Extraordinary Very Merry Christmas

Let's get this job talk out of the way, because it's worth mentioning.  When we last met, I was excited to be starting this position at LA Fitness.  A step in the right direction, albeit getting there was a little shakey and a lot of worry for nothing.

Or so I thought.

There was finally a position in a gym for me, with my certification shiny and ready to be used, from a gym that contacted me; I didn't have to do the grunt work!  I wasn't even looking.  Shouldn't that have been a tell-tale sign all along?  Yes.  It should have.

LA Fitness is a big box gym, the biggest gym chain in the country I believe.  A facility where people pay money to go to work on themselves, each setting different goals to be where they want to be either healthfully or aesthetically.  LA Fitness provides lots of machines and weights and other such gym accessories for those looking to meet those goals.  But God.  At what cost?

It's an attractive value.  Many locations for a cheap price.  Open long hours during the day so you can go just about anytime you'd like.  There's even a personal training department to help you evaluate your goals, and with us, we can help you figure out the most efficient and effective way for you to accomplish them!

That's where I come in.  Hi, I'm Angel and I'm with the training department.  Can I interest you in a person training assessment, free of charge, to help you accomplish the goals you're striving for here today?

Oh, you're busy... right, you're working out.  And you have headphones on.  Okay, no need to be rude.  Just doing my job.

*     *     *

From day one on the job, I met the two guys I'd be working with.  Both having been personal trainers who are now Fitness Directors at the LA Fitness location at which I'd be working.  Introductions, yada yada -- here, Angel. Here's a clipboard with a blank piece of paper.  Go sell training.
"Umm, so what do I do?  I mean, can you show me how it's done first?"
"Oh, I guess you can shadow me for a bit."
Perfect.  What a relief.

"Hi, ma'am.  My name's Jesse [so on and so forth about setting goals and meeting them effectively and efficiently.]  Okay, no problem, ma'am.  If you ever need anything, don't hesitate to come by our training offices! ... think you can handle that, Angel?"
And I was on my own.

From day one, blank piece of paper on a clipboard.  Go sell.

After about 5 days of this, I got a few phone numbers of clients so we can call them to set up appointments, but not anyone who actually wanted to go through with these appointments.  After a while, these 2 guys I would work with would berate me and say "We could go out there and get 30 phone numbers and book 10 appointments in an hour!"
The difference between these guys and me was, well, first and foremost there's confidence.  But I also have morals, and self awareness for these people.  I work out (not at LA Fitness) and it's my time.  It's my time to go to the gym, work on myself, and try to achieve my own personal goals.  I don't go there to talk to people.  I hate it when people try to talk to me at the gym.  It's distracting, unnecessary, and not the place for any sort of small talk.
If I were working out and someone not only tried to talk to me, but then tried to sell me something, and continued to push after I had said no, I would seriously consider going to another gym.
Now, the gym I work out at, which I really enjoy, has personal trainers.  I see them around with clients all the time.  But no one is walking around with a clipboard trying to push it on every member.

After my initial pushes on people weren't working, they had me try another approach.  They told me to write on a big piece of paper, 'DO YOU WANT PERSONAL TRAINING' and walk up and down all of the cardio equipment and show people the sign as I walk by and see if anyone would bite.

Never worked for me.

So, as big of a failure I was at bothering people and bullying them into buying something they didn't want, they showed me what would happen after I got a client to book an appointment.  We went through the rundown of what we tell these people, which has a lot to do with confusing them, drawing little charts, and asking them about their goals.

Say Patty came in and said, "I want to lose 60 lbs!" and Joseph came in and said "I'm trying to lean out and put on about 15 lbs of muscle," or Robert said, "I'm trying to cut and need to lose about 10 lbs of fat."
Our job was to tell each of these clients that it would take them roughly 50-60 weeks of personal training to attain these goals.  Yes, whether you want to lose 10 lbs or 100 lbs, we could get you results in a fucking year.

Of course I believe in personal training.  I think it could benefit absolutely everyone, even personal trainers themselves.  Having someone push you, bestow knowledge on you, intrigue you with new ideas, it is always beneficial.  I also believe in most circumstances, for most people, about 3 months of personal training could be enough.  That's if you're motivated to reach your goals and need someone to teach you proper form, certain exercise plans, and what it takes to make each of these goals happen so you don't give up and don't plateau before you reach them.

A year of personal training, while not crazy, excessive, or a bad thing, is a bit much for the average person.  Personal training is expensive, and usually an expense people don't want to commit an entire year to.  But if they can, that's great, and it can only help you in the long run.

Another piece of information given to these people is that if they gain 10 lbs of lean muscle, somehow magically you are guaranteed to be burning a pound of fat every week completely at rest, doing nothing.

This is the blanket statement they give to people.  Not considering that people also are taking in calories, are not always at rest, and that 10lbs of lean muscle does a pound of fat a week make.  It just doesn't add up.  But you talk fast, confuse people, and they might not ask super specific sciencey questions.

Now I questioned my knowledge when I was told this, which was a bit scary, but then my superior who was telling me all this (by the way I should mention he's gone from my position, to personal trainer, to Fitness Director in about 3 months.  Turnover much?) also sidebarred me with, "Now we both know this isn't true, but it's just what we tell people."

