Exhausting - Recensione dipendente - Outdoor Education Instructor presso Pali Institute

Great community. Everyone is always willing to go on an adventure during time off. The classes are fun, and overall it is more fun than it is work. well paid for a seasonal camp esque job.

There are long hours and you occasionally work weekends.

Like most people have said, the only thing that really helps make Pali tolerable is the people. I met a lot of really cool people.

Lets talk about the cons because there is A LOT. First is pay. $500 a week is honestly insulting for the amount of work you do. An extra $50 a night for staying in cabin is fine but then you are literally on the clock 24/7 5 days a week. Do the math, it's roughly $6 an hour. That's laughable when you consider current gas prices in LA are over $6 a gallon. You can make more money. How you ask? By taking on more reasonability and work obligations. You have three options. You can be a wellness center tech, a school lead, or potentially become a ropes lead. You only get paid $30 more a week for doing those extra position which really is crazy to me because ropes leads have to go through a weeks long training to get certified and they only get paid an extra $5 a day. Second is free housing and food. That's how they really get you. Sure free housing in the LA area is unheard of until you actually live in one of the company houses. Most of the houses have over 14 coworkers shoved into one small space. They are pretty old and outdated for the most part. There are a few houses that are pretty nice but are the most competitive to get into (You do get some choice in housing as you submit a housing request form after visiting the houses but priority goes to leadership and returners). Food is okay. If you are on second meal the kitchen usually runs out of what is on the menu. You also get to serve meals if you aren't in cabin. And by get to serve meals I mean sweat under the food warmers for 45 minutes and repeating the same three things while the kids in line aren't paying attention and asking a million questions. But the best part of the free housing and food is that it is part of your pay. That is how they excuse such a low pay. They call it a compensation package. LOL. Three is curriculum and teaching. Ed cords are the ones who create the curriculum. To be fair it has to be accredited but I am not sure if there are any checks and balances to that because a lot of the curriculum is the same information in different fonts. One of the classes is literally taking kids on a "hike" and having them take pictures with hand held digital cameras and calling it photography. You don't really get the support when teaching classes. I had new hires shadowing classes I've never taught before and told it was fine they just needed to learn the basics. How am I going to teach a new coworker a class if I haven't taught it before? Four is kind of a bonus or a heads up if you decide to take the job. If you don't have a car good luck. But if you do have a car, also good luck. If you don't have a car you are STUCK on the mountain. Leadership doesn't offer trips down the mountain to grocery stores or even fun outings. I mean you are in southern California after all. If you do have a car you are basically expected to take your coworkers to and from work. I never had a problem doing that as I know what it is like to not have a car but they don't offer a gas reimbursement to the people who are driving coworkers into work. But if you are housing your employees offsite give them some sort of transportation help. There was an interesting situation I want to share to help you decide if you want to take the job or not. Weekend schools. This is a way for Pali to make more money and use you all to do it. You have to work two weekend schools a season. It doesn't sound like a lot but after working a LONG week and finally making it to Friday, jokes on you, you get a whole new set of kids to then run the program with. Seven days straight of basically working 24 hours a day. Like others have said, the turnover rate is high. Nearing the end of the season most people either quit or leave to go work at their summer jobs. They had two weekends where the company was having trouble staffing because they simply didn't have the staff. Upper management sent a big long message about the situation and it was basically one big long guilt trip. These particular schools that were coming on the weekends that Pali couldn't staff had received a scholarship from the state to come to camp. If Pali had to cancel on the school, the school would lose the scholarship. You know what the offer was to the people who volunteered to work those two extra weekends? A $500 bonus if you finished the rest of the season (4 weeks) and didn't call out a single day. Not a "we will pay you double if you work a weekend so we can provide this really cool experience to underprivileged communities". Basically they needed you to work two straight weeks, no days off and god forbid you got sick and needed to call out. Kiss that $500 bonus goodbye. Then to almost blame us and make us feel guilty for not working those weekends to serve underprivileged kids, after everyone already worked their mandatory 2 weekends. Truly insulting. I say all of this because one, you deserve to know what you are committing to and two, I have worked seasonal jobs for over four years and honestly it ranks in the bottom two worst seasonal jobs I have ever had. I am SEASONED in the seasonal job world so that says a lot.