Close
Encounters of the Gym Kind
Part one
It’s been a few years since I had to manage a gym but I still remember many incidents that make me chuckle or shake my head in amazement. For the most part, our clients were average people who wanted to get fit under our supervision. But there were a few who were, shall we say, extraordinary. Some were eccentric, some hardheaded, some truly one-for-the-books and some were just victims of unusual circumstances.
Cell
phones
When the first ultra-small cell phones came out on the market, one of our clients
flushed her brand-new day-old phone down the toilet. She absent-mindedly placed
the phone on her lap while she was doing her thing, reached behind to flush,
stood up, and watched in horror as she saw it disappear. We felt bad for her
but it wasn’t much fun for us either because we had to remove the entire
toilet bowl. The phone was totally destroyed and the poor client had to go home
and face her irate mother who had just given it to her for her birthday.
We had a client who would text while doing step aerobics. Incredibly foolish but true. In spite of repeated admonitions from the teacher to stop doing this, she persisted. Well, one day she fell off her bench. Luckily, she didn’t get hurt. After the initial shock, the teacher quietly snickered and prayed that she had finally learned her lesson. She did.
Super
saleswoman
If you ever need a champion salesperson, I know just who to recommend. We had
this client who was a born saleswoman. It was forbidden to sell things in the
gym but she just couldn’t help herself. Selling was in her blood. We would
find boxes of detergent tucked away in corners of the locker room. We would
get complaints from clients who felt trapped having to listen to her sales pitch
while exercising on the treadmill beside her
She would bring a small cooler to class, which I assumed had ice water in it. One day, during the floorwork session of class, I saw her casually pull out a frozen bangus and offer it to a surprised classmate who was dutifully doing her abdominal crunches beside her.
Another time. I arrived to find our cardio room had turned into a tiangge. She had hung clothes on all the cardio machines. The staff gave me a look of, “We tried to stop her.” The last straw was when a jar of kinilaw broke in her locker. It took us a week to get the smell out. She was a nice person but she just couldn’t get selling out of her system.
Stepsister
We had a client who liked to work out in solitude and in complete silence. Even
if there was no one else in the gym, she wanted the instructors to stay far
away from her. They couldn’t even make eye contact. If there was a class
going on, she would put cotton in her ears and tell the aero instructor to tone
down the music. One day, a particularly perky instructor was a substitute for
the regular teacher. The client approached her and said, “No clapping
and no happy-happy”. The startled instructor asked after the class, “Who
was that?” When told she was the sister of another client who was Ms Congeniality,
the instructor asked, “Stepsister?” The name stuck ever since.
Surprise
encounter
Our weighing scale was kept in our consultation room so you could weigh yourself
in privacy. The door had no lock. One of our clients had this habit of completely
undressing to weigh while a staff member stood guard at the door. Well, one
day the “guardian” got distracted by other members and left her
post. Our clueless maintenance man was then asked by our equally clueless receptionist
to grab medical history forms from the room. I don’t know who was more
surprised and embarrassed but there were screams from both parties. For weeks,
our client and maintenance guy could not make eye contact.
Body
odor
You would think that people would know if they had BO or not. The signs are
all around – the staff uses up an entire can of air freshener, the other
exercisers cough and gasp for air, and there is an ever-widening circle between
the perpetrator and the other people. But no, apparently people with BO cannot
smell themselves.
Telling a person they have BO is probably the most socially uncomfortable situation you can imagine. The staff members pass the responsibility back and forth like a radioactive football. Nobody wants to do it. You know you are going to hurt the client’s feelings no matter how tactfully say it and you also know you will probably never see him or her again. But you have to do it; otherwise, you could lose all your other clients.
My memories of these encounters are not pleasant ones. I have had a one-hour lecture on the dangers of getting cancer from deodorants, been almost physically attacked, told to my face we were all imagining things and told that smelling that way was “sexy”. One woman even broke down crying that her husband was leaving her for his secretary (the connection is still lost on me).
Showdown
There was a time when mornings at the gym would be quite tense. There was a
daily battle of wills between a hefty bodybuilder type who liked rock and roll
music and a meditative type who wanted to work out with soft music or no music
at all.
Whoever got to the gym ahead would win round one. The next round would go to the first person to use the rest room. If the bodybuilder went first, he would return to silence. If Mr. Yoga went ahead, The Rolling Stones would blast him. One day, they had the ultimate showdown and were alternately switching the music on and off for about five minutes. After that, they called a truce and decided to come at separate times. Whew.