Several years ago, I went skiing at Hunter Mountain. In the locker room, I witnessed the “professionalism training” of their staff.
From the statements made by the trainer (e.g., stay professional all the time, be extremely courteous, never forget that you are going to do your best to provide the best experiences to the visitors…), it seemed that the training was being done routinely on a regular basis in order to get the most professional/courteous behavior out of their staff.
The staff were all wearing uniforms with name plaques.
Last Saturday night my family went to the concert organized by Great Neck Park District at Steppingstone Park in Kings Point.
Since there was a shortage of parking spots near the entrance of the concert, my wife called her friend who lives near the park and asked her if we could park in the driveway and she replied “there are plenty of spaces and of course you can park in our driveway.”
At the intersection two blocks away from her house, two non-uniformed individuals were blocking the road and did not allow us to enter into the road leading to the house. My wife, who was driving, explained to them that we are going to a friend’s home and we were going to park in their driveway and not on the street — to no avail.
One of the two individuals said that you have to show me your ID that you live there! No matter how hard my wife tried to explain to them that we didn’t live there and we were given permission by the owners to park in a private driveway, they refused to let us in in disbelief!
I was sitting in the passenger seat and I was not able to speak with them, so I got out of the car in order to assure them that we were going to a private home and not park on the streets.
However, the other individual tried to intimidate me by threatening: “You could get arrested.” I replied that you could get arrested for illegally not letting us into where we were going to park legally at a private home where we are given permission.
It seems that these non-uniformed staff are also non-trained and they believe that they contain legislative, judicial and executive powers within themselves.
Instead of expansion of the territory, maybe the park district should spend their resources to train their staff and get rid of the individuals who are not trainable. This would only serve the best interest of the taxpayers who are to be serviced.
Of note, the concert was inappropriate for the audience present at the event who predominantly were families. There were vulgar vocabulary and dances of females with buttock movements toward the audience. The use of such vocabulary and “sexy buttock dances” is not allowed even on television.
Maybe, the park district should look more carefully into the appropriateness of the concerts prior to spending an exorbitant portion of the taxpayers’ funds for the events to be held at Great Neck parks.
Maybe the park district should have their staff uniformed with name plaques so they act more responsibly. If that doesn’t work, then they may wish to put them through regularly scheduled “professionalism training.”
Fred Bassali, Ph.D.
Great Neck