Pros
You end up interacting with tons of lifeguards, sometimes you meet some nice ones.
Cons
Upper management will take absolutely any contract they can get, regardless of whether or not their staff can realistically handle it. I knew supervisors that were in charge of dozens of pools in 5 different counties. Every single supervisor and staffer was worked to the absolute bone. The responsibility to pay ratio is completely messed up. My title was staffer/recruiter, but you end up being the HR person for every single lifeguard you end up hiring (200+ lifeguards). You are responsible for their tax forms/paperwork, and you have to answer any question they may e-mail/call you about. You will speak to many parents of lifeguards when things inevitably go wrong, and 90% of the time the parents are very upset. The job was incredibly stressful very often, to the point where I was anxious about the next day in my bed going to sleep. When I woke up I would immediately be stressing about the day and wondering what was going to go wrong (every staffer had 30+ pools to be responsible for, and if a single lifeguard decided they couldn't go in, you had a huge problem). I was forced to ask lifeguards for completely unrealistic things, because it was either that or get fired. Would very often call a lifeguard saying we needed them to come in that day because someone called out. The company will literally hire anybody who comes in for an interview to be a lifeguard. It is impossible to not get hired, and it is EXTREMELY rare that a lifeguard actually gets fired. The company will instead just put them at a different pool after one of the pool owners complains enough about them. 6 days a week working with a random day off, and on your day off it was rare to receive less than 5 work-related phone calls. Company is extremely cheap and provides the bare minimum in terms of equipment for office staff. Towards end of summer, company will start to crack down on lifeguard's overtime. You will have to upset many lifeguards by cutting their hours. The best is when you desperately need another lifeguard, but you aren't allowed to use the only ones available because they had 50 hours that week already. -I witnessed no less than several dozen employee payroll correction forms, which were submitted when their pay was incorrect. These only came from employees who noticed their pay discrepancy, I am 100% sure that a very large number of lifeguards were incorrectly paid, but they didn't notice/realize/submit anything. Often times the submitted payroll corrections would get denied by the president because there was a minor technicality that allowed the minor possibility that the employee didn't work. I saw some payroll corrections that were submitted 3 times that never got approved. Some lifeguards were owed hundreds of dollars (to a highschool teen that is unbelievable) for the entire summer. -Many office employees are trapped working there, it is very sad to see what these people have gotten themselves into. -During off-season the company "lays-off" employees that were promised year-round employment, under the guise of a termination. They keep the necessary office staff during the season, then when that hell is finally over, they make up that there were problems during the summer they were just now hearing about. How convenient. -I know many lifeguards hated me because I would call them to work on their day off, or to schedule them last minute. I do not blame them, but I busted my hump just to barely make every deadline. Every single office employee was constantly scrambling last second to fix something. Not one day went by without some form of emergency. -The international lifeguards are subject to deplorable conditions. I heard of 5 people living in a 2 bed-1 bath apartment, each working 7 days a week. Absolutely digusting. -Pays guards minimum wage, when the minimum wage went up, tons of guards' wages did not change and they were paid BELOW MINIMUM WAGE until they said something. Again, many guards didn't notice their BELOW MINIMUM WAGE pay and nothing was ever changed about it. -Office staff get 600/week to start, +50/week each subsequent year. May seem ok, but once you realize that you are contracted for 48 hours, and 90% of the time it is actually 60+ hours, the $/hour is almost as much as some lifeguards! LOL -I am very relieved to have gotten out of this company, looking back I had to convince myself somehow that it wasn't that bad. Working at my current job is amazing compared to Community Pools. I could still list many more negatives but I don't want to think about this company anymore. Good riddance
