I work the front desk at a 24-hour gym. A guy walks up after his first-ever workout; maybe thirty minutes on the elliptical and a few bicep curls.

Customer: “Hey, do you guys have one of those infrared fat-burning saunas?” 

Me: “No, just regular saunas. And they’re mostly for recovery, not weight loss.” 

Customer: “Hmm. Okay. What about that machine that zaps your abs into a six-pack? I saw it on YouTube.”

Me: “Uh… we don’t carry machines from infomercials, no.” 

Customer: *Deadly serious.* “Well, how am I supposed to get ripped without, like, working out?” 

Me: “This is a gym, sir. The only thing that gets ripped without working is the paper.”

I’m a front-desk attendant at a gym. It’s mid-morning and pretty quiet. A gym member storms up to the front desk.

Member: “Excuse me. I need to speak to the manager about the music.”

Me: “Sure. Is it too loud?”

Member: “It’s hip-hop. I don’t think that’s appropriate for a wellness environment.”

I glance over. It’s a lo-fi playlist with maybe a faint beat behind it.

Me: “We rotate through different playlists, but I can turn it down a little.”

Member: “No, it’s not the volume. It’s the message. I didn’t come here to be assaulted by someone’s SoundCloud.”

I nod slowly, resisting the urge to tell her it’s literally just a Spotify playlist called “Calm Workouts.” The current song playing has a very light African beat.

Member: “Why can’t you play something less… urban? Like Michael Bublé? Or Josh Groban?”

At this point, one of our regulars, bench-pressing in the corner, calls out without missing a rep:

Regular: “Lady, if I lift to Bublé, I’ll fall asleep under the bar.”

She gasps like he just dropped an F-bomb.

Member: “That’s extremely rude.”

Regular: “So is demanding a soundtrack for your stretching routine. If you want to listen to relaxing music, go to a spa.”

She glares at him, then at me, and huffs out.

CONTENT WARNING: Dark Humor

Me: “I’m calling to cancel my gym membership, please.”

They take my details and start the whole corporate-mandated spiel designed to keep clients.

Representative: “Sorry to hear that, sir. Is there anything we can do better to keep you with us?”

Me: “Just the cancellation, please.”

Representative: “How about if we give you three months at half-price to—”

Me: “Just the cancellation, please.”

Representative: “Or if we included that, plus three free classes a month—”

Me: “I have cancer and will be dead in three months.”

Representative: “…”

Me: “So… the cancellation?”

Representative: “Yes, that’s been cancelled for you. Have a good day and… uh… sorry.” *Click.*

That was years ago. I don’t have cancer, but I also don’t have time to waste. Am I an a**hole? Maybe. But so are companies who make it difficult to cancel s***. Traumatize them into speeding things up, I say!

I work in a martial arts gym. A kid comes in with long nails, so I tell him he needs to cut them and point him in the direction of the clippers. When I say “kid”, I mean the guy is sixteen years old.

He comes back about ten minutes later. I look at one of his hands, and the nails are still all long.

Me: “What have you been doing?”

Kid: “I cut all the nails on my left hand. But… I’m right-handed, so I don’t know how to cut the nails on my right hand.”

A few years ago, I was working out at the gym when a group of three teenage boys, around thirteen or fourteen, walked in. They were chatting and laughing as they walked in.

Teenager #1: *Shouting* “We’re here to challenge you for the Gym Badge! Send out your Pokémon!”

The other two burst out laughing, and they all started to basically shout and repeat their challenge, laughing their heads off as they did. Most of us just ignored them and kept going on with our workouts, but one of the trainers started to walk over. He told me later that he was planning to play along a bit, saying they could “earn a badge” if they beat him on the stair-stepper or something like that.

However, before he could reach them, one of the boys got too into it and proceeded to swing his arm around.

Teenager #2: “Karate chop! AUGH!”

He screamed as he suffered the predictable consequences of trying to karate chop the metal side of a machine as hard as he could. He bent over, clutching his hand and crying. Both of his buddies got panicked looks, immediately turned tail, and ran out.

Trainer: “Oh, s***. Are you okay?”

The injured teenager just turned and fled after his friends, still clutching his hand.

Then, a seventy-year-old lady who was walking on the treadmill suddenly chimed in.

Old Regular: “Workout Machine used Being Made Of Metal. It was Super Effective.”

That got a laugh out of pretty much everyone in earshot. [Trainer] stepped out into the parking lot to look for the teens and see if the kid needed help with his hand, but they were long gone.