Olympic Swimming Pool Lifeguard Understandably Bored at Work
A picture of an Olympics swimming pool lifeguard has “gone viral.” The picture was originally published by the New York Times on August 4th in an article about Olympic lifeguards, but it was posted on the NYT Instagram account on Sunday morning and now everyone is pointing out how silly that seems. I mean, what do the best swimmers in the world need a lifeguard for, am I right?
According to the New York Times, there are around 75 lifeguards working the Olympics. Only 8 of them are required for the swimming events.
"Four of them — two at the competition pool, two at the training pool — work from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The other four then take their places and work until training ends at midnight. They are paid 1,100 reais (about $340) for about 20 days of work."
So, no, they aren’t getting rich.