I have unbelievable hostility for the people at the gym who refuse to tell you their rates and instead make you take a tour and tell them what you're looking for in a gym and whether you're training for a marathon or just looking to feel the burn cuz it's go time and you can sleep when you die and summer's coming and nothing tastes as good as thin feels and tone it up etc and then sit you down and throw a bunch of numbers and conditions at you and work their way around a piece of paper until it's just an inscrutable black blob of numbers and x-es and you're sure that if you could just hold it all in your head, including the special promotions they mentioned at the beginning of the gym tour which they're now not mentioning anymore so you should remember to remind them about that you could get the best deal but you also suspect, or rather know, or really, feel, that no matter what you're getting fucked even though they're flashing you a shit-eating grin and asking if you have friends who would be interested in training, not to contact them, but just they can "get some ammunition on you" for when they go to their manager because they don't even know if she'll okay this deal and she'll want to know how they even got the number so low but it's ok because they like you and want to help you out.
I'm reminded of room draw in college where you're each given a number but if you draw into a room together you combine the numbers and take the average so while looking at rooms you must carry a calculator and have various back up plans for if person A goes with that plan or B goes with that plan or abroad, etc. Frustrated, my friend Wendy declared that this was like a horrendous word problem and she suspected if we could just figure it out somehow we could get an entire dorm.
And loosely related is trying to get an apartment in NYC where you're walking around with a broker and trying to butter them up because maybe they can help you on the price and they're trying to butter you up because they want you to take the apartment and so it's just a big ass-kissing free for all.
harrumph
Monday, June 14, 2004
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3 comments:
Why the fuck are gyms acting like car dealerships these days? Here is the equasion: I will pay you to use your gym and its equipment. I will pay a pre-determined amount, the same amount that everyone else pays. It should go like this: "Excuse me, how much does it cost to work out in your gym?" "Sir, it costs $50 a month." "Oh, ok. Do I get a break if I pay for a year or six months up front?" "Yes Sir, you get 5% for 6 months, and 10% for a year." That is all it needs to be.
Alison, I didn't mean to be anonymous... it's Rob!
the part I like to go over and over in my head about is when, after delivering spiel, he looked up and said "I have now told you everything you need to know about gyms in thirty seconds or less. my apologies if I took longer than thirty seconds," and then he blanked out for a bit, because clearly he forgot what came next and I so badly wanted to say "are you going off book?" and I've even thought of going back to the gym, just to say that, because I'm petty and little like that. Oh, OH!, another good moment was when he was explaining this one promotion where you can use the gym for free for a month if you come three times a week and then for whatever reason you can cancel, for any reason at all, like you can come in and say "I have an epidermis, I can't come to the gym" which actually, if intentional, is funny, but I'm sure it wasn't intentional, because I didn't get the feeling he was capable of subtle humor and he probably sits up at night worried about "getting an epidermis" and thus is funny at his expense.
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