Imagine a job where you get paid almost $15 an hour for spending your day at a sunny Ventura beach. It’s paradise, right?
Seriously though, being a lifeguard, in most people’s eyes, is seen as some laid-back, lazy job for high school and college students trying to make a few bucks. However, it is one of the most stressful and demanding jobs anyone, especially a high school student, can ever have.
In California, we tend to think of lifeguards as beach bums who don’t really pay attention to what they’re doing and flirt with cute girls in their towers. Countless times, I’ve heard people criticize and judge lifeguards, just because it doesn’t look like they do a whole lot, sitting up in their towers all day. I’ve heard very ignorant people, even on Foothill’s campus, (where several students and alumni have, and are working as a lifeguards) compare government employees to a character from SpongeBob Squarepants, who is a lobster lifeguard and does nothing but play beach volleyball and workout.
Trust me, lifeguards are anything but lazy and distracted; they’re some of the most focused, underappreciated employees you will ever find. They don’t just play volleyball.
Over the past summer, I had the opportunity to work with Ventura State Lifeguards, as an assistant lifeguard through the Jr. Lifeguard program, and witness just how important the job really is.
Why do we call them lifeguards in the first place? Because they are the ones we hold responsible for making sure we obey the law on the sand, and make sure Mother Nature doesn’t take us home too early in the water. They’re the ones who have to run back and forth, reminding us not to play on jetties, go body surfing on shorebreak waves, or jump off piers at low tide.
They have to be alert all the time to make sure we don’t make stupid, life-altering decisions.
When lifeguards are up in that tower, there is no room for getting distracted. You have to keep your eyes trained on, and scanning the water at all times: no exceptions.
Take your eyes off the water for a split second and anything can happen: a woman can drown, a boy can break his leg playing football, a dog off its leash can bite a little child building a sandcastle, or a surfer could become paralyzed, all because you took your eyes off the beach to talk to some friend, check your phone, or wave to a girl.
Anything you do as a lifeguard can, and probably will affect someone’s safety at the beach. All too often, ignorant mothers tend to think that lifeguards are babysitters, paid for by taxes, and let their children roam the beach freely, and unrestricted.
Lifeguarding is serious. You have to be in shape, alert, and unrelenting in your surveillance to the California coastline. If you’re watching the water, it’s your water, and yours alone. Anything and everything that happens in the territory of your tower is your responsibility, and you have to take the blame, whether it’s excessive litter, broken bones, or concussions.
If anything like that happens on the beach, it’s the lifeguard’s responsibility to react accordingly, and take any punishment from your superiors if the correct procedures weren’t taken to prevent the accident in the first place. When people take lifeguards to be lazy bums and are disrespectful through either words or actions it sickens me.
So next time you’re at the beach having fun with your friends and family and you see a lifeguard sitting up in his or her tower, don’t think of them as some lazy bum moping around that’s looking for something to do. Know that they’re in the tower for a reason and respect what they do. You never know, you could be the next victim of the ocean and that lifeguard just might save you or your loved one’s life.
