Food Acknowleder Association (the other F.A.A.)

What you got today, Stan? Tuna?

Picture the scene. You're pulling an 8 hour shift sitting in an indoor pool, inhaling the chlorine and bromine fumes, with whiny complaints from oddballs about the hot tub temperature or the steam room's amount of steam bouncing off you like bullets off of Superman. Slowly, you're becoming more annoyed as each minute of your day goes by and you're getting hungry. There were no real discernible lunch breaks at this job. Occasionally another staff member would watch the pool while we were able to run across the street to grab some food, but picking it up was all the break that we got. So we had to eat our meals at our lifeguard desk, while watching the pool, or reading a magazine (safety first!).

We came to discover that in this atmosphere, people seem to always want to acknowledge your food. I can't explain it, and I don't condone it, but it will happen. Like death and taxes. Maybe they think it's folksy small talk, a relatable topic between two people. But to us, it was just annoying.

We were never able to finish our meal without someone walking past and interrupting it with an annoying comment about the food. Whether or not they thought they were just being folksy or not is beside the point. These people were members of an association that Phil and I deemed the F.A.A.-The Food Acknowledger Association.

People love to say something about what you're eating, especially at this job; it was almost like a requirement that we could not go through an entire meal without at least one comment.

Some of the comments included:

"Taste good?"
"Are you feeding the rabbits?" (if you had food that looked healthy)
"Come on man we're in a gym you can't be eatin' that!"(if you had food that looked unhealthy)
"Bring enough for me?"

One gentleman seemed to almost examine and keep track of every meal I ate.

"Ahh I see you got the sub today, last time you had the salad, this time you got the sub!"

We were always mid bite too. And we inevitably had to stop eating to acknowledge their acknowledgement.

In case you're wondering, no one had an interest in letting us eat our meal in peace. Even our so-called heroes (people we liked) were part of the Food Acknowledger Association, so we sort of had to be polite and respond somehow.

I've come to learn now, several years removed from the lifeguard business, that this group is not limited to pool jobs. F.A.A. members are everywhere. You probably know one at your job right now, sitting and waiting to stand over you and breathe a pointless comment about your meal of choice for the day.

"Looks yummy! Whatcha' got?"

D

Is it hot?

Almost everyday, a somewhat disheveled man in his late 30's to early 40's who sort of resembled 'Oscar' from 'The Office' would walk past our lifeguard table and ask the same question as he pointed towards the hot tub.

"Is it hot?"

(He waited for a cab everyday after he sat in the hot tub, so we formed him the directory name "The Is It Hot Cab Rider," thus you can see how we formed random nicknames. Given the crudity of his nickname, however, I believe Phil and I decided on the new nickname, "The Moocher.")

Everyday, it was the same question. Asking if something really is what its name says it is sort of always perplexed me. To me, it's like walking into a Toys 'r Us and asking the first clerk you see, "Are there toys in here?"

But apparently, somewhere along the line, he lost confidence in the hot tub's ability to be hot. That, or he was just insane.

Some days I wanted to answer back, "No, it's freezing. We just call it a hot tub to f*ck with you guys."

On some days, he would ask us if it was hot as he zipped past us, not even really waiting for our response, then he'd proceed to ask people already in the hot tub the same question.

What the hell?

That was pretty much what we thought the entire time we worked there.

These odd folks crossed our paths each and everyday. You really start to wonder why these quirky people are at their health club's pool at 2pm on weekdays. Shouldn't they be annoying co-workers somewhere? We came to sort of gather that a lot of these folks had no jobs. And what we presumed, most of the time, is that the time they spent at our pool was just a daily bus trip from the mental institution.


D

An Introduction

Welcome, friends, to a new literary effort inspired by the absurd behavior exhibited by those who frequent health club swimming pools. We understand that health club swimming pool patrons are not often recognized for their behavior, absurd or otherwise, but as seasoned lifeguarding veterans, we feel it's time for their comeuppance.
I'm Phil. I worked as a lifeguard in the pool area of a Health Club in Catonsville, Maryland for most of my late teens and early twenties. Most of those years were spent working with the co-author of this blog, Damon. You can read my personal blog at http://philbertun.blogspot.com and Damon's fitness blog at http://yourtrainerdamon.blogspot.com
As I mentioned on my other blog, as lifeguards at a Health Club, Damon and I kept rather meticulous records. This is odd for two people who were attracted to a job that required little more than a pulse and slight positive bouyancy, but we did.
We realized early on that we knew all of the same lunatic patrons and, as Damon put it, we figured we needed a way to keep track of these oddballs and if one of us didn't know the reference, we could look them up on the list. Sort of like a nutjob card catalog. And thus was born The Directory.
The Directory contained a detailed list of our regulars and a brief description of what made them stand out. A few of them (whom we referred to as The Heroes) were the people we liked to hang out with (Ray), were wacky and fun (Carlos) or had interesting stories to tell despite their proclivity for random acts of public nudity (Big Al). Each entry had a paragraph outlining their basic personalities and those qualities which made them memorable.
Most of The Directory, however, discussed The Heels: those people who drove us near the point of madness. These included anyone who perplexed, angered or irritated us, especially those with bizarre appearance or apparell (Wash Cloth Bathing Suit Lady), those with over-the-top personalities (The Intense How-Do-You-Do) or particulary whiny individuals (Most Obnoxious Woman on the Face of the Planet Who Deserves to Die 100,000 Horrible Deaths). Some of the Heels simply confounded us with their incorrigible regularity (The Bald Foot Dipper), others with their pointy man-boobs (Pointy-Breasted Karate Guy).
Often, instead of an individual with a particular charicter flaw, we'd lump together groups of perturbingly like-minded folks who, for whatever reason, could not resist performing the same aggravating maneuvers as their equally oblivious bretheren (Chair Re-Locators, Loogie Hockers Incorporated).
These stories, the story of that time when Ghetto Fabulous ate my pizza, and more when we return. Stay tuned, dear readers. Stay tuned.
P.