Hotel Sofia. Onboarding 2026. Never Again. I’m better than this.

Yeah. That toilet plunger thing was unique and cute. Until I really thought about it. Now let’s get into the seedy white underbelly of seasonal employee housing. And the things that a good property manager could have (and should have) easily mitigated.

Okay. What country in the f-ing world, as we know it, do people think the best place to store a tool for getting turds out of a toilet is hanging it between the vanity mirror and your face? Where in the world is a bathroom floor too dirty to put a toilet plunger on?

Well, I guess that would be Bulgaria. I have to say, although those two guys weren’t that clean, they had a bit of a Forrest Gump vibe and were kind of cool. But the Ecuador guys were Grade A dicks.

When I’m trying to sleep nearing midnight, I hear them humble-bragging, “Our country is small, but has two time zones. One is just for those f-uped lizards.” I know Xanterra doesn’t hire the brightest students, but is it that hard to say Galapagos Islands? When Spanish is your first language (it means tortoise, by the way)?

Now take a hard look at this shack, which definitely has human trafficking written all over it. Outside laundry under a lean-to. A story-and-a-half, with horribly pitched dormers and a front porch roof from a sharecropper’s shanty.

The loft where they threw in SIX beds, with zero privacy and only marginal dresser space for people who will be working here for at least three, possibly five, months.

And wait, check out these smooth plastered walls. Yeah, no popcorn texture. No acoustical control. These things are basically amplifiers of whatever noise comes from the rest of the house.

And what is the rest of the house?? Well, the loft is fully open to the lower kitchen and what would be called a family/media/game room. Other than the half dozen bunks up high, there are two more in a separate bedroom downstairs. Pretty classy. It has a … door!

It only took one night to find out this is THE gathering place for EVERY foreign J1 Visa student in the entire Coram RV Park. Yes. They don’t use to the common kitchen. They come here not just to cook, but to hang out. To convene with their own. Share culture. Stories. Video games and movies.

All that commotion goes well past sunset. Then, with the dawn of a new day, more of those who don’t live here come to use the single shower and laundry facilities. All the sounds of that traffic come straight up to the people trying to sleep above.

It was clear the two Bulgarians who claimed the lower room didn’t care who came and went. There were people walking thru their bedroom every morning to take a shower. Sometimes even knocking at the front door at 6 a.m. when it got accidentally locked (opps).  

I didn’t stay long enough to see what the laundry line would be like. But I could only guess. Funny, since there was also a washer-dryer outside under that carport lean-to thingy. 

But then there was the crawl space. In a closet. With a scary stepladder leading us to… who knows. The Future? The Past? Judgment Day? Or maybe a pile of passports of those students who didn’t make it home. I’ll never know. And can only guess what snuck out of there at night.

I’m too old for this stuff. Over the last five years of onboarding, three of them have been horrible experiences. I’ve had enough. So I started thinking.

The last couple of seasons, I’ve been staying the night before onboarding at these little prefab duplex cabin things that have popped up in a farmer’s field along my travel route. And they are just just TWO short miles from the Jammer bus barn/shop where we have our mandatory week of training. 

I have the place all to myself. No students. No parkies. Can sleep when I want. Use the fire pit and BBQ if I want. I can always jump in the car and be with other drivers for dinner and beers in a few minutes.

I only need five nights. And it’s May, which is early pre-season, which means… they are a third of the price they get in prime summer months. So, I’ve done the math. 

Looking at my tips per day average over the last four years as a Red Bus driver, five nights equates to about three days of tips. Yep. Just three days out of a 90-day season. And I can sleep in peace and not have to bad-mouth any foreign nationals because their parents didn’t teach them to be considerate people when they went abroad.

It has taken years, and I’m a little slow, but I’m dialing it in. No more toilet plungers in the bathroom light sconce. No more nights in a Bangkok youth hostel. No more time spent under the Lake McDonald Poverty Line.

Ah yes.  In the jungle, the quiet jungle,  the lion finally sleeps tonight.  GoatBoy is out. Wiser than he has ever been. Almost content. At peace with his life’s choices (well, most of them).