Thursday, June 13, 2013

Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato day 3

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)

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