#facility problems

[talesfromthepooldeck-blog]

I don't know about lifeguards in other cities/counties/states, but in the community where I am, there's a bit of a pool rivalry. And by a bit, I mean I can't help but sneer whenever I have to go to any of the other pools and I'm hypercritical of everything they do.

...but I'm usually right...because their pools suck.

My city's rival city (yes, this is how my community works-- this is straight up Night Vale vs Desert Bluffs stuff) is really the pool I (and all the guards I work with) hate the most. Why? Because their pool, which I will call Jefferson Pool, got this donation to do an entire remodel so their facility is so much nicer than all the other pools, but their staff is super lazy. 

And I'm not just talking about the lifeguards, who lazily sit in chairs and paint their nails instead of watch the pools. This includes the maintenance workers as well.

I have to go to Jefferson pool every day to coach swim team, so I get to see just how disgusting the pool is. There is a list of "Cleaning Duties" hanging in the office and, I kid you not, the protocol to clean the pool is to "Brush pool twice a week"

...Now I'm sure some of you know how pools work, but for the sake of any of my followers who don't know, dirt settles to the bottom of any pool if it's been undisturbed. When the dirt is disturbed (by say, brushing), the dirt will still be in the water, and will eventually resettle at the bottom of the pool.

So basically, they just move the dirt around. Twice a week.

And this is the most popular pool in the entire county. Everyone goes there. So everyone's dirt and garbage (yeah, they don't clean up the garbage) is at the bottom of this pool.

This pool gives lifeguards and pool workers a bad name.

[talesfromthepooldeck-blog]

Alright, so there's this vending machine that has been at my pool for as long as I've been working there. At the beginning of my second year working at this pool, the machine broke. We called the company listed on the side of the machine, only to find that the company had gone out of business. And since no one at the pool had a key to open the machine to try and repair it ourselves, nor was there anyone to call to remove it, the machine ended up being in limbo. Every year, we put up a new "Out of Order" sign to make sure patrons don't lose their money to the machine (especially since we can't refund them in any way).

Well yesterday as I was opening up, I walked past the machine, when I heard a loud thunk. Turning to investigate, I saw that a Diet Coke had fallen out of the machine.

Now just to be clear, this machine is not working. In fact, it is not even plugged in, and has not been for years.

And if that weren't creepy enough, you can see that this particular Coke has a special logo to celebrate...the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Guys, this Coke was bottled when I was still in high school, and is older than the Obama administration. And this bottle of Coke now sits in the guard shack, because we're all too terrified to try and open it.

[talesfromthepooldeck-blog]

I'm not sure if the city worker who painted this was drunk or that damn lazy. And if you're wondering, yes, they all look that bad, if not worse

[talesfromthepooldeck-blog]

one day when I came to work we had to deal with poop on the bottom of the pool, a kid crying cause he dropped his sunglasses in the deep end (13ft), and two of the girls toilets being clogged at once. Guess how many toilets there are. Two. And as the only girl on shift I had to deal with it. One of them turned out to be completely broken.

[talesfromthepooldeck-blog]

Alright, so I work at a public pool in a small community. So basically, this facility is... not the best.

The bathrooms are perhaps one of the things I'm most ashamed of at my pool. For one, they are quite literally just bathrooms: two stalls in the girls' bathroom, a stall and a urinal in the boys' bathroom, and a sink in each. That's it. There's nowhere for people to change, nowhere for people to put their things. Nada.

It gets worse. The water pressure isn't always working. Yeah, there's no water pressure at a pool. So guess what that means? Sometimes the damn toilets don't even flush.

I've lost count of how many times a patrol will come up to me and sheepishly say something like "I couldn't get the toilet to flush..." and I always have to reassure them that it's quite common for the toilets not to flush.

Sometimes I think it would just be easier to have outhouses...but then I remember than outhouses in the middle of the summer would be a God-awful idea.