Negative Nonce or Just a Realist in the RV Workamping Life? My First Experience

Welcome to RV There Yet Tuesday, where I discuss everything, RV and Full Time RV life related, whether it's some DIY, our beginnings of the journey or just random tidbits on this wild ride. This category is everything RV related. I hope I've helped you join the fold of the RV life, or have inspired you to chase your dreams. Please read on, and leave comments below if you have some additional experiences to share we'd love to hear them...

We landed at PA Dutch Campground. In this blog, I will discuss a very negative workamping experience, beware...Negative Nonce or Just a Realist in the RV Workamping Life? My First Experience...April 2022 - October 2022

We pulled up in anticipation of a good spring, summer and autumn here in the Pennsylvania countryside. Instead we were greeted by an unkempt campground with a fallen, faded fiberglass horse. Maria wasn't sure if the hole in the ground, meant to be a pond, or the fallen horse lying in a flowerbed at the front entrance, was a bad omen that this workamping gig would be shit. In hindsight her intuition was spot on.

I entered the office as positive as I could, because no matter what, I would have to make the best of the situation. I wasn't good at planning this early in the RV journey, I evolved over the next three years. I met the owner of the park, a hyperactive, scatterbrain who didn't know if he was coming or going, let alone what site I would be given for the season. He told another workamper, Cheryl, who I'm still friends with, to walk me to the site. I unhooked the car from the tow dolly and followed her with the Mothership.

She was kind in giving me the larger of the couple sites the owner had given us to pick from. I situated the motorhome, and took a picture of the set up, as per custom every time I land. We were home for the season, a full hook up site with electricity that would go out from time to time, and a large privacy fence behind us shielding us from the trailer trash seasonal sites that mostly filled the dysfunctional campground. I worked Monday through Wednesday, and that was plenty. I earned about sixty dollars a week, cash, and the rest of my labor paid for the site. I worked my ass off. I worked with Jerry, Cheryl's husband, and Chuck, Terry's husband, until the owner of the place separated all of us out of jealousy because we got along. Chuck and Jerry were veterans and my dad's age, so I always wanted to keep an eye out for them. The owner had little to no regard of the elders I worked with and gave them the shittiest of jobs after separating us. I felt bad that they were given a push mower to mow lawn and eventually forced to work weekends and opposite shifts of their partners. In most workamping situations the campground's, if you're a workamping couple, gives couples the same days off. While their shifts started off like this, it changed because the owner didn't like Chuck and Jerry.

To make a long, miserable, tale short, I mixed concrete, cleaned fire pits, tested water and the chlorine levels from the well water. I weed-wacked, was never allowed to use the zero turn lawnmowers, push mowed the park, read electric meters, and much, much more that would become more inconsistent with each job, and each waking day of me working. I worked under a guy that I'll call Bubble, and his minions, or sons, and they were all miserable hicks who hated their own lives enough to take it out on the elder veterans I worked with. Bubble (the owner's best buddy, who would badmouth his friend as frequently as he could) and Scooter (the campground owner, the recipient of the badmouthing) eventually gave the two workamping couples early dismissal in September, forcing them to find spots somewhere else in the United States, and adjust their lives because PA Dutch apparently didn't need their services any longer. For some odd reason I wasn't asked to terminate my services. I had plans of where we were going next, the dates, and everything in between around this gig and was already looking ahead if the same outcome was being held for me. I felt like shit as I said good-bye to all my workamping friends, but this life could be like that and not all workamping jobs were created equal. I kept work ethics up, as hard as it was to do, until it was time to end the waking/working nightmare. I vowed to never return, even to camp, at this poorly run, campground. There were so many things wrong, that I could make a grocery list of, I won't because the previous three paragraphs sums it up and I don't want to be that Negative Nonce!

Lesson of this garbage work experience: when looking at a workamping opportunity, get on the socials, feel around to other experienced workampers to get the gist of what you're about to get into. I list many of the places and resources I use to connect to jobs on a previous post here: Workamping Essentials

To put a positive spin on the adventure, time had come to leave, and to trek to Long Island, a campground called Battle Row. My daughter's wedding was just around the corner and the last week of October rolled in, it was time to leave the PA nightmare. Next week I'll discuss Long Island and a wedding adventure of NYC's Central Park...

Stay tuned next Tuesday for more...

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Tim Eagle

Tim Eagle is an author of the novellas Stolen Seed, Life Ship, and the Vasectomus Collection. He lives full time, on the road, with his wife, Maria and their dog, Cocoa. He grew up in Michigan and is inspired by the dysfunction of America. His books are available on Amazon, godless and this site timeaglefiction.com 

Negative Nonce or Just a Realist in the RV Workamping Life? First Experience