Summer jobs: Spotting fake poo at Hanmer Springs

Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools and Spa is a water park two hours north of Christchurch. There is archaeological evidence that Māori travellers used the area to rest and warm up on their journeys long before Pākehā arrived in New Zealand.

​The first dressing shed was built 150 years ago. It has since transformed into a water park with 22 outdoor pools of various temperatures and four waterslides, including the 13.5 metres-high Conical Thrill.

​During summer, daily patrons swell to 4000 from a winter low of 300 people. The complex has 20 lifeguards on duty while it is open in the busy season. Lifeguard manager Chantelle Hutton has some interesting techniques to make sure they are paying attention.

​What does a normal day look like?

Depending on what time of day you're starting, we have a crew that starts at 7am, and we hop in the pools, vacuum, clean the pools, all that sort of stuff, and then just get the complex ready for opening.​

We are open from 10am until 7pm. The lifeguards will be out there, and you're greeting customers, just helping them with finding their way around the complex and explaining how the water works.​

Is it true you shouldn’t put your head under the water?

It’s a really good thing to be strict on. Our water comes up through fractured rocks, so it’s slightly different from some pools in the North Island, which come up through mud. If the water comes up through mud, you have a chance of getting quite sick.

What skills do you need to have?

A lot of it is customer service, but we do skill up on our first aid. Every six weeks, we do training, and we like to do scenarios in the pool or first aid.

A lot of our first aid responses are for fainting because of the hot water. People will get in there, especially on a cold day, and they get talking to someone beside them. They don't realise how long they've been in for, and then they'll get up and walk out and faint.

You need to be reasonably fit. You're standing up outside for eight hours, and it could be raining. It could be hailing. It could be snowing. It could be a hot, beautiful, sunny day.

How do you make sure the lifeguards are paying attention?

If I'm training new lifeguards, sometimes I'll just go and put an orange mannequin in their pool and see if they notice.

We do have fake poos. It’s really big and it's squishy and it's got googly eyes on it. So, if you do see it in the pool, it is fake. Sometimes I will pop that out just to see if anyone notices it, which is sometimes a little bit disturbing for the customers. I have to turn around and go, ‘I am training and it is not real'.

How quickly should they spot the fake poo?

They should probably find it in about 20 seconds.​

Is there a common place where people get into peril or mischief?

This doesn’t happen often, but I did have a lady who wouldn’t get out of the bottom of the hydroslide. She had one of those string bikinis on, and the bottom part had not just untied but unthreaded. She might have had a few wines beforehand. I just grabbed someone's jacket and wrapped it around her and got her to go and find some more bikini bottoms.

Sometimes, with elderly people, they can't get their hands to work properly, so you might have to help them do their bra up or something like that. So when you're doing the change room check, and they might be like, ‘Oh, excuse me, dear, can you do up my bra?'

​This interview was lightly edited.