A (Disastrous) First Encounter with my Groupon Gym

So next week, on Monday, I have a fitness assessment with my new gym. I must say, I'm pretty excited about it. Why, I'm not exactly sure... I can't imagine I'll be getting news other than "you're weak and out of shape", which I don't exactly need a kinesiologist's report to figure out. Maybe I'm excited because it feels like a natural beginning to kicking off a badass workout regime, which will be the perfect complement to my dietary changes so far... the ice cream on my apple pie of healthy eating, so to speak. Or maybe, I'm excited because I've been waiting for it SO LONG because it's been canceled TWICE by the gym already. Sigh. This, my friends, is the story of what you get when you purchase a gym membership on a groupon website...

About three weeks ago, I bought a Groupon gym membership for Premier Fitness. I was pretty darn stoked about what I was getting for such a ridiculously low price: A 4-month gold membership, including a fitness assessment, one session with a personal trainer and dietitian, and access to all of the gym equipment and classes, for ONLY $55. The savings were astronomical. Feeling as though I'd just stumbled upon a pot of gold a the end of a rainbow, I was eager as heck to get started and see the luxurious fitness club I'd just practically stolen a membership for. The very next day, I threw some gym clothes into a bag and headed off to Yorkdale (the closest location) to explore my future fitness haven.

So I arrived at the gym, Groupon certificate in hand. I confidently handed it to the buff-looking dude who was manning the counter and pronounced "Hi, I'm here to redeem my membership", fully expecting he would respond with a polite friendly "Oh yes, of course, welcome to the club!" He looks at the paper. He looks up at me. Back down at the paper. Then, he yells over to his equally buff pal... "Hey Bob, what the f*** is this??"

Uh...okay. Not exactly what I'd call stellar customer service, or a great welcome to the establishment. I'm slightly taken aback, so I just stand there and wait as Bob strolls over to take a look. "Oh yeah", he mumbles, "yeah, this thing." He says something else under his breath to his not-so-friendly coworker, then says "Okay, come with me", to me. "Thanks" I reply, determined to turn this bad start between my miracle gym and I around.

Bob takes me into an office, and hands me a form. "Fill out the top part with your information". This part goes relatively smoothly. Next, he starts to interview me about my health status, nutrition habits, and fitness history. I wasn't expecting this, but I do the best I can to be as honest as possible. At first, Bob has a subtle look of judgment seemingly permanently etched on his face, and the fact that his muscles are bulging out from under his shirt doesn't exactly help my level of ease in spilling my guts about my weak history of fitness (or lack thereof). But in typical form, I crack self-deprecating jokes to cover up my mild discomfort, and I can see he's sort of warming up to me. He seems to find me amusing. Okay. This isn't going TOO badly.

We then reach the part in the interview where he asks me about my fitness goals. Here's where things start to go awry. "Well" I say, "obviously I'm not here to lose weight..." at least I think this should be pretty obvious, but he just nods his head and repeats "so then, what are your goals?". I explain to him that what I really want is to gain some strength, particularly in my core and upper body. "The job that I do can sometimes involve lifting people and/or heavy objects. Right now I'm really not able to do this without risking serious injury, but I'd like to gain some strength so that I'm more capable of it."

Bob pauses for a minute. I can see the wheels in his head are turning. He then drops his pen, looks up and me, and says, "okay, well how are you going to achieve your goal?"

I'm not sure how to answer this. What is he looking for here? I really want to reply "um, by lifting weights...?" but I'm afraid this will sound facetious and ruin our already shaky rapport. So I laugh and say, "what do you mean?" He repeats, "how are you going to achieve this goal?". I try a different tactic. "Well, you tell me! I don't know too much about it..."

Bob half-smiles, almost mockingly. What comes out next is a perfect demonstration of what NOT to do when dealing with a customer. "You're NEVER going to achieve this goal. I promise you. How are you going to 'gain strength', as you said? What is your plan? Using machines won't work. (He launches into some kind of scientific sounding explanation about why machines don't build muscle mass, which involves a lot of intentional jargon and is incomprehensible to me). "You need to be doing free weights, but you don't know anything about free weights, do you? How much weight can you bench press?"

"I don't know", I respond, taken aback by this rant Bob seems to be going on.

"Can you bench press 150 pounds?" he asks. "Um, no...." I reply. Wow. Where on earth is Bob GOING with this?

"No, of course you can't. You're going to hurt yourself if you try to do free weights on your own. I promise you, without help, you'll leave here in four months looking EXACTLY the same as you look right now, and you won't have achieved your goal."

Wait a minute. "Without help." I'm slowly catching on to Bob's game.

"You are absolutely going to need a personal trainer. Otherwise it will be impossible."

"I see." I reply. Now I get it. "Well that sounds great and all, but I'm pretty confident that I'm nowhere NEAR being able to afford this".

"What do you do?" he asks.

"I'm a student, just graduated. No job. A heap of student loans waiting to be paid off. That's why I bought this groupon in the first place...it was the only gym membership I could afford!"

"Okay", he says. "Well let's just see, for arguments sake...let's do the bare minimum. Normally you should have three personal training sessions a week, but let's say you just did two, with homework in between them each week. So we just cut down the number of sessions from 36 to 24." "Okay", he says... "so that comes to...." *he flips around his computer screen so I can see the number*. I can’t remember the exact figure, but it’s something along the lines of… $1700.

I laugh heartily. Time to put an end to this game. "Buddy", I say, "I couldn't even afford that right now if you cut off one of those zeros. There is NO way. So tell you what... I'll just use whatever comes with the Groupon and do my best to achieve my goal anyway.... even if it is "hopeless", as you say."

Bob looks slightly annoyed, but resigned to the fact he's not going to get anywhere with this sale. Our interview promptly ends. He takes me over to the assessment office to book my fitness assessment.

Since then it's been canceled twice by the gym, with about 45 minutes notice each time. "Our kinesiologist is sick", is the explanation I've gotten on both occasions. Determined not to just let this slide and allow them the satisfaction of knowing they haven't wasted their time assessing one of those "Groupon" customers who won't be getting personal training anyhow, I've booked a third time.

And this...this is why the saying "if something looks too good to be true, it probably is", really IS true.

Until next time...
xo Janine