Hey I just want to get this off my chest BC it's been bugging me all day. I'm an Asian Canadian lifeguard at a pool in Canada for several years.
So a group of rowdy teenagers come in and start rough housing/grabbing each other just about to throw their friend into the deep end. I shut it down by telling them to stop. They go sarcastically okay and do a racist asf karate bow. I tell the teen who did it not to do it again but he does the bow again right in front of me to their friend. I tell them to get changed n leave. They go straight to the supervisor and complain before they're allowed to roam free.
I know I should've talked to my white supervisor beforehand. But they complained to them and were allowed to go back to playing. No word of apology or nothing. When I mentioned thinking about doing an incident report she dismissed as a tedious process. She also said the teens explained the bowing gesture as part of their culture but my Persian coworker (after my supervisor left) said it absolutely wasn't.
This basically gives them a green light to be little shits throughout the whole pool as lifeguards on rotation all had to talk to them. When again they were in my zone and were rough housing (pushing each other throwing the ball). Running around on deck, throwing the ball at each other, just being little shits in general. I took their ball but the other supervisor let them have the ball
I saw then the two supervisors were looking at me and talking to the other guards and mentioned writing an incident report about my behaviour/actions. I overhead one supervisor talking to the head guard as I was leaving.
I'm worried about getting written up even though my supervisor had let the teens continue to roam free. They continued to be little shits to the other guards as well but I feel like I'm getting singled out for calling the teens out for their behaviour. I noticed her talking to the other guards as well to report/document anything they saw (writing motion with her hand)
Basically it's their word against mine but it's kinda disheartening to have no backup on this and potentially get written up. What's more frustrating is my supervisor told me not to file an incident report
Teens being teens I get. But when they do racist shit like that should go against the code of conduct for the facility.
What would you do? Should I file an incident report or grievance? I'm worried about me getting reported/written up for being too strict…but it definitely gave me a bad feeling afterwards.
Thanks for reading. It's a relief just to get it off my chest