Work Woes

Yesterday, I tweeted that I am not going to re-apply to work at the local pool next summer. Some of you replied asking why, so here is the story:

As you may have read, I work at two different locations, and right now, I am only talking about one of them. This is the pool where I teach swimming lessons. The working conditions are much worse than at the other pool, which is why I am not going back. In fact, none of my coworkers are going back.

Everyday, our bosses come up with new ways to ensure that we get paid for less time. We used to close the pool at 5:00 and got paid until 5:15, which makes sense because we were still there for 15 minutes cleaning up. Well, the administration came up with the great idea of closing at 4:55, but only paying us until 5:00, even though we are there till 5:10.

Whenever we want to do something in our lessons that is fun or interesting, we are told we can't do it anymore. Literally, we can swim back and forth, and that's it. We can't dive off the diving blocks anymore, for example.

On top of that, they make up new rules for the pool everyday. The annoying thing is that it makes the lifeguards look bad when our supervisor comes over and keeps informing us of new rules. At this point, the guards have adopted selective hearing because some of the rules are just so absurd.

For example, nobody is allowed to have kickboards in the water. You also can't twist when you jump into the water. Nobody can use water polo balls in the water either, no matter how old or experienced you are.

Finally, we change schedules every 3 weeks because that's how long swimming sessions last, so we have to change according to the sign-ups. I work Tuesday-Saturday, and I am given my new schedule on Monday night. This is unacceptable. I have to plan my life, and I can't be changing plans because my work schedule was given out super late.

On top of that, my boss insists on calling us with the schedule and telling us over the phone. She absolutely refuses to email them to us, even though several of the employees (including myself) asked her to do so.

Lastly, she gives us the wrong schedules on the phone, and then blames us for the mess up. Literally every single employee this session got reprimanded for showing up at the wrong time, even though we showed up when she asked us to over the phone.

In conclusion, the pool is run in a bureaucratic manner that makes life unbearable for its employees.