Day 3
Written: 5-2013
On day
three, we didn’t go in the water at all. We began by finishing up the last few
teach backs. They all went really well, especially because now everyone was
refreshed from the day before.
Except
right in the middle of one of the teach backs, Chad
started making funny noises and then passed out and fell on the floor. That was
our call for an emergency, though we were obviously being tested by Jerica and
Mike. Someone grabbed the crash bag that was already near by and Doug, who was
right next to him, shouted at Mike to call 911, then immediately gloved up and
began to check for a pulse. There was a pulse so we began rescue breathing.
Meanwhile, everyone else in the room jumped up out of their seats and got in
close to watch. The people who were near by jumped right in to help.
“Okay,
that’s it,” Mike announced, “Everyone go back to your seats.”
“Don’t say
a word,” Jerica said. She and Mike passed out papers. They were random either
incident/accident reports or rescue reports. “Fill these out to your best
knowledge.”
When we
were all done, we passed back in the forms. Jerica and Mike took them and
looked them over, then set them aside. We did even more skit scenarios after
that. They went pretty much the same as the day before, but I’d like to touch
on one that was especially good and a bit funny.
The best situation had to be when
Doug complained to Cesar and Emma that a lifeguard kicked his kids out of the
pool for not wearing real swim suits. And if you haven’t seen Doug really go at
it then you have no idea. I will try my best to describe what happened.
Cesar came in and asked Doug if he
could help him. Doug started out by stating his complaint. Then he started to
build up. “My kids have been swimming hear the whole summer and not once has a
lifeguard said anything. Lifeguards passed by them all day and then suddenly
one came along and said my kids can’t be in the water because they aren’t
wearing real swim suits. Why can’t my kids wear basketball shorts?”
Cesar started to say something, and
then Doug would just cut him off with an even angrier remark. All this time,
Doug began to step closer and closer to Cesar until Cesar had to start backing
up.
“I understand, sir, but…”
“But you DON’T understand!” Doug
cut him off. He was literally flipping out by this point and dramatically
waiving his arms and cutting down and saying how horrible the lifeguards were.
It went on much this way for a few
more minutes. Meanwhile, everyone else in the room who was watching the
scenario play out, or should I say Cesar getting brutally mutilated to pieces
by Doug, was laughing, yet we could see how a guest could act in this way. It
had happened before.
“I don’t get it,” Doug said, “It’s
not in the health code from the state.” Doug turned and grabbed a piece of
paper off the counter, “Look, see,” He said, showing it to Cesar, “I even have
the health code right here. It says clean clothes. You don’t have to be wearing
swim suits!”
Cesar looked at it and said “Yes, I
see, but we require that everyone wear a commercially sold swim suit because we
can’t tell if the clothes are clean and washed or not.”
“Clean? These clothes are clean!
How do you know that the swim suits people wear are clean!?” Now Cesar was
almost backed up against the wall with Doug right in his face, shaking the
paper at him. Finally Cesar had Emma, the manager for the scenario, come in and
help out. Emma introduced herself and it calmed Doug down a bit. Doug restated
his complaint to Emma. But then he started to build up again. Finally in the
end, Mike ended the scenario. Cesar, Emma, and Doug all went back to their
seats.
We gave our comments. Doug reached
over the table and shook Cesar and Emma’s hands and apologized for tearing them
up. It was still pretty good, though.
All I could think was, “I am so
glad that Doug is not a guest with a complaint at MY pool.”
Mike passed
out the iPads again, and again we went over all the paperwork, or should I say
iPad work, and we reviewed everything from the day before. Only this time, Mike
had a big TV screen set up with his laptop hooked up to it so we could all
clearly see what he was doing instead of crowing around small iPad screens.
This time
everything made a lot more sense. I started to see how simple it all really was.
It was very plainly laid out. The software was designed by someone who worked
for Ellis, and so they obviously knew exactly how it needed to be laid out and
what things were normally called. For example, all the Jeff Ellis Management
pools in Illinois are in the Chicago
area. But the ones in Florida , Hawaii ,
and Texas are all over the state,
and so when supervisors sign into their facilities and select their location,
it says the Illinois pools are in
Chicago , but down in Florida ,
it says the specific state and then the town.
Jerica
stood up with three stacks of papers in her hand, one was, well, most of the
reports we had done. The other two stacks were hardly stacks at all, but had
only a few papers. “This,” Jerica said, holding up the thick stack, “Is all the
reports that were filled out wrong. This,” She said holding up the smaller two
stacks, “Is the reports that were filled out correctly.” Everyone in the room
started to murmur, wondering what they did wrong.
We figured
out what was wrong. We were not supposed to put our own information on the
paper; we were supposed to put the information of the guest. It was different
from being a lifeguard. As a guard, while filling out one of those reports, we
put our own information as witnesses. But as supervisors and managers, it was
our dity to get the information of the guest.
Jerica had
some nice comments to say about some of the handwriting, “Gees, Giehm,” She
said to Eric Giehm, a roving manager, “Beautiful handwriting. Please take this
out into your job and use it. Some of those VAT forms… I mean.”
“What?”
Giehm said. Everyone in the room laughed.
Finally it
was time for Jerica and Mike to give out the certificates. One by one as they
called our names, we went up to the front of the room and got our certificate.
We shook Mike’s hand, and then Jerica’s hand. But when Giehm went up, he shook
mike’s hand, didn’t thin twice, and went to sit down, then remembered Jerica
and went and shook her hand. “Giehm!” Jerica said, “You better watch it. I know
where you live.”
When my
name was called, everyone clapped, as they did for everyone else, but a bunch
of my awesome coworkers shouted, “Martita! Go Martita,” as if I just won a gold
medal. Martita was my nickname at work that they gave to me. It was a long
story.
As we did
the two days before, we went around the room and everyone stood up and said one
good thing and one thing we needed to work on still. Hardly anyone had any
constructive criticism. Instead we saw the improvements that everyone made. I
think the biggest thing, one that a lot of people pointed out, was how everyone
in the room really bonded together. We all forgot our differences and the drama
in our lives and worked together to improve each other’s leadership skills.
Everyone in
the room had pretty much taken everything for good points when it came to be my
turn. But I decided I was going to speak the truth of what I thought. I stood
up, “I think the skits were really good. I think the best way to learn
something is, not only to teach it, but to be in it, whether it is fake or
real. This reminded me of my first guard class last year. In those three days
no one ever taught me that much all at once. And I feel like that happened
again in these past three days.” Everyone looked at me and I looked around the
room. Doug smiled and nodded at me. Didn’t mean for the little speech right
there, but I wanted to be honest.
Later that
night at home, I thought of something. I liked to call the Basic Leadership
Training (BLT) the Bacon Lettuce and Tomato. I was telling the truth actually.
I thought of it like this. The bacon is the lifeguards, the lettuce is the
supervisors, the tomato is the managers and roving managers, and the toast on
the outside is Jerica and Mike, our area managers. To have a true BLT, the one
of the ingredients can be missing. Without all the lifeguard, supervisors,
managers, and area managers, we were not a true BLT. Without each other, the
entire Ellis company would not exist. And Jerica and Mike held us together,
because if it weren’t for them, we would be nothing.
Basic Leadership Training was over,
but now to come was our real challenges as leaders.
-Martina, Summer, 2013 (Martita)
