SOUTH COBB — Since 2019, Greg Fuller has been general manager of Six Flags White Water in Marietta. But before that, he spent his entire career at south Cobb’s Six Flags Over Georgia, reaching the position of operations manager.
“Is that not insane?” he joked, speaking to the South Cobb Business Association this week. “I know you people are all thinking ‘Oh, my God, 33 years at that place? Are you kidding me? … I visit for four hours and I’m ready to go home and lock my kids up.”
Ahead of Saturday’s opening day at Six Flags Over Georgia, Fuller delivered a jocular talk about the park’s impact on the local community and outlined new additions coming.
Workforce
Fuller started working at the park when he was 16, and said he worked in just about every job.
He is a product, then, of what he sees as one of Six Flags’ greatest benefits to the community — providing jobs to teenagers.
Six Flags, Fuller said, is the top employer of teens in the state, and hires roughly 3,000 seasonal employees every summer.
About 30-40% of their seasonal employees are rehires, many of whom move up the ladder each year. Most don’t stick around as long as he did.
“I just never got ready for a real job. So I stayed there,” Fuller said.
Six Flags plays an important role in hiring and mentoring teenagers, preparing them for the workforce, Fuller said. The parks have workers as young as 15. Managing the parks is not unlike running a high school.
“Has anyone had a 15 year old? Try 1,000 of them on the same property, it’s only 200 acres,” he said. “A thousand 15-year-olds are enough to make me want to retire 20 years ago, but 15-year-olds are the lifeblood of our workforce, our summer workforce.”
Natalie Rutledge is the executive director of the Marietta/Cobb chapter of Communities in Schools, a national organization that supports youth…
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