A: I work on the weekends. The hours are really flexible, so it works with my busy schedule. You can also drop shifts and pick up dropped shifts if you need to. I get around $7.35 an hour.

Q: What does the job entail?

A: You have to ensure patron safety by walking around and making sure everyone is following the rules. I basically just walk around and watch the water. It’s a little boring at times, but it’s easy money.

Q: What is one thing you wish you could change about lifeguarding?

A: Well when you lifeguard indoors, you have to walk around and check every station; you don’t have a chair to sit on like most outdoor pools have. So I wish they would put chairs inside so that way you could just watch the pool from there.

Q: Has anything strange happened while lifeguarding?

A: This one time we didn’t let a kid go on the slide because he was too short and violated the safety regulations, and his mom came over and yelled at us for not letting him go. She argued with us for literally two hours and said that we were discriminating against people based on their height, and complained about how her son could swim perfectly fine and should be able to go down the slide. Then she reported us all for being unfair.

For more information on how to become a lifeguard, visit http://www.ymcastlouis.org/wildwood-family-ymca/aquatics to find the lifeguard class schedule for the Spring 2013 Session.