Another great day at the Camp Verde NPS headquarters! Ryan has ordering authority, which is a privilege that few park staff members hold. Park employees will inform him of the supplies that they need to adequately do their job and he will put the orders in online. The main orders that he puts in are for various office supplies. Ryan also pays for things like the phone bill, internet connection, and many other essential services that are required for a park to operate smoothly.
Another key piece to the administration position that Ryan holds is to keep tabs on Park Service property. Once a year Ryan and a few others must go around to the buildings by each monument and check on the government property, which mainly consists of electronic equipment such as computers, printers, etc. Vehicles also fall under the category of park service property that must be checked. Ryan uses the Financial and Business Management System to check property asset records and also to work on budget manipulation. On this website he is also able to pay utility bills for The Park Service in the Verde Valley as well as Tonto National Monument.
I found out that as an administrator for the Park Service, Ryan also serves as the key control officer. A couple of employees came in to exchange keys and find out which one was used for what. He also manages the charge cards for each employee by going on a website to check each employee's spending. Each employee sends records in to show what they paid for and it must match with what the website says or else Ryan will have to find the cause of the discrepancy.
Mindi, the store manager for the National Park Service at Tuzigoot and Montezuma Castle, came in to meet with Park Ranger Krystina and Superintendent Dorothy. I sat in on the meeting and learned a lot about how merchandise ends up on the shelves of the stores. Mindi had a huge pile of potential merchandise that she thinks will do well in the stores. She explained what was important about each item and why she thought it would sell. Krystina and Dorothy would provide their input and Dorothy would sign off on it. There is some great merchandise coming to the stores soon!
The last part of the day was spent with Ryan learning how to send proper government e-mails and learning how to put together a government resume. He showed me his own personal resumes and gave me tons of useful information. I had no idea that a federal resume should be different from others. I'm really glad he told me to tailor my resume to each specific job posting by using the same wording in my resume that is on the job posting. There is a ton of different tasks that an administrator must tend to, or as Ryan likes to call them "collateral jobs." I have learned so much about the essential inner workings of the National Park Service from Ryan!