A Pool Through The Lifeguard's Eyes

First and foremost, I feel like I have to get this out of the way, lifeguards are real people! We have lives and families and personalities. They don’t just go out and try to find the most stone cold faced people of the world and recruit them to be lifeguards. They also don’t try to find the crazy ones, but sometimes that happens too. We don’t enjoy having to tell you that you can’t throw your kid around the pool or that you can’t dunk your best friend all in fun and games, or worst of all, we especially don’t enjoy telling you to walk for the hundredth time. It’s not just you, we don’t like telling the five hundred people that are at the pool at the same time as you those same exact things. It doesn’t give me joy to “ruin” your fun, and honestly I’m bored out of my mind after sitting in the sun for 5 hours but I still have to do my job in order to keep you and the people around you safe. This pool is my home for the summer and you are guests in that home, so why is it so hard to follow a simple rule like “no running”? I get that it’s super exciting to be able to go swimming and you want to get to the slide as fast as possible, or maybe your mommy or daddy said “hurry up!” and the only way you know how to do that is to start running as fast as you can, but let me just tell you I’ve seen people fall waaaaaay to many times for me to start letting you run all over my pool. The people weren’t even running that fast, they may have just been skipping (which is another thing people try to substitute for walking, if it were walking then that’s what we would call it).

I’ve never had this problem but sometimes people complain about a lifeguard being too mean or not doing their job. First off, there is a lot more to me doing my job than what you as a patron know about. I clean bathrooms, the pool bottom, concessions area, take out trash, know CPR and First Aid, and have been trained in all the possible ways to retrieve a person from the water as fast as possible. At the same time as this I have people who come to me and speak with me as if I’m their therapist. Just yesterday I had to speak with at least 3 different people about their personal problems. We have to be nice, we’re not just here to be the worst people on the planet or have a sneer on our faces, we do know how to smile and have a real conversation. All it takes is you talking to us, but not while we’re on stand cause that’s a HUGE distraction. We’re normal people and we want to get to know you.