When you had to negotiate a contract, it wasn’t a contract, they couldn’t have a contract with the city, they could, I remember it’s called a memorandum of understanding. And that had to be in the memorandum of understanding that they wear the uniforms. And once I did that, I… Read More
What are the pluses and minuses?… Read More
The pluses are that you can live right by where your job is, the minus is, you can live right where your job is. (laughing) That’s, and that is, that is boy. That’s a, that’s a minus truthfully. It’s more of a minus than a plus, really is. People think… Read More
You had to know that you were gonna be, you were gonna wear the uniforms.” “No, no, you you’re making us wear them,” and that was the deal. That was their deal, that was their gripe, and they wouldn’t wear them. Read More
How did you get those keepers to wear the uniforms?… Read More
I mean, just saying, “How can you make us do it,” you know?… Read More
I said, “You wanted them.” I said, “You wanted the uniforms. I got the uniforms for you. Read More
Did you think that I was gonna let you leave them in your locker to stay, and you would never wear them?… Read More
Let’s vote on what you want. I don’t wanna dictate the color. I don’t wanna dictate the style. You vote and we’ll, that’s what we’ll go with. The majority will rule.” All right, so they of course voted and naturally it came out a tie, in every way and all… Read More
“But we’ll, we’re gonna be responsible to launder them.” I said you know, “And you’ll be, wear them, and we’re all gonna be happy.” Well, they weren’t happy of course. But anyway, they got the uniforms, got a uniform service to, you know, to do exactly what I said to… Read More
So finally I figured, well, I gotta take the bull by the horns. ‘Cause this is costing the city a lot of money. I mean, it was not expensive, was not cheap. It was very expensive. So I figured, all right, so one day, so I had a meeting, you… Read More
You mean nine out of 10 days?… Read More
Nine out every 10 days? (chuckling) Yeah, well there was a lot of frustrations, a lot of frustrations. One of the things that I probably, I’ve been, I thought of lately, when I got your, you know, I got a lot of these thinking questions to do. And one of… Read More
Before I got there, the zookeepers made some, made demands. They wanted certain things to happen, and one of the things they were asking for were uniforms, which of course seems to be obvious, and I totally agreed with. And I told them that, that I agreed with that, “And… Read More
But were there things that were going on that affected all zoos?… Read More
Well, you’re talking about governmental regulations and things like that, or- It could be government regulations that had an impact, or things that AZA was doing, or programs that were being initiated that were affecting all the zoos, and certainly down in San Francisco. I don’t really, I don’t really… Read More
What were some of your frustrating times as zoo director?… Read More
Did you, you obviously had brought people with you, or you brought people in?… Read More
Yeah, I asked people to come, yeah. Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t really involved in all the day-to-day things, no, not that heavy. Read More
When you started at the zoo, were you looking to enhance, or did you wanna enhance the visitor service experience, and how were you able to change that?… Read More