Tom Brady's pool cover nightmare, explained by a former pool supply store employee

I used to work at a pool supply store in northern New Jersey. Working at a pool supply store in North Jersey was miserable because there are roughly three months in a temperate year in which anyone would want to use a pool, and there are so many leafy trees and fertilized lawns that it takes 10s of gallons of military-grade chemicals to keep the water clean during that time, then it takes another pile of money to keep the pool from demolishing itself in the frozen winter months. My job was to spend all day explaining these things to frazzled people who deeply regret digging an Olympic-sized money grave in their backyard.

Which is to say, California native/multimillionaire Tom Brady losing his mind over the very same explanations I gave to far poorer Northeasterners all summer for three summers is hiiiiilarious. All thanks to Business Insider for screencapping these bits of the post-DeflateGate Brady email deluge.

Brady's manager tells him in October that a new pool cover plus installation will run him $8,540, which is baffling and gets a response I've heard 1,000 times too many in my life:

(Puts on baby blue Anthony & Sylvan Pool Supply polo shirt, which is size XL and goes down to my knees, and also stinks of chlorine.)

You use a retractable mesh cover during the warm months. It lets the sunlight warm the water and saves you energy costs on the heater, but keeps leaves out when you're not using the pool! Unfortunately, that thing would collapse under the weight of snow and ice, so it's no good for wintertime.

Well, see a winter cover is a huge, solid piece of vinyl, like a shell. It  rests on the edge of the pool instead of floating right on the water (the level of which will be dropped when it gets cold so the expanding ice doesn't crack the tiles around the upper aspect of the pool).

A winter cover won't retract like the current one, so it'd be a pain for multiple people to move on and off every time you want to use the pool. Anyway, do you want a black or white one?

We don't have the white one.

Uhhhhh let me talk to my manager.

If we're being honest, though, Tom, I know you're rich enough that none of this really matters, but I'll tell you what I wish I could have told (and sometimes did tell) so many people before you: Building a permanent swimming hole in a New England backyard is like breathing on the moon. It takes too much money and effort to conquer the forbidding environment.

The pool industry is a huge scam. Go swim in a lake.

★★★

SB Nation presents: Tom Brady's summer? Not that great. Gronk's summer? Amazing!