Thread: Company fires lifeguard for saving people

Originally Posted by lizarddust

Councils and municipalities which border on the ocean. For example beachside suburbs, towns and cities.

oh..we never call them councils.

I've surfed outside of patrolled areas before and I've had lifeguards warn me that there is no coverage there if I go down.

If this guy was close enough to a patrolled area then why didn't he just swim there instead of outside of it. I definitely wouldn't have abandoned my post and risk the people i'm supposed to watch to save someone who chose to take a risk.

Yet another example of evil profiteering. Profiting has become the bane of America. Obama is 100% correct to demonize big business.

Anyone who thinks its better to be careful then help someone who is drowning, is heartless and souless, and the product of this flourishing 'f*ck the world, and everyone in it except me' mentality. No wonder crime rates are where they are now a days.

This is a complex case for several reasons.

1) The swimmer was stupid for putting himself at risk for being in a dangerous area. He bears sole responsibility for his accident. But that's the price of exercising personal freedom and doing whatever you want to do regardless of known and unknown dangers.

2) The incident happened at least 1,500 feet away from the patrolled boundary. That's a significant distance. It had to have been farther from where the life guard was when he became aware of the incident. So that's a minimum of 500 yards on a sandy beach. It probably took him a good minute to run the distance.

3) The city and contractor are corrupt. Someone on the city probably got a kickback for awarding the contract. The contractor employs four guards and one supervisor. He pays the guards $8.25 an hour. His labor costs for the year for the crew is less than $100,000. That leaves a profit of about $230,000. That qualifies as a scam.

4) Now that the incident has made the news how many more people will want to work there for those slave wages?

5) And how many more fools will swim in the posted "swim at your own risk" areas?

Originally Posted by Ethereal

From the article...

"We have liability issues..."

The lawyers and politicians strike again!

The OP's point is valid - you have the money to pay for a service (which everyone in a modern society should benefit from), you have coverage. The rest can die off.

This is what idealistic free market capitalism brings. Compromise on ideals is the path forward; some services are simply not for sale - the ones that save human life for example.

Originally Posted by Mac-7

Suppose someone within the lifeguard's assigned area got into trouble and there was no one there to save him?

The company is responsible for providing protection to a limited, assigned area, not the entire (*)(*)(*)(*)ing ocean.

But the company is a person and people have empathy, ergo the companies defence should surely have been "our company is a person, which inherently (because it is a person) has empathy.

Unless the laws on corporate personhood are a one way street....

Originally Posted by Leffe

The OP's point is valid - you have the money to pay for a service (which everyone in a modern society should benefit from), you have coverage. The rest can die off.

This is what idealistic free market capitalism brings.

Compromise on ideals is the path forward; some services are simply not for sale - the ones that save human life for example.

That might sound convincing to ignorant people in your country but it won't work here since government acts EXACTLY like that private company did when government does not get paid.

If you were not a foreigner you might have heard about the public fire departments that won't respond to fires at homes that have not paid the fire protection fee.

Originally Posted by Surfer Joe

I saw this truly disgusting report on the news today.
A company that was contracted to provide lifeguards for a beach fired one of its lifeguards for saving a drowning person who was just outside their coverage area.
The lifeguard spotted the drowning bather and immediately swam out to save him. Then he was told that he had gone outside of his patrol area to save the swimmer and the company fired him.
Apparently, private lifeguards are not supposed to care about saving people if they happen to be drowning outside the area the company is paid to watch.

This is what we have to look forward to if the cons ever manage to foist their ideology on the rest of the country.
If they succeed in gutting the public sector with the nonsense that the private sector can do a better job, they will finish turning the country into a cesspool of greed and corruption where only the privileged few have the chance to enjoy life and the rest can eat (*)(*)(*)(*) and die if they are not rich enough.

I hope that the company loses the contract and the city goes back to providing the service, and that people wake up to the fact that the failures of government are not because of the policies but because of the greedy, selfish, corrupt officials that are supposed to implement them honestly and then betray their trust.
At least in government we have some degree of oversight and redress against corrupt officials, but when these same people are operating in the private sector, and there is no oversight of their actions, their crimes can cause much more harm and then they can hide behind their army of lawyers to avoid facing the legal consequences as long as they can.

The private sector has no business running public services. They don't do it cheaper or better and they only care about the bottom line rather than the quality of the service.
If people like Romney and the Koch brothers ever get control, we will get the sort of country where it becomes commonplace for a company to let people drown if they are not being paid to save them.

your conclusion is a joke on many levels.
besides, good samaritan laws dont allow a person to sit and watch someone die. If a contract conflicts with the law, the contract is illegal If the guy sues for his job back, that and other reasons will get him his job back.

Originally Posted by Mac-7

That might sound convincing to ignorant people in your country but it won't work here since government acts EXACTLY like that private company did when government does not get paid.

If you were not a foreigner you might have heard about the public fire departments that won't respond to fires at homes that have not paid the fire protection fee.

Am I missing something? Someone could have died, while a life guard looks on and you think that my perspective is missing because I'm not American!?! That would mean to me that Americans have no sense of sympathy or empathy... Which I disagree with.