I just started as a lifeguard two weeks ago. I am still a tad nervous about certain rules. My boss says, “Go with your gut instinct. If you’re not comfortable, blow the whistle and stop it.”

I am in the office making phone calls about swim lessons when one of the guards needs to go home. I am to cover her once she leaves. As she comes in, she explains how these certain brothers, about the ages of ten to fourteen, are coming in. They are regulars but they are notorious troublemakers. She warns me that they are a handful and wishes me luck. I mark each boy with a colored marker, which designates how deep they are allowed to swim, and they jump in.

At first, they are pretty easy going. They are shooting hoops at the small basketball net we have. Soon, they start to hang on the rim of the net, which it states clearly in big, bold letters, “Do NOT hang on the rim/net.” I blow my whistle. 

Me: “Hey, guys, please don’t hang on the net. It could fall on you or it could break.” 

Boy #1: “Tsk…” 

I am ignored by the other. Then, they find the small beach balls and start to whip them at each other, especially in the face. There is another family in the open swim area, as well, two parents and their two young children. They occasionally get hit with the ball, too, and get annoyed. I walk over to the edge of the pool.

Me: “Guys, you can throw and catch the balls, but please be respectful of other members.”

Boy #2: “Okay. Hey, let’s go down to the deep end.” 

Boy #1: “Yeah, sounds good.”

I’m thinking by now, “Awesome. I got them to still have fun but keep the other people happy, too.”

Haha, no.

From here, they decide to race across the pool deck and median whipping balls at each other. 

First off, the median is for lifeguards only. It’s the small strip of wall that allows us to walk in between the kiddy pool/shallow end and the lap pool. Second, there is no running on the deck. Period.

These two are all over the place, jumping over the wall and the railing, sliding under the netting, jumping and running on everything. The other guard that was on with me blows her whistle a few times; they just ignore it. Same with me.

Me: “Guys! You need to stop right now. No running on the deck; you can slip and hurt yourself. If you don’t stop, you will be asked to leave immediately.” 

Boy #1: “Whatever.”

They ignore me and continue it. I’m getting so frustrated because I’m still a newbie and I’m still unsure of myself. I don’t want to be the bad guy, but I finally psyche myself up enough courage to say they need to leave. Just as I am about to, the eldest brother throws a ball right into his little brother’s face, and then proceeds to slip on the pool deck. I rush down to help him.

Me: “Are you okay?! This is why you need to follow the pool rules; people get hurt.”

He’d scraped his knee and elbows on the tiles. He grabbed his brother and they ran away, embarrassed and angry. I heard them curse a few times while storming out.

I have seen them back once, but they couldn’t swim because the swim team was using the pool.

Worst part is, I’ve heard from my boss they still keep ignoring the rules and that wasn’t the first time they’d hurt themselves.

Related:
Pooling Together All The Bad Behavior

Our swimming club usually gets the kids who have behaviour issues and can’t be handled elsewhere. Since we are used to — untrue — negative stories, we usually don’t have opinions formed before seeing a child. But sometimes, even we get fooled by experiences from the past.

A mother asks if her thirteen-year-old son can join the swimming club. They just emigrated from an Asian nation. They speak little Dutch and a bit more English. It’s not much of a problem, so our contact person asks if he has any swimming diplomas. 

The boy has none. That country doesn’t do swimming diplomas, nor do they teach swimming classes. So, how did he learn? He taught himself! This usually sets alarm bells off because we have had plenty of parents who’ve said their angel children could swim like fish and all they could do was barely avoid drowning. 

Our first plan is to let him start at level zero as a beginner, which means, for him, knee-deep water. But, since there’s a global health crisis going on, that class hasn’t started again yet. 

The mother asks if we can please, please, give him a chance. She knows it doesn’t sound good, but he really can swim well and if we only gave him a chance, if he wasn’t good enough, she would never bother us again. Since something just feels… different from the other entitled parents, the contact person arranges a test swim. 

Seven teachers are present, ready to jump in if needed. The boy is shy and nervous, but he also looks happy when he sees the pool. One teacher will act as his “primary teacher” for the day and she asks him to show what he can do. 

Our jaws drop. Of course, he’s not an Olympic champion but… he’s good! Considering his technique, I mumble that he probably watched Olympic swimming videos as teaching material. 

It turns out that he did!

The teacher then asks him to dive. The boy looks confused; what is diving? The teacher shows it with poses — teachers are not allowed to swim yet — and the boy tries to dive. It is a good dive. He has never swum on his back before, and he does, including the backstroke! He picks it up immediately. 

Then, our most senior teacher arrives. He’s approaching ninety and has taught for around sixty years; keeping him away from the pool would be torture for him, so we’re very careful around him. “Hey, new kid?” he asks us. “So, which class will he be in? Level five?”

