Why I Will Never Lifeguard Again

A depressing reflection on $15/hour mentality.

I thought lifeguarding would be cool. It’s a summer job where you bathe in the sunshine and occasionally save kids like a superman in a sexy cape. Plus, you get paid for sitting in a stand (with shade!) and looking at water.

Maybe the water was cool. But my experience? Quite the opposite.

As a kid, I always wanted to be a lifeguard. I think I was not alone; everybody had an idolized swagger associated with it. So when last summer I got the opportunity to work as one, I promptly took it. I was thrilled to earn an impressive $15 per hour for my first job.

I started working in late June of 2021, on average four days a week, for about seven hours a day. I would work at one of three local pools, rotating lookout positions every thirty minutes.

It was nice at first — the mood was calm and from time to time, I got to chat with coworkers of similar age. I did make some friends. In the beginning, I didn’t mind sitting in a chair watching over people do their swimming business, especially since I habitually did a morning workout and monstrous breakfast before every shift.

But as the days went on, I gradually found myself dreading the workday ahead. Working a 9–5 started to become less and less fulfilling.

Lifeguarding became a job where you stretched out every single minute of your clocked-in time. It was a job where your disdained a normal couple coming in to swim on a rainy day because it meant you had to pick your ass up, off the phone, out of the tent, and get back to work. The slightest sound of thunder couldn’t be more exciting, because then you got a 30-minute break as swimmers irritatingly had to get out of the water. Boy was that whistle a squeal of despotic authority. Over time, your work for pay tolerance ratio gets lower and lower. Lazy I became. Simply put, it was a job that you increasingly hated and purely did for money.

I spent the summer of 2021 working for money.

Looking back at my lifeguarding experience, working $15/hour was a waste of time. I didn’t learn anything new (besides basic CPR) and I didn’t find or bring any value; in fact, the opposite considering how I yelled at kids running across the pool deck.

But perhaps it was worth it; I learned a very valuable lesson: By the end of the summer, I finally understood what a 9–5 is: a job worked not for enjoyment, but for salary. That’s what it means to be employed under the American Dream.

It’s a trap that 99% of average people fall into; they just assume that the only way to work is by earning money, better yet climbing the corporate ladder for more, and become entitled to living their life around pinching pennies, wages, and employee benefits. It’s a “rat race” as Robert Kiyosaki calls it.

A new beginning

This trap, although very tempting, is one I will have to resist if I want to work not for money, but for purpose, pleasure, and fulfillment throughout the rest of my career.

I have seen enough to conclude that there not only is a way but a more sustainable way, to monetize off of your passions. You just have to work 10X harder for this empire. Most people don’t have what it takes to kindle that startup or freelance idea and just opt for the easy way out a fixed salary. In truth, I didn’t. It’s not a blue-collar vs. white-collar dynamic; it’s a passion vs. money dynamic.

Working for yourself — being your own employer — couldn’t be more scalable, because it has nothing to do with per-hour rates and everything to do with what you put in. What you get out is completely entrepreneurial. I mean, that’s the ultimate freedom.

With that said, I’m literally going to put my money where my mouth is. This summer, I have an opportunity to return as a lifeguard and work an even higher wage. I’m not going to fall for this trap. Instead, I’m offering myself a challenge: to earn more money on my own terms than I did last summer working on employee terms (by September 2022). That means that through side-hustles, I have to earn at least $3300 (after-tax).

Maybe it will be through curating Medium articles. Maybe it will be through flipping garage sales. Maybe it will be through starting a tutoring business. In any case, if I succeed, I would have done everything to prove that one doesn’t have to work for money.

Let the challenge begin.

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Thank you for reading to the end; I truly appreciate it. Feel free to let me know in the comments what you thought— discussions are welcome. I will see you all in the next article!