A Calgary government official took notice of a video record of a frustrated father in the City of Calgary, whose attempts to enrol his children in the city’s swimming classes were faced with frequent system crashes over the past two years.
To assuage the disgruntled father, the city’s official, who the father, Darryl McCoy, spoke with and showed the video proof to, enrolled his son into the swim classes and told him they would hire another swim instructor to ensure his son is attended to in the program.
According to CBC, “It’s been an absolute nightmare,” said McCoy, about his experiences to sign up for the city’s swim classes for his children. He explained every time he or his wife would try to enrol their boys into the classes, the computer system would oust them from the queue. He added he saw long lineups of similarly frustrated parents at a few local pools in the city’s south, where quite often the parents were turned away.
At one of his latest attempts, he recorded a video proof to show a city official the problem he had been facing, and then proceeded to call the city’s help line almost 300 times to finally get a response.
In a statement to CBC, City’s spokeswoman Amanda D’Silva explained: “A lack of returning frontline staff, low response rates to job postings, and higher than normal attrition in a competitive market has left a gap in our ability to provide the level of facility access and programming Calgarians expect.” She also said currently the city was operating its aquatics programs at 65 per cent of staffing levels before the pandemic.
She added: “We understand the impact these reductions in service have for Calgarians and ask for your patience as we rebuild.”
