Lifeguarding is perhaps one of the most serious jobs we willingly hand over to our nation’s teenagers. Despite being largely populated by 17-year-olds, the actual training to become a lifeguard is pretty rigorous, and all of those 17-year-olds have to get certified. And once they actually become lifeguards, the job itself is pretty serious.
If you think about it, we have high schoolers overseeing the well-being, health, safety, and even livelihood of everyone who comes to a swimming pool, lake, or beach. Although drowning is rare on the day-to-day, if something like that does occur it’s up to a legal child to ensure everyone makes it out unscathed.
That’s a lot of pressure to put on a high schooler’s plate. You know, on top of AP classes and all. So when the pool closes and the boss leaves, who can blame them for goofing around a little bit and playing some harmless pranks?
One group of young lifeguards on TikTok decided to play a harmless yet accurate prank at their indoor pool. After closing time, the staff placed a ‘Caution! Wet Floor’ sign on a floating kickboard and pushed it out into the water.
Pranks aside, the sign is pretty accurate. Swimming pools are just a hole in the ground with a really, really wet floor. Commenters, of course, saw the irony of the whole situation and found the fun, harmless prank to be hilarious. One viewer joked that he now has to wait for the pool to dry before going swimming since he wouldn’t want to slip while in there.
Some people even said that they’d played that same prank themselves, whether as a lifeguard or even during swim practice just to pull a joke on their coach. Many people simply commented that the imagery of the lifeguard running across the pool deck with such urgency to place this sign in the water left them in hysterics.
Speaking of the lifeguard running down the pool deck, any good pool patron knows that running on the pool deck is in direct contrast with all of the safety rules we know and love about public pools. So a few viewers let the brigade of lifeguards know that their rule breach had not gotten past them.
Other than the potential of slipping on the pool deck, the prank left everyone unscathed, and hopefully, their boss took it well. May we all take this as a sign that we are seriously limiting ourselves when it comes to the prank potential of “Slippery When Wet” signs.