Low-Wage Teen Jobs: Lifeguarding

Lifeguarding

Bottom 10% of guards: $6.89 an hour

Median Salary: $8.18 an hour

In these rough economic times, today’s teens are entangled in an every-increasing battle for part-time as well as full-time jobs. More and more teens have to support themselves for a variety of reasons. Teens born into already impoverished families are forced to find work at a much younger age to help support the family. Teen pregnancy is on the rise, creating another need to find work. Families are not able to afford college educations, forcing teens to finance their own way through college. As these reasons expand, low-wage jobs are being filled at a faster rate than ever. At such young ages with hardly a high school diploma, teens are usually left with low wage jobs. A popular low wage job for teenagers is lifeguarding.

Upon researching the average wage for lifeguards, I was shocked to find it well below minimum wage for California of $8.00 an hour. The past three summers I have worked as lifeguard myself; however, I was among the few lucky teenagers able to find a job that paid well over the minimum wage. While I never had to work for minimum wage, I was doing the same job that many of my friends did in order to receive just minimum wage at other facilities. I would talk to my friends who guarded at different pools, comparing my work atmosphere to theirs and found it very similar.

Granted that every shift was very different from any other shift, a typical shift at the pool begins as follows: show up on deck five minutes before the shift starts, get a first aid pack from the drawer, grab a charged radio and perform a radio check to the other guards, and rotate on for the indoor guard at precisely the start time of your shift. The guard spends either 15, 20, or 30 minutes guarding the indoor pool, depending on how many people are in the pool and how many guards are on duty. After this time passes, the guard on break rotates you to either the second indoor guard station or the outdoor guard station, also depending on how busy the pools are. You proceed to spend another 15, 20, or 30 minutes guarding the outdoor and tot pool before you are rotated by the indoor guard. At this point you are typically on a break for 15, 20, or 30 minutes. However, often times your break gets cut short or gets taken away all together because the pool population increases.

While on break, guards are free to do whatever they want within certain guidelines. At all times you have to have your radio and pack on you. You are free to make a phone call, read a book, do homework, swim laps or workout in the gym on the same level as the pool. However, most breaks are busied with tending to patrons for first aid incidents, questions regarding pool policies, cleaning up pool equipment, and making sure the numerous safety hazards are cleared off the deck. After cleaning the deck and assisting patrons, there is just enough time to run to the bathroom or quickly take a bite of a sandwich for lunch.

There is an intense feeling of responsibility and stress while in the guard towers, which automatically takes a lot of focused energy. However, one of the most frustrating and exhausting aspects of lifeguarding is interacting with the patrons. All day the guards are pelted with various questions. In addition to answering questions, guards have to mediate the lap lanes and swimmers. During peak hours (early morning, mid-afternoon, and evening), guards have to supervise and set up circle swimming procedures in the lap lanes. This is perhaps the most exhausting and degrading aspect of the job. Patrons feel very entitled to their own lap lane and do not see the need to treat the guards with any respect. It is almost guaranteed that after every shift you will be either yelled at or criticized for mediating the lap lanes and trying to keep the pool safe at least five or six times. Often times you will even get yelled at for asking a mother to stay closer to her five-year-old daughter who hardly knows how to kick and is floundering on the steps. Parents at the pool rarely realize how dangerous the water truly is and believe that their children are invincible. The guards trying to look out for these children are met with disrespectful parents who act as if the guards are trying to tell them how to parent their children, when in reality, they are simply doing their job of looking after the patrons.

Toward the end of a five to eight hour shift, the guards are extremely exhausted mentally and physically. With the opening shifts and closing shifts being the longest and busiest shifts, it is always a great relief to see the next set of guards arriving through the back gate to relieve them. The end of a shift will typically bring about much frustration, exhaustion, and demoralizing feelings, yet only about $66.00 at best. This amount is hardly enough for one to live on, let alone enough for a college student to put themselves through school.