But I could see, I could see the commissary right outside of my office. I could see the zookeepers working right outside my office. They could see me up in my office. Okay. Facilities maintenance was just beyond that, along with horticulture. So we were always, I wanted to keep… Read More
Pollyanna. They’d call me Pollyanna because I’m soft. Okay. I’m not a good confronter. Okay. To be very honest with you, confronting a bad situation, I got better at it. But a dysfunctional employee, I, it was hard for me to confront it and to repair it. And sometimes I… Read More
Quite often people are given responsibility, but not the authority to go with it. But I really worked hard to give them the authority to go with the responsibility of moving things forward and being leaders. So I think part of it was really believing in, in my coworkers listening,… Read More
Okay. The frontline fighters gotta listen to them too and hear what they’re saying, hear what they’re saying. Now what’s, words are coming outta their mouth, but what, what are they really saying regarding this situation or whatever. So I try to be a really inclusive listening door wide open… Read More
I guess I always believed in my coworkers, especially those that I had a lot, a lot of faith in who demonstrated their ability and their knowledge. Okay. And I really wanted to listen to them and their influence and their recommendations because they’re the pros. You know, as a… Read More
Oh boy. Can I describe my management style?… Read More
Okay. But that was the right thing to do. And so, you know, it’s people in dollars. The biggest challenges, honestly. Read More
So, two questions. Can you describe your management style?… Read More
What would you say some of your more frustrating, challenging times were as director?… Read More
Well, it was usually staff or money. You know, I had one period I, during my directorship, I had, what do you call it when someone wants to take over the ship, mutiny of some, some leadership. Okay. Because they weren’t always agreeing with my leadership decisions ’cause they were… Read More
And I don’t know why that person really wanted to do that. I could make some comments, but I’d rather not. And there were sometimes when we had recession and rough financial times when had to cut back on the budget, cut back on staffing, reduce hours, things like that. Read More
And so, you know, like I said, well here’s an interesting fact. If you’re wearing a cochlear, IM implant for hearing. You cannot go down a plastic slide. The, the, and I don’t understand it, but, but, but the plastic slide affects the cochlear implant some way. And so we… Read More
I said, you’re kidding me. So when we developed a couple of new areas with large spiral slides, we spent a lot of money to import ’em from Europe because the big spiral slides are all plastic made in the United States. So to get a big stainless steel slide,… Read More
I think, you know, visitor amenities, oh, everything from, you know, the parking lot to make sure the parking is convenient for people. Make sure you’ve got obviously all the right handicapped accessibility issues. We also are a, we work with, I think it’s called culture club regarding people who… Read More
Okay. So we sent people out, staff out across the country, taking lots of pictures, talking to lots of people, bringing back lots of information. We actually took, when we were designing, we actually, our contractor, we took his private jet and flew to a couple of zoos and actually… Read More
What, what are, what visitor amenities do you think are important and why?… Read More
Oh, we tried to involve as much staff as possible. You know, it’s, and again, you know, you come up, management may come up with a concept, but it’s gotta go through all the filters and all the different layers of everybody going. Read More
Is this really going to work?… Read More
And I think I mentioned earlier that we had hired an independent person to go out and do research measure exhibits. He was independent and he went to at least a dozen differences across the country working on tiger and giraffe habitats, doing research, getting all the facts, talking to… Read More
Oh yeah. You know, funding, you know, and sometimes you got a great conservation program going, but then the person spearheading it leaves for another opportunity. And if that person was the spearhead and did 90% of the heavy lifting for their project, it, it would do a huge damage… Read More