Surveillance is and should be the practice of any diligent lifeguard. This method of scanning consists of counting the number of people that are in the water and watching their facial expressions. The common problem that lifeguards face is that every once in awhile, the pool will become so busy that it’s hard to complete a thorough headcount of patrons in the water and have a consistently steady result each time. This is why they set a ratio for a number of guards to patrons. Even though this makes the job easier, it’s still cumbersome because you still need to know exactly how many people you have in the water, what the limit is and what you can handle with the staff that you have.
It’s important to scan the pool quite frequently. In my almost six years of working as a lifeguard, there have been multiple times where I have realized that I am two or three people short. The first time this happened to me, I almost panicked and began asking myself “Why do they even trust 16 year olds like myself with this job?” After I got used to the fact that people actually move around in a pool, the startling sensation kind of went away. Now, whenever I have miscounted the number of patrons in the pool, I end up saying things like, “Well, no one is lying on the bottom so we’re doing great on that end of things.” Always after a minute passes, the two or three missing people reappear from the locker rooms. Hey, I’d much rather scare myself counting patrons that disappear from the premises temporarily than have a bunch of kids stay in the water for hours and hours for my sake because then I start to wonder if they’ve really “held it” that long. Don’t think about that one or you’ll never get in a pool again. Okay, to answer Jonathan’s question: “Why can’t they just stand still?!” The answer is simple: It’s water.
It’s important to scan the pool quite frequently. In my almost six years of working as a lifeguard, there have been multiple times where I have realized that I am two or three people short. The first time this happened to me, I almost panicked and began asking myself “Why do they even trust 16 year olds like myself with this job?” After I got used to the fact that people actually move around in a pool, the startling sensation kind of went away. Now, whenever I have miscounted the number of patrons in the pool, I end up saying things like, “Well, no one is lying on the bottom so we’re doing great on that end of things.” Always after a minute passes, the two or three missing people reappear from the locker rooms. Hey, I’d much rather scare myself counting patrons that disappear from the premises temporarily than have a bunch of kids stay in the water for hours and hours for my sake because then I start to wonder if they’ve really “held it” that long. Don’t think about that one or you’ll never get in a pool again. Okay, to answer Jonathan’s question: “Why can’t they just stand still?!” The answer is simple: It’s water.
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