If you haven’t noticed, American ski resorts are easy targets for some good old-fashioned social media hate in recent years. They are the proverbial Goliath to the everyman skier and snowboarder’s David as we watch pass prices go up each year. The bigger the corporate umbrella a resort operates under, the heavier the disdain raining down on them. And by extension, this makes smaller independent ski areas even more sacred and beloved to the people who visit them.
Donner Ski Ranch is a great example of this — a family owned hill that was one of the very first in the United States to embrace snowboarding culture while old school ski resorts treated boarders like outcasts. But a recent creative attempt to put out a message on operational safety didn’t exactly endear them to social media followers..
The resort posted an image of a sign they say is now posted at the bottom of every chair and carpet. It calls on guests to police lifties violating its no-cell-phones policy, a pretty obvious safety hazard. The sentiment of holding lifties accountable to safety standards probably isn’t something social media followers disagreed with. But the idea that a resort was throwing its employees under the bus didn’t seem to sit right with people who chimed in on the conversation.
The sign reads “Safety First. It is not ok for our lift ops to be using their cell phones. Rat ’em out.”
“Oof. Love you guys, but this one missed,” one person wrote. “Lifties being on their phones is a management issue, not a guest-policing issue. Instead of asking customers to ‘rat them out,’ pay your lift ops a couple bucks more than the big resorts, train them well, and empower supervisors to actually lead, coach, and hold the team accountable.
“Build a crew that wants to work hard, take care of guests, and take pride in the mountain.
“But please don’t put guests in the position of supervising base-pay employees who can barely afford to live anywhere near where they work. That’s not safety culture. That’s passing the buck.”
Donner Ski Ranch’s response to that comment was a very simple, “No.”
The follower sentiment seemed to be aligned with the idea that Donner Ski Ranch missed on this post, which only made the ski area (or whoever’s managing its Facebook page) dig in. Some accuse them of creating a poor culture with posts like this, even bringing up the bigger issue of wages — a constant in resort culture, where living costs have been outpacing the income afforded to lifties, ski patrol, and other employees that make skiing and riding possible.
“You do not know Sh*t about our pay and subsidized housing,” the resort responded more than once.
I’m gonna make some popcorn and keep reading the comments section for the rest of the day now.
