He sweats in record-breaking heat. He puts up with wrinkly old men in thongs. He drags your ass out of the ocean when you swallow too much saltwater. And you never share your Hebrew National hot dogs with him.
In honor of Labor Day weekend, we asked a Palm Beach County lifeguard to list the top five ways beach bums annoy him:
1. You don't leave the water when there are sharks.
"They get pissed at us. They don't really believe us. They think we're trying to take time off.
"I had a guy tell me, 'You don't want to get hit by an Irishman.' This old man, he was like 80 years old!"
So the guard replied, "I get off at 5:30 p.m., if you want to meet me back in the parking lot with your cane."
2. Your don't share your barbecue, even when the wind blows the delicious scent into his lifeguard stand.
"You can smell their food, and none of them are offering any."
3. You hit on him.
"I've been asked out by a guy from Pakistan," he says. Apparently, the suitor was in town for a Nike convention and was staying at a hotel on the beach.
"He tries to get me to come to his hotel room for a pair of shoes... That's not gonna work, buddy, unless you got a pair of socks."
4. You think you invented the Baywatch joke.
"I've never heard that one before -- five times a day."
5. You have sex on the beach. (Well, actually, he doesn't really mind.)
"We see it, but we don't stop it," he says. "We point it out to each other."
