Today is A shift.
I should not be working today, but I am. Why, you ask? I'm working for a co-worker who worked for me a couple weeks ago. It's always great to have someone work for you, so I can have five days off. But when I have to work for THEM, it means 48 hours in the firehouse, which can be fun, boring, or completely insane.
As of this writing, I'm 10 hours in on a 48-hour work bender. I'm working in Bethesda at station 26, driving the fire engine. Driving the engine is a great gig, and today is no exception. Working at station 26 though, isn't usually something to write home about. Only three career guys work there at a time (an ambulance staffed exclusively by volunteers is also here, but the career people and volunteers don't interact too much), so it can be a little boring if you're not running calls. We've only run one call so far today, but that doesn't mean we've been devoid of activity...oh no...
Memorial Day weekend not only means remembering those who have served our country in the armed forces, but also that swimming pools all across the county are open for business. Little children and senior citizens, teenagers and parents, college students and single twenty and thirty-somethings all gather together at their local pools to cool themselves off in the crisp, chlorine-seasoned water or to lounge by the poolside, hoping to darken themselves up after months of accumulated winter pastiness.
For us in the fire department, Memorial Day weekend meant going to these pools and checking to see if their hazardous material certifications were up to date (Swimming pools store so much chlorine and other pool chemicals that they need to have a Haz-Mat certification). So we went out and about in neighboring Bethesda to make sure condo pools, apartment pools and private pools were all up to date and legal.
During our inspections we visited five pools (two condo, two apartment and one private) and found two common similarities in all of them:
1) There must be some kind of service that provides life-guarding jobs to European and Asian teenagers, because all of the lifeguards we spoke to at each pool (except one) spoke either Russian or some other European foreign language fluently (their heavy accents and difficulty understanding what we were asking them for were dead giveaways). How do these kids get hooked up like this? How did they get this "in" to the life-guarding business? I know summer time life guards are usually teenagers, but all of them Russian-speaking? Hmmmmm...
2) ALL of the pools...repeat, ALL of the pools had no Haz-Mat certification present (a violation) or the one had was expired (also a violation). Not only that, but ALL of the pools' licenses to even operate a pool were expired too (a MAJOR violation)! These certs are supposed to be renewed every year; How do the pool management companies let this slip? I might be able to understand if ONE company had let it expire by maybe a couple weeks (if that), but they were ALL expired! One company hadn't renewed their license since 2007!!
Technically, we could have shut all those pools down right there on the spot, but the captain gave them two weeks to get their problems fixed. If they don't, looks like the local Bethesda residents will either have to search a bit farther to cool off, or be stuck taking lots of cold showers.
Either way, I'm sure the Russian teenagers will still get hooked up with jobs somewhere.
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