Pros
I found that were no pros in this type of working environment
Cons
There were so many issues that went on when I worked there. My first concern was for the children. My co-counselors cared more about having a good time than actually doing their camp responsibilities. I would legitimately handle 30 kids while 3 counselors would just sit around and talk when they were supposed to be helping take care of the kids! Sometimes the counselors in training (15-17 year olds) would be put in charge if they were running low on staff. That was even worse! I had this one counselor in training “help out” and she just texted on her phone the entire time. The other issue was with training. The person in charge would pass people for their lifeguard training who had clearly failed the test! In one portion of the American RedCross lifeguard test, you have to do an Active Drowning Victim Front Rescue and she wasn’t strong enough to keep anyone up. And this was with the lifeguard rescue tube! She should have failed but the directed awardee her the certification anyway and she did do lifeguard duties that summer. She wouldn’t have been able to save any kids who weighed more than 80-90ish pounds. In one incident, a kid got stuck in between the netting of a floating trampoline on the lake. She wasn’t strong enough to pull him out. The other counselor was too busy playing with the kids than actually supervising them TO REALIZE THE DANGER OF THE SITUATION). Anyway she was trying to pull him up and could not and the child was starting to slip out of his life jacket and get further stuck below the netting inside the floating trampoline. Fortunately, the other counselor finally noticed and went over and was able to pull him out. Other questionable acts: -The person in charge would carefully curate an international staff to appear cultural -The person in charge had hired back this one older person who was a previous counselor and now he was supposed to be on the cooking staff but was eventually put in charge of the day camp children. He would often put little girls on his lap and that behavior was not stopped The other issue was the toxic company culture. The person in charge had an issue with one of his bosses over him and somehow made all the counselors think she was evil. Ironically I heard her daughter ended up working there. (I’m sure the person in charge was thrilled). There was this one time a laptop got stolen and the person in charge held an emergency group meeting in the middle of the day (took us from the campers during lunch but they were definitely watching through the windows) to tell us that he would call the police if no one owned up to it. I guess whoever stole it owned up to it because he never mentioned it again. I wouldn’t be surprised if the person in charge had just misplaced it. The person in charge also cared more about keeping up appearances than the kids themselves. One of the counselors got worried that one of the campers (7 years old) had a neck injury and they took it very seriously and called an ambulance. And the person in charge reprimanded the entire staff. He was upset that they had the ambulance come to the same area that the day campers got picked up at. After that, the other counselors never sought medical assistance for their campers. There was this one time that a camper had an allergic reaction and the counselor should have called the nurse on call but she didn’t. The camper’s face got completely swollen up. Luckily her throat didn’t close up. Another issue was the lack of diversity within the staff. When I was on staff, there was only one non-white person working there (as a counselor in training). The only other non-white people working there were cleaning staff and kitchen staff, no non-white counselors. It appears that they’re working on having a more diverse staff now but the main full time staff is still all white and if I were to bet the kitchen and cleaning staff is still primarily non-white.