After class, I see the boy waiting outside. He walks up to me and asks, in broken Dutch and English, when the next class will be. I tell him to send an email to our contact person and please, please, please come back, because he swims wonderfully! A shy smile appears on his face and when I get home, I contact our contact person to say that the boy seems interested in returning. 

Due to experiences in the past, we expected someone at less than level zero. We got someone close to level five. We hope he will return — if he wants to! — because he can grow into a wonderful swimmer, perhaps even a champion!

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When I was fourteen or fifteen, I worked in the snack shack at my local swim club. This was my first real job, so I didn’t have a lot of experience, but I learned quickly. The snack shack was run by a separate company from the pool, so technically, they were my employers. But I will tell you, it sucked.

This place, had anyone actually checked on it, would have broken so many health codes that they wouldn’t have even been able to fit them all on one paper. The entire floor under our grill and fryers was a massive grease pit, and the entire summer, I was scared it would catch on fire and explode.

One time, I swore I saw a mouse disappearing into the bread drawer. Halfway through the summer, there was a fly and maggot infestation. When food went bad, we usually scraped off the ick and still served the good parts!

Toward the end of the year, the company basically gave up on us and stopped sending restock items. This meant that, on Labor Day, by far the pool’s busiest weekend of the year, we were out of fries, onion rings, bread in general, hamburger buns, waters, sodas, candy, and tuna.

And, to top to all off, they took an extra three weeks after the snack shack closed for the year to get us our pay, and they likely wouldn’t have paid us at all if I hadn’t put up a fuss.

This story is part of our Labor Day roundup!

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The pool I work at hired a new employee who previously worked at a famous water park in our area. Since she had that background, we assumed she’d be a great employee. When I first met her, she was caked in makeup with eyelashes up to her forehead, and she was about to teach a swimming lesson. Surprisingly, none of it came off, so I asked her where she got her mascara. She then tried to play it off like her eyelashes were natural, which was warning number one. 

She has a shift on Saturdays from four to eight, but a month into working, she advertises that she wants the shift covered because she recently had a concussion and her grandma is sick.

Legitimate reasons, and I’m sure if she had talked to our boss, it would’ve been covered no problem. She didn’t, though, because she only wanted the six-to-eight part covered. No one wants to only work two hours on a Saturday night, but I’m already working noon to four, so I offer to work the entire four-to-eight shift. I hear nothing later and just assume she’s changed her mind.

A week or so passes until I’m working with the girl and she brings up the topic of her Saturday night coverage.

Girl: “It’s just been a hard decision for me because I don’t feel well, but I need the hours. So I’m trying to just get rid of two hours of my shift, so I can just have a break because it’s hard with my concussion.”

Me: “I understand, and I really want to help out. What if I worked four to six? It’s more convenient for me and you would still get those two hours.”

Girl: *Pauses* “Mmm, I have to think about that.”

I was stunned by this response because that was as good as she was going to get. I didn’t live nearby at all and didn’t want to work noon to four, have two hours off, and then be back from six to eight. I decided to drop it and cover someone’s opening on the next Saturday, instead.

On Friday night, around 11:00 pm, I was lying in bed and I just got a feeling to check our work’s email. I opened it up and, sure enough, that girl replied to my old email recently with, “Thanks, [My Name], you’re the best.”

So, I basically had to work a 6:30 am to 8:00 pm shift, and I was not happy. Luckily, she didn’t last long.

I’m babysitting two small children, a five-year-old and a three-year-old. These two children are trilingual, while I am not. By virtue of spending a lot of time with these kids, I can understand a moderate amount in German and a small amount in Russian but can’t speak in either language. 

Today on the agenda is swimming lessons, and when we finish, I herd them towards the elevators so we can head back to their house. As we get there, we approach a family who is speaking Russian. The five-year-old is always psyched to find other people who speak her languages, so she strikes up a conversation with the two little girls.

As happens with regularity, the mother turns to me and starts speaking to me in Russian. I explain that I’m their babysitter and I’m woefully monolingual. The five-year-old then launches into an explanation — in Russian — of who speaks what language in her family, since not everyone speaks all three.

She makes a mistake and I correct her in English, which leads to some weird looks from the mother of the other family. I explain that I can understand a little bit, but I don’t speak it. The mother asks why I don’t speak it or learn to speak it, and the five-year-old interjects with a bit of Russian I don’t understand. 

The mother starts laughing, while the five-year-old gives a cheeky grin. The mother tells me that the kid told her I’m a bad student, which is why I don’t speak it. I also laugh, because that assessment comes from her trying to teach me Russian words for months but giving up because she didn’t like my decidedly American pronunciation. Good thing she wasn’t grading me.