11/8 blog post
As soon as I turned 16 years, once I was old enough to get a job, I started working for the Deerfield Park District. Growing up I was year round competitive swimmer so it was natural of me to assume the position of being a swim instructor and lifeguard at my local community pool. The majority of the staff at the pool was young kids, middle school to college age students. While the job was to importance of the employees working there, as kids, things come up and individuals had various other obligations besides working at the pool. The pool was run through the Park District, under one full time employee. The pool then had several managers, who tended to be upper-level high schoolers or college students. Since it was a large group of staff, compared to the few amount of managers, there was some sort of disciplinary protocol in place. The full time employee of the Park Districted implemented a “write-up” system. The “write-ups” where used for various different situations dealing with an employee, but the idea of getting a “write-up” was bad. After getting three “write-ups” in a given operating season, the employment of the staff member was in question.
“Write-ups” could be given at somewhat of the discretion of a given manager at the pool. These instances could include, but were not limited to, an employee being disrespectful, an employee being late or missing a shift, an employee failing a safety drill, and others. When a given employee was issued a “write-up” there were following measures that took place in the process. The employee would have to meet with the manager who issued them the “write-up” to discuss the nature of the “write up” and sign off acknowledging what happened, the employee would then be dismissed from the rest of their shifts that day if they had any.
Part of working at the pool, as a lifeguard, included cleaning the facility at the end of a shift. This included taking out the trash, cleaning trash from the deck, cleaning the pool chairs, organizing the pool chairs, tables and umbrellas. This also included cleaning the pool’s locker rooms. This was one of the more unfavorable cleaning jobs assigned to the lifeguards. Cleaning the locker rooms was a task that was assigned to a group of guards, as it was a far larger task that would require the work of several employees. Cleaning the locker rooms included spraying down and cleaning all the sinks, toilets, floors, shower stalls, mirrors and individual lockers in the facility.
One summer afternoon I was working at the pool, on my shift down on break in the office. This break was at the beginning of my shift that day, and took place during a transition time. This transition time meant that the morning guards were getting ready to leave from their shifts and the afternoon guards were coming in for their shifts that day. As the morning guards were completing their end of shift cleaning jobs and leaving for the day, one of the managers on duty that day went to check the locker rooms to ensure that they were cleaned to the standards at which they hold all staff members accountable to. When the manager came back from the locker rooms, he was upset with the job that had been done, there was one young man in the office who cleaned the locker rooms during that shift that day, and the manager decided to issue him a “write-up” for the failure to clean the locker rooms to standard. This was an employee who had worked at the pools for longer than that manager, and was a good guard and employee who had never received “write-ups” in the past.
If I were in the autorotative position of the manager, in this given situation I would have handled things much differently. To start off I would have provided all employee members who were assigned to clean the locker room during that given shift an explanation on what in the locker rooms was not cleaned up to standard. I then would have provided them with instructions on how to clean the areas that they had failed to clean properly. I then would have given all of the staff members assigned to cleaning the locker rooms on that given shift an opportunity to re-clean the locker rooms before they left. I also would not have penalized only one staff member, as the manager had done, for the responsibility of the entire group of guards who were assigned to clean the locker room during that given shift.
This is a real post. I can see the effort you put into it. Let me ask a few clarifying questions.
ReplyDeleteWas the write-up system something unique to your specific pool or did all the pools in the park district use the same system?
Were there time of day issues with the work, were many of the staff would prefer certain shifts but not others? Also, how long was a shift?
How did one become a manager? Apart from the write-ups was being a manager preferable to being a lifeguard? Was there any training for the manager, about the write-ups or about anything else on the job?
Let me note one last thing, which is hard to for me as a reader to know in your case. Sometimes a manager punishes and employee because the manager got angry and the punishment is a way to resolve the anger. At other times, however, the manager is completely calm. The punishment is then rationally considered and thought through as how to best prevent the situation from happening again and not deteriorate further. It is natural to be angry at first after seeing poor performance, so to get the more rational approach, there usually needs to be some interval where the manager calms down before a decision is made. Did that happen in this case or not?
I believe the write-up system was unique to the pool facility, and not used by other park district programs, however, I'm not entirely sure. The protocol of write-ups was introduced to as a somthing that was developed for and by the organizers of the pool facility.
ReplyDeleteMany of the staff would perfer to work in the mornings the 9am-12 shift, because for the first half of the shift the pool was opened for public lap swim, and the second half of the shift was instucted lessons. This made gaurding easier during these times because the amount of people to gaurd at a given time was consistent and limited. The first shift was 5am-9am, then a 9am-noon shift, then a 12-5pm shift and then a 5-9pm shift.
Most of the managers at the pool were former lifegaurds who had worked for the pool a substianical amount of years and demonstrated leadership within the role.
In this case the manager was angry during the time, and gave the write-up in the moment without taking time to calm down and think about the situation. I do think if the manager would have taken time to think about the situation, and not given the write up in the heat of the moment, the manager may not have given the write up.