Why are gym employees douchebags?
My 3-year membership at a local gym expired this past July, and since then I've just been paying month to month. 79 bucks. More than I want to spend, but still cheaper than some gyms. The gym I've been going to is nothing fancy. They've got weights, cardio equipment and three punching bags. All I need. The managers are, for the most part, douchebags. They spend more time on their cellphones and looking in every mirror they walk by, than say, seeing if people are using machines correctly, or other crazy things like that.
It took them two years to replace a broken water fountain. That's part of why I left. I was thirsty.
So I go into another gym after work the other day to ask the lady behind the counter a simple question:
"Can you tell me what your rates are? I was thinking about joining this gym."
Without actually looking at me, she instantly and instinctively performs the OPPOSITE of customer service; she hands me a clipboard with a long form on it and a dangling pen, which she grabs from a large stack of clipboards with long forms on them and dangling pens, from the wall behind the desk.
I wanted to fucking punch her in the face.
I can't tell if she was incapable of answering my question, unwilling to, or just brainwashed into never interacting with someone unless they were just asking for a towel, but I'm pretty sure that's not the best way to reel in a new customer.
But hey, I'm just in advertising, what do I know?
After filling out more information than they deserve, I handed her back the clipboard with the long form and the dangling pen and she tells me someone will be right with me. What I wanted to do desperately however, was hit her over the head with it, while simultaneously screaming BOO, just to get her to make some friggin' eye contact.
15 minutes later, and one nose-hair away from my walking out, one of their crack sales guys (read: early 20-something overconfident Hispano-African kid who kept licking his lips and using the phrase "lemme AKS you something" at least five times) sits me down in one of their 4 x 6 cells to talk turkey.
Again, the first thing I did was 'aks' him what their rates were.
Nothing doing. He wasn't about to forego his droning 20 minute schpiel and my useless free tour. I know what a gym looks like. Weights. Machines. Mats. Music. Dipsticks with big muscles. I get it.
I didn't want to reveal yet that I work across the street and we get a corporate rate. I wanted to see what a regular walk-in would pay.
So he pummels me with countless junk-mail generating questions and pointless information - then he proceeds to veer off into a conversation about my brother who lives in Las Vegas, and all the unnecessary free guest passes I can get. Even funnier, with a straight face, he actually tried to convince me that after three years, my membership rate "would only go down, not up." I called him on it, by saying we both know that's just not going to happen and I think he got kinda flustered.
Anyway, as soon as I mentioned where I work he panicked, and got up to go call in a 'cleaner', or a 'closer', depending on how you want to look at it. It was as if I told him I work for the FBI or something.
Well, I didn't realize the chain reaction I had started, because he brought with him two even bigger, far uglier oafs wearing the same red wife-beater unitards that were too small. They made sure to let me know that they had A LOT of muscles.
After 10 seconds of man-on-man foreplay that included a few handshakes, the short answer to the question I asked half an hour earlier, and my subtle gagging on their crappy colognes, all three of them were standing over me, no, lumbering over me, quietly, intensely, impatiently, with a contract and ball-point pen, waiting for me to sign.
I guess somewhere between when the first guy jumped up and when he brought his gumbahs back with him, my initial question got lost in translation, and became a game of telephone. "What are your rates?" became "This guy wants to join, quick, get him a contract and a pen. Do it! Now!"
One of the few valuable things I've learned in my field is this: listen to people. No one wants to hear your over-rehearsed canned answer to a problem they didn't tell you they had.
Still, sometimes pressure can be good... say, when you need to stop a gunshot wound from bleeding. This was not one of those times. A little bit of subtlety, honestly, and humanity goes a long way.
Not wanting to bow to their caveman sales techniques, I told them I needed 24 hours to think about it and walked out.
The whole thing reminds me of a tiny part of Ben Afleck's incredible speech in the movie The Boiler Room.
He said: "A sale is made on every call. Either you sell someone on a reason to buy your stock ...or they sell you on a reason not to."
Anyone out there go to a gym they like?
