to the poor, beleaguered touring center.
It's like when Oral Roberts said God was going to take him out if his followers didn't fork over a cool million. Why someone who urgently desires heaven would tell his followers to dig deep in their pocketbooks to keep him in this vale of suffering raises questions the average superstitious believer never seems to ask. Logical thought is a sin.
In another sense, Jackson Ski Touring's lighthearted rallying call to vandalism is more like a simple hostage grab by religious zealots. They don't even have to believe what they claim to believe. They've simply taken something or someone, hoping enough people value the threatened object to produce a decent payday.
If they need something to throw on the fire, how about marriage licenses people are no longer using?
Burn, Baby, Burn.
It's like when Oral Roberts said God was going to take him out if his followers didn't fork over a cool million. Why someone who urgently desires heaven would tell his followers to dig deep in their pocketbooks to keep him in this vale of suffering raises questions the average superstitious believer never seems to ask. Logical thought is a sin.
In another sense, Jackson Ski Touring's lighthearted rallying call to vandalism is more like a simple hostage grab by religious zealots. They don't even have to believe what they claim to believe. They've simply taken something or someone, hoping enough people value the threatened object to produce a decent payday.
If they need something to throw on the fire, how about marriage licenses people are no longer using?
Burn, Baby, Burn.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Jackson Ski Touring and the Taliban
Jackson Ski Touring has been sending out emails announcing that they will burn Olympian Charlie Kellogg's skis in a bonfire to appease the snow gods and bring on a great ski season. This is a small example of the kind of thinking that led the Taliban to destroy historic Buddha figures carved into cliffs in their country. In either case, performing an act of destruction is supposed to cause powerful imaginary beings to shower the faithful with approval.
Mr. Kellogg's skis are hardly in a class with ancient, monumental sculptures, but they're still irreplaceable historical artifacts that have been taken hostage by superstitious vandals.
You want to put on a good show for the snow gods? Have Thom and the entire board of Jackson Ski Touring run naked around the base lodge and the village on the weekend of the annual ski sale. Make the assembled membership watch. THAT'S a sacrifice.
You want to burn something? Burn everybody's clothes while they're running around.
Mr. Kellogg's skis are hardly in a class with ancient, monumental sculptures, but they're still irreplaceable historical artifacts that have been taken hostage by superstitious vandals.
You want to put on a good show for the snow gods? Have Thom and the entire board of Jackson Ski Touring run naked around the base lodge and the village on the weekend of the annual ski sale. Make the assembled membership watch. THAT'S a sacrifice.
You want to burn something? Burn everybody's clothes while they're running around.
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