Day 1
Written: 5-25-2013
“If you go to any other lifeguard company and ask them for a
cup of water, they will bring you exactly what you asked for. If you ask a Jeff
Ellis lifeguard for a cup of water, they will bring you a cup of water with
ice, a lemon slice on the side, a napkin, and a little umbrella on top. When you tell them you didn't need all that,
they will tell you its no problem, they do it every time.”
Mike
Johnson, the assistant area manager of Illinois ,
used this comparison to show us lifeguards going through the Basic Leadership
Training that our company will give more than is expected. A new guest may come
into the pool for the first time and expect a lifeguard to sit there and stair
at the water, but we give them more. We scan our water, checking in every
corner and making sure everyone is safe. We come in several times a month to
maintain in-service hours where we practice and fine tune our skills so they
are never forgotten and always improving. Guards are tested at random with
Vigilance Awareness Tests. We are audited three to four times a year by a
licensed auditing team. And discipline is at its highest.
On the
first day of leadership training, I was ready and prepared. I dressed
nicely and sat up straight. I made sure to pay attention and absorb all the
information and skills that were being taught. I worked hard in the past year
to get up to this point, and here was my opportunity to become a leader.
The class
was called the Basic Leadership Training, or just BLT. Or what I like to call
it, the Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato class. The training was held at the Vaughn
Athletic Center Aurora . The only room that was
available for use was the party room, then temporarily our meeting/class room.
There were about 40 of us all crammed in it, and it got a little stuffy, but we
fallowed our lifeguard mado and made it work. We all were either renewing their
licenses or earning them for the first time, becoming supervisors-in-training,
supervisors, managers-in-training, or managers. Some of us were even going to
be roving managers. And then of course we had our trainers, the
ever-so-wonderful Jerica, our area manager, and her assistant Mike.
Many of the
people in the class I already knew, but there were some who I didn’t. They were
from the smaller pools that I never worked at, and so it was really nice
getting to meet them and getting to know them.
One person
who I was delighted to see in the training was none other than Doug one of the
best managers I ever worked with. He gave me even more motivation to do well
than anyone else. I looked up to him.
At the
beginning of the first day, we went around the room and we each told our names,
where we worked, how long we had been working, and an interesting fact about
ourselves. For my interesting fact, I told everyone I played the violin.
Simple, but a cool one at that. When it was Doug’s turn, he surprised me a bit.
He said he almost drowned when he was little. Well, there was something I could
relate to. He wasn’t the only one. Brad from the Fermi Lab pool said he was a
graduate from college for music and band. He was currently in the process of
getting a job as a music teacher. I already knew that one, but I though it kind
of cool, since not a lot of people are really that dedicated to music anymore
to take it on as their college career. Cesar said the same thing as Brad,
except that Cesar just graduated from high school.
After that,
Mike and Jerica threw us all in the pool (not literally). I was glad we were in
the therapy pool because the water was warm. All of us were divided into three
groups and put at stations. At each station we went through different scenarios
and skills. Mike gave us a little speech before we got in the water: “I want to
see great and confident work here. We are leaders. We are going to be teaching this
stuff to the new guards. You shouldn’t have to be told how to do it anymore.”
This was our time to show how good we really were at our lifeguard skills. Here
was our chance to be leaders.
My group went to the CPR station
first with Doug. He took us over by the window and had us partner up with
someone. Doug walked around and corrected little detail as we performed
scenarios on each other with rescue breathing and CPR. I did mess up on a
something that was really simple. Doug gave me a look that said, “C’mon
Martina.”
When we were done with CPR, Doug
asked us, “How come we do a proper jaw thrust? Think of it like a straw. You
bend it and your drink isn't going to come through very well. Straighten it out
and it works perfectly. You straighten out that airway on the guest and air
will go through.”
I liked that, how Doug always used
other simple little things in the world to compare life guarding skills to. It
made things seem so much simpler and easier to understand. I liked how he told
us why something was the way it was,
not that it just was that way with no explanation.
