profile of portage lake state park
... They also help summer workers by doing there share of the work, like cleaning bathrooms, mowing grass, and cutting down trees. I would have to say there favorite part of the job is patrolling the campground for people who are violating the rules. Of the four park officers, I worked with Shane the most. We both worked the late shift which was from 6-2:30a.m. We spent most of our shift patrolling, but we also did some maintenance while we had some daylight. Shane is only about 22 years old so we got along well and related with most things. The thing that characterizes Shane so much is his love to write Minor In Possession tickets. He would always be looking to see if any young kids were staying in the campground and if they were he would really watch them. I can’t really explain his love of writing mip’s as he isn’t against teens drinking, because he did himself. I guess it would have to be the look of terror on the kids faces when we walk up to there site, pour there beer out and give them a breathalyzer test. I guess I would have to admit the experience of not being the one getting the MIP was pretty fun, but I did feel kind of bad about it sometimes. While I worked with Shane he ended up writing about nine MIP’s, no other officer in the park came close to writing that many. There is also a no alcohol rule in the park. Since this is the most widely broken rule the officers tend to just dump out the alcohol of those over 21 rather than write them a ticket for it. I couldn’t even begin to think of the number of beers I saw dumped out over the summer. I didn’t work with Bill very often but heard enough complaints from the others about him. He is the oldest one working there and must be in his middle 40s. Of the complaints about him, his laziness was the biggest factors that irritated everyone. That would be followed by his perverted sense of humor that the girls didn’t think was too funny. His favorite job was giving the summer workers jobs that he was supposed to do. So if you can’t already tell most everybody didn’t like Bill too much. Then there was Pat, she just retired this fall. She was in her 60s and had a very long career in the DNR. Everyone liked Pat as she was very easy to work with and was very nice. But if the campers got lippy with her she could get really mean in a second, and people would usually listen to her. She also has a lot of crazy stories that are very funny to hear. Many of the workers had grown attached to her over the years and were very sad to see her retire. All together there were about 8 of us summer workers. We are only employed for the summer and are mostly made up of college students. The thing I hated most was cleaning bathrooms; we constantly had to clean them. There are 3 bathroom buildings that have to be cleaned every couple of hours and it’s a pain when you work the day shift ...