My Resume Includes "Locker Room Attendant" at the Public Pool

Reflections on the strangest job I've ever held. Plus recs for Chloé Cooper Jones on dance, Felicity in Space by Eliza Cossio and Delaney Yeager, and Casey Cep's Deb Haaland profile.

The strangest job I’ve ever worked was a short stint during the pandemic at the outdoor public pool in Burbank.

It all started when I was on my way to swim one day and I saw a big sign announcing that the pool was hiring for all positions. I was currently unemployed, looking for a way to fill my time, in need of money, and always on the hunt for offbeat experiences that might lend themselves to my comedy or writing.

And oh boy did the pool deliver! Except on the money front. It paid very poorly.

The process began when I learned that I was not qualified to be a lifeguard and due to pandemic staffing shortages, they were only running lifeguard trainings very sporadically. So that job was out.

Instead, the only job I was qualified for was “Locker Room Attendant.” If you’ve ever visited a public pool in your life, you know that being the person in charge of the locker room is not a job for the faint of heart. Now imagine if, instead of being in charge of the locker room, your job was actually lower down in importance. You’re the locker room attendant.

During my job interview over Zoom, one of the questions they asked me was “Why is working as a locker room attendant your dream job?” I honestly could not bring myself to give them a reason. Instead I said, “This is not my dream job, but there’s not a lot else that is open right now.” They nodded as though they understood, but also scribbled down notes on their papers.

I should also note that of the two people interviewing me: one was a teenager and the other was the ripe old age of 23. When I eventually got hired, I learned that you would have to go three full positions up the chain of command from my boss, before you got someone who was not currently a student. In other words, my boss was a high schooler, his boss was an older high schooler, and her boss was a college student.

On the first day, as I was being trained by my boss (again, a high school junior), he seemed to not immediately understand that I was an adult man.

He made small talk by asking me, "So have you ever worked before?" and I said, "No it's my first shift," and then he said, "No, I mean, have you ever had a job before?" When I told him I had, he said “Oh! You’re gonna do great.”

A guy who’s going to do great

Working at the pool, I learned very little about pool safety. In fact, I would say that my experience there made me believe quite strongly that if you get injured at a pool, you’re probably going to die. Once, during a lifeguard training exercise, one of the high schoolers was supposed to jump in and save a guy pretending to drown. Instead, she broke into tears and started hyperventilating. This was, again, only a simulated drowning. I wish that young woman no ill will and I certainly empathize with feeling overwhelmed. But the response to her panicking was, “Don’t worry about it. She’ll do better if it’s a real emergency.” And I gotta say… I don’t think she will! Maybe she should not be a life guard! She can be a locker room attendant with me instead.

May they rest in peace

While I didn’t learn a lot about safety, I did learn a LOT about Gen Z culture. One day, all the staff was buzzing about a viral party they heard about on TikTok called Adrian’s Kickback. I had no clue what they were talking about until a week later when I read about it in the NYT, but essentially it was a 17-year-old’s birthday party that became a meme and nearly caused a riot when thousands of teenagers descended on Huntington Beach. I guarantee you I was one of the few 30-somethings who almost got invited.

Another time, we were walking out to the parking lot after our shift and one of my coworkers said, “I didn’t realize you were Yoda Gang!” Once again, I had no clue what he was talking about until he had to explicitly spell out for me that I was driving a Toyota and therefore in the Yoda Gang. But now I know that I am Yoda Gang 4 Lyfe.

One afternoon, a lifeguard was very proud that he had a girlfriend. He found a way to drop it in every interaction. For example, I said I was going to the store during our lunch break and asked if anyone wanted a coffee or a drink. He said, “No, my girlfriend and I are going to Starbucks after work.” Or when I asked if he’d seen a movie, he said, “My girlfriend and I haven’t seen that yet.” At one point, he asked me if I had a girlfriend and when I told him I had a wife, he looked visibly shaken and then asked, “Wait… how old are you?” Once I explained that I was in my mid-thirties and not a high school sophomore in a child marriage, he said “ok then” and nodded.

I ultimately quit the job when we were doing a staff training and one of my child bosses asked, “If a kid poops in the pool, are we supposed to clean it up?” Our supervisor said, “That is not your job. They do not pay you enough for that. If someone poops in the pool, call maintenance.” Then she walked away and we saw her talking on her walkie-talkie. The supervisor came back looking slightly abashed. “I just double-checked on that last question and it turns out it is your job. If there’s a turd in the pool, you should scoop it out and throw it away.”

I quit later that day. That was exactly three years ago today.

My projects and upcoming events:

LIVE IN NYC: Wrong Answers Only at Symphony Space - Thursday, May 23rd at 7 p.m. Comedians Phoebe Robinson, Josh Gondelman, Alison Leiby, and I learn about dragonflies, termites, cockroaches, and so much more with Dr. Jessica Ware, the head of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. Details and tickets here

PODCAST: How to Be a Better Human (TED/PRX) - Nuar Alsadir, poet, psychoanalyst, and clown, knows all about the importance of laughing at herself. We get deep into humor, mental health, and what it means to see yourself honestly. Listen here (or wherever you get podcasts)

This week’s list

GREAT:

Chloé Cooper Jones wrote one of the best-written and most thought-provoking memoirs I’ve ever read, Easy Beauty. I had the good fortune of getting to interview her for the TED podcast. We talked about what it means to be disabled in a world that is not built to accommodate differences, how to insist on being seen as a person rather than being pitied, and the difference between “easy beauty” and “difficult beauty.” Chloé built on many of those themes in her latest piece for the New York Times Magazine about falling in love with a choreographer and struggling to understand her own relationship to movement. The ideas and thought behind the piece are beautiful, but Chloé’s writing is also gorgeous just purely on a sentence level. She’s the kind of writer who writes a line that can knock me out for days. Loving Him Meant Facing My Greatest Fear

FUNNY:

Eliza Cossio and Delaney Yeager, two former Daily Show writers, recently collaborated on a bonkers script that is so, so, so funny. They’re both huge fans of the tv show Felicity (1998-2002), a grounded drama about the American college experience, and they desperately want to see it rebooted. The biggest obstacle is that Felicity was created by J.J. Abrams and these days he’s only interested in Star Wars and Star Trek. So Eliza and Delaney came up with a solution: they wrote a reboot of Felicity that takes place in outer space. I love when very funny people take on a ridiculous challenge just for the sake of doing it. This script is a joy to read: Felicity in Space

INTERESTING:

“As the first Native American Cabinet member, the Secretary of the Interior has made it part of her job to address the travesties of the past.” This profile of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is both a history lesson and a reminder of the current stakes in American government. Secretary Haaland has been working away from the media spotlight. But her goals and the challenges she is facing are essential to understanding what’s happening in this country. This is a must-read piece written by a writer at the top of her game: Deb Haaland Confronts the History of the Federal Agency She Leads

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That's it for this week. Thanks for reading! Please share Bright Spots with anyone you think might enjoy it.

I checked and actually that is your job,

Chris Duffy

This has been Bright Spots, a newsletter.

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…wait, who are you?

I'm Chris Duffy, a comedian, TV writer, podcast host, and both a former fifth grade teacher and a former fifth grade student. I’m currently writing a nonfiction book about humor for Doubleday.