When my group was done with the CPR
station, we went over to another part of the pool with Chad ,
one of the managers. Here he had us doing rapid extrications and spinals. We would either
have to pull an unconscious person out of the water on the backboard, or deal
with a spinal injury where we had to strap them into the backboard and
immobilize their heads. A few of us grabbed tubes and someone, acting as the distressed guest, went out into the
shallow water and did something random.
The third station was basic
rescues. We did everything from the usual front drive to duck plucks, to rear
hugs, to unconscious rescues. As Chad
did, Mike paid close attention to the detail. We all did every rescue two
times, switching out the lifeguard who was on stand so that we all had a chance
to go.
When everyone was done, Mike
gathered us all by the doors to the pool and said, “Nice job everyone. Just
remembers that it is important that every detail you get and everything you say
is correct, because other lifeguards will fallow exactly what you do. There was
a trainer back in Hawaii who was
teaching a lifeguard class, and every time he would use the seal easy, he would
shake it first out of habit. And I can guarantee you all that every lifeguard
in that class shook their seal easies before they used them.” Everyone in the
room laughed.
When we all changed into our
clothes and met back in the party room, we all commented on the good points and
things we could fix with everything we had just done out at the pool. For the
most part, everyone did really well, except that the backboard was dropped a
few times with a bang.
And then we started on my favorite
part of the training; skit scenarios. Mike chose two people to go out into the
hallway and wait while everyone cooked up a good situation that could happen at
a pool with one or two guests. He chose some people to be the guests, and then
brought the two people from the hallway back in. One acted as the supervisor, and the other acted as the manager. The guest, or guests, had a complaint about something
with the pool or something that happened. The supervisor had to try and deal
with it, while the guest argued more and more and found more things wrong. When
or if the supervisor couldn’t solve the problem, they got the manager who would
then step in and help out.
Sometimes the situations went on
for several minutes; sometimes the guest was quickly satisfied. It all really
depended, not only on how well the supervisor and manager handled the situation,
but also how far the complaining guest wanted to go. There was even a situation
where Doug and Jesus had a fight when they thought their kids were spitting on
one another. They started yelling at each other, and then Jesus pushed Doug, and
Doug pushed back, so it turned into a shoving war. The supervisor and manager
had to come in and separate them and listen to both sides of the story.
I was caught in a situation as a
supervisor where Meriah and another girl complained to me that the pool was
freezing cold. I was glad that they picked something I had to deal with many
times before. I talked to them about how it was the maintenance’s
responsibility to take care of the water temperature and I would let them know
right away. They argued more and then Mike stepped in and started also freaking
out at me. When that happened, I got the manager to help.
Apparently I did well, according to
everyone. Mike said my confidence built up as the situation progressed instead
of going down, though Cesar did point out that I needed to work on eye contact.
Ugh! I knew I had a hard time making eye contact with people in general. Some
other’s also said I could have suggested the therapy pool to them or something,
since we were pretending the situation was at the Vaughn
Center
Towards the end of the first day of
class, Jerica assigned everyone something about life guarding that we would
have to teach everyone the next day. We had to teach them as if no one in the
room had ever heard of what we were talking about. I was assigned child CPR.
When class was over for the day, we
went around the room and each one of us told a good thing from the day and
something we could work on. Everyone touched on pretty much everything. We all
realized our weak points in the job that a lot of us didn't even realize we had before. We found what we needed to work on, and our strong points. We could use
those to help out others in their weak places.
I went out in the hallways where my
younger brother was. He just came over from Splash Country where he was at a
cleaning of the water park. He was a new cashier that summer. I called mom to
come pick us both up. She happened to be in the area so she headed over. We sat
on a bench, and when Jesus walked by, my crazy younger brother said, “Jesus!”
Only he said it in English instead of Spanish. He did the sign of the cross in
the air. Jesus laughed.
Cesar walked by a minute later and
said bye to me. He told me I did a nice job on my scenario. “Thanks, I tried,”
I said. He went around the corner, but a few minutes later he came back. When
he passed by, Matthew my brother, stomped his foot and jumped half way out of
his seat while making some sound like he was going to attack Cesar. Cesar
jumped a little and looked over his shoulder with a smile on his face. I just
rolled my eyes at both of them.
Day one was
over. Day two was coming. So far, I was thoroughly enjoying myself and
definitely learning at the same time. -Martina
