making the corporate representative's meeting room into my own personal lounge, complete with a bed (cushioned chairs that I stacked up every morning), a gaming computer (the sign in computer that I downloaded a copy of WarCraft 2 onto, which I then hid), and a snack fridge.
The snack fridge merits additional explaining. It was a fridge the camp used to store chocolate, gram crackers, and marshmallows for a smore event we did every week. I always told corporate that we needed about 3 times as many materials as we estimated we would need for the week, leaving a hefty supply of snacks. For extra measure, I also stocked up on a very large number of bagged lunches from campers who didn't want to eat the officially provided meals. Those I would eat for breakfast.
Every morning I would be woken up by sunrise and walk from said building all the way to my work area on the other side of camp. The sun would wake me up at the same time as the morning meeting for the rest of staff, so I would always pass the meeting when it was about to end. I would also skip the morning singing routine most of the time, but that was because the thing went on for hours and my voice was usually shot after the first day because of a song that I would always shout at the top of my lungs during the evening campfire.
My abode also allowed me to get more sleep, since I didn't have to put up with the adults smoking in my cabin, or the teens a few cabins over playing call of duty on an xbox they somehow rigged up in the rat-infested plywood boxes that passed for our official shelters.
All these benefits meant that I could spend all of my energy doing my job instead of nodding off to sleep or listening to a bunch of announcements that didn't apply to me. My job was to teach astronomy, public speaking, and cold war history, and according to my students I was pretty damn good at it. They would often say that they learned more in one week of my class than in a full year in their public schools, and also that mine was the most fun class on their schedule (despite the fact that there were some pretty terrific activities to do, like archery and black powder shooting). My students (the campers) were being overcharged and taken advantage of by the camp's owners, and I felt it was my duty to give them the maximum bang for their buck, so to speak.
As it happens, that last part is a large reason for why I didn't get fired. I had gained something of a reputation, and people started coming to the camp specifically to take my classes. In my first year I capped at about 10 people per class; by the end of the of my 5 years I averaged about 20 to 25. My astronomy events were an even greater success, starting with about 20 people my first year and building to around 250 by the fifth (I stored my telescopes in the very building as well, despite repeated complaints from the administrators, but I stated that they were there because they would be damaged if I had to move them all across camp every wednesday and all the way back the following thursday, which is true). Corporate knew about this, and were thus hesitant to fire me. Further, I was friends with the regional representative's wife (who was often shunned because of how much the rest of the staff dislike her husband), which made things even more difficult.
Also, it was exceedingly hard to prove I had done anything. That's not to say nobody knew I was doing it. All the staff knew. But none of them were willing to rat me out, largely because they all despised corporate (because everyone's areas were either underfunded or suffered from tampering from on high). Even the Camp and Program directors knew and kept their lips sealed. Also, I was pretty liberal with my chocolate stash, and everyone wanted that to keep going.
I quit after my 5th year, even when they offered me a raise. I didn't want to be associated with them any more.