The past week or so I’ve been training at my new job.  I work at the city hall in Casa Grande.  I file papers, I copy papers, I get paper cuts.  Actually, it’s a great job for someone as nosey as I am.  I bet they didn’t know that I was nosey when they hired me.

Today I was in court making copies of all the plea agreements, and I was listening to everyone’s sob stories of how the justice system isn’t fair.

“The police, yeah, they set me up.  It ain’t right!”

“Your dog jumped over your fence and almost bit someone.  How is that a set up?”

“It’s a set up, I TELL YOU!”

My favorite one is a girl charged with a DUI.

“You can accept the plea agreement if you would like to resolve this case today.”

“I want to plead not guilty.  Like Paris Hilton.”

Yesterday I was guarding at the city pool again. Yes, the same pool that I quit working at.

Mean Lisa’s boss told me, “If you guard on a one night contract you will get paid a ridiculous amount of money.” So I did it. I signed a paper that said I would get paid a ridiculous amount of money, and all I had to do was show up. The contract did not tell me what I was expected to do if someone started drowning though, so I figured it couldn’t hurt me too much.

A couple other guards were contracted to work, and they were all good guards that knew their job well. It wasn’t half bad. Mean Lisa’s boss even fed us.

Earlier in the summer, me and a couple other people discussed putting an ad in the classifides that would say we were available for hire to guard private pool parties. Think about it: if you were hosting a big party and you had a pool (granted, everyone in Arizona does), you won’t want to watch the kids in the pool. No one wants to be the adult out at the pool with the kids. If you had the option to hire a certified lifeguard for around $10 per hour, wouldn’t you do it? For a mere $30 plus travel expenses, you could get rid of a lot of stress. We never placed the ad, but a couple people did end up getting hired for a certain influential family’s private pool party.

I’ll work on a contract any day. It’s a good deal all around.

Say Anything - Alive With the Glory of Love

Tonight at a pool party, a kid had a diarrhea accident while going down the slide.

We got everyone out of the water, closed down the pool and went home.

Most pools are shocked with high amounts of chlorine, and then closed for 24 hours after a diarrheal accident. As found in this chart distributed by the government, a pool should be closed for 6.7 days per 1 ppm (part-per-million) of chlorine after a diarrheal accident.

Our chlorine was at about 7 ppm, so this means we should have been closed for 22.9 hours. Let’s round that up and give us a safe 24.

So when did we let people back in the pool? Less than 16 hours later.

Please, please, someone get a health official to write us up.

“What’s that new movie about the Twin Towers called? Flight Plan? 9/11?”

“I don’t know, but I think it’s good that these movies keep coming out. Some people say it’s too soon, but I think that people need to be reminded why we are fighting a war in Iraq right now.”

That’s right, Genius. Keep telling yourself that. We are fighting a war in Iraq because the Twin Towers were blown up.

775 My Street Name
Casa Grande, Arizona 85222

August 2, 2006

Lisa Borninkhof
Recreation Coordinator
City of Casa Grande
510 E. Florence Blvd.
Casa Grande, Arizona 85222

Dear Ms. Borninkhof:

I would like to personally thank you and the other aquatic staff personnel who have worked with me over the past two summers. I can not even begin to describe how much I learned and matured while working at the Palm Island Family Aquatic Center. Not only did I learn lifesaving skills, but my skills have also improved in the areas of public relations, internal relations, tolerance, and ethics. I have made new friends and grown closer to old ones. You, my co-workers, and the public have all worked together to help form my character. I will be able to use my experiences that I had working at the pool for the rest of my life.

Through no fault of your own, or anyone else’s for that matter, I would like to officially put in my two weeks notice. This will be effective beginning today. Therefore August 16, 2006, will be my last day working at the pool. Initially, at the beginning of the summer, I thought that I would be able to work until the pool closed for the winter. Several things have come up that I did not anticipate, and I will not be able to work that late into the year.

Thank you very much for your time, consideration, and understanding.

Sincerely,

Alisa Wilhelm

I turned in this letter this morning. Mean Lisa was not there (surprise, surprise), so I had the office clerk put it in her inbox.

Mean Lisa is a difficult person, so of course I had to suck up to her in the letter. To tell the truth, I quit because all of the good guards have already or are going to quit. That means that I will be left with the guards who don’t know what they are doing. If an accident ever happened, I would be screwed for the rest of my life (i.e. lawsuit). I am no longer willing to take that risk. This job is stressful enough as it is, and I can’t handle the thought of guarding a whole pool by myself (which is what would basically happen if I stayed). I don’t want to deal with that.

This winter I suppose I’ll work for The Dispatch, The Cactus (a college newspaper), or the college’s pool.

Overall, it was fun while it lasted, but I’m moving on. It’s time to do something else and learn something new.