That was the moment I wanted to walk out.  But I didn't.  I came in one more day, and they gave me my blank piece of paper and clipboard, told me to make sales, and by the middle of the day I had only managed to acquire a couple phone numbers, they did what they had been doing to me for almost each day I was there; they told me to leave early read the packet of lies yet again, and come back tomorrow.  This was after another session of "WHY ARE YOUR SALES NOT HIGHER?!?!?" and talking down to me and making me feel like an utter disappointment.
So my sales suck, they make me leave early every day, and not once did I ever have a single bit of training besides a sales packet that only told me what to lie to people about once we got them sitting in the chair.
Now, these guys obviously weren't geniuses and one of them has only been there 3 months, so... I don't know.  Shitty company, not sure if I'm even getting paid for the week and a half I was there... but when I was told to come in on a Saturday bright and shiny at 8am to annoy more people with my clipboard and paper, it was finally time to say fuck it, and never show my face there again.  And judging by the phone call I did not receive the next day, I'm guessing this sort of thing happens quite a lot there.

I worked at the highlighted location.  The purple one.  The Lakeview location.  The one with 1.5 stars.

So I am now unemployed around the holidays, which means Yay, no stressing about working too much around the Holidays!  But it also means I have no income which, you know, scary.

But I've been making a few calls, sending a few resumes, and enjoying my time off in the snow, taking pictures and enjoying this extraordinary very merry Christmas.

Rode the Santa Express downtown yesterday to the Christkindlmarkt, a Bavarian holiday market downtown.  It was pretty cute.  Enjoyed some Glühwein and even got to keep the mug!  It was adorable.

So if you're wondering what to get the guy who has ... well, no job, you can always take a peek at my Wishlist on Amazon for inspiration!

http://amzn.com/w/3M0CMUKYC7OYO

Happy Holidays everyone!

Passion Play

There have been many a great changes occurring.  I wanted to do a video about it but I never got around to it.  Oh well.  Maybe next time.  I'll actually be having a lot of time to be doing these updates from here on out.  Now only if I had something to write about.

And now I do!

I'm writing this as I sit in a cushy brown chair in a Starbucks here in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago with the Apple logo glowing behind the screen into which I'm staring, just like all of the great writers of the world.  This Starbucks is located half a block from a complex which houses an LA Fitness gym on its top floor.  I work at this gym now.

Say what?!

Yes, I am working in a gym now.  It's not in the position for which I am qualified, no.  So here's what happened.  I get a random phone call a month or so ago asking me if I am interested in becoming a personal trainer at LA Fitness.  I say sure, let's give it a shot.  I go in for an interview that day.  I meet with a couple guys and discuss my qualifications, and I am very honest.

I say to them, look.  I have this certification, sure.  However, I would not feel very comfortable working with people in a person training capacity just yet, as I think my W.I.T.S certification course was kind of a load of haberdashery. I explained the course instructor was never prepared, seemed to not know what she was doing, and didn't really have us do a lot of hands on training.

They appreciated this honestly and told me I ought to start out in a different position.   This position is called a personal training counselor.  They explained the role to me, how I could work to be comfortable at personal training, and I accepted, even though I was a bit confused as to what this position actually entailed.

Later that evening, I received a phone call being offered the position, and I accepted.  And that's when things started to get a wee bit confusing.  I figured this would be a full time position, and so I could work with it to do this gym position as well as keeping some hours at the current gig, bartending at the Twisted Vine, the lovely wine and whiskey bar that took me under their wing when I was but a baby to the exciting whirlwind of Chicago city life.  So to get all of that situated, I came in for my first day of work to LA Fitness in early November.

We discussed my availability, which at the time was a November schedule at the bar that was written in late October, for the entire month of November.  At a bar with 3 employees.  No time off, no switching shifts, no quitting without notice (I didn't want to be a dick), and thusly, no gym job until my schedule cleared up.  He presented to me what the hours would look like.  6 days a week, with 3 of those days being there for about 11 hours, with a 4 hour break in the middle.  Meaning no time for two jobs.

So I put it off.  I was told when my schedule cleared, I would have a position at LA Fitness waiting for me.  I was told that sometime around November 13, and with a birthday weekend coming up, my birthday being November 16, I decided to put off dealing with that work junk, and made the commitment to report my final days at the bar to my boss when I came into work that following Tuesday.  Before that, I called LA Fitness to make sure he would keep his word that I had a position there should I decide to quit my current bartending gig.  It was confirmed.  So Tuesday came (my birthday weekend was great by the way), and it was consistently busy.  Never a dull moment.  Never a moment to breathe.  Never a moment to discuss the end of days with my boss.

Then came Wednesday.  It was a day that started with lots of busy work involving some side project my boss had been working on regarding Christmas ornaments and lots and lots packaging popcorn -- the fluffy stuff in packages.  My co worker would come in 2 hours after I had arrived, and committed that I would disclose the notice before she came in.  And so I did.  It went something like, "Hey, gotta tell ya somethin!" And then the blabbering of news came out, and the reaction received was an unexpected one.  Few words, mostly silence.  In fact, it was nearly 2 weeks of silence thereafter, an appropriately wintery chill, up until I finished my term at the bar, my last couple days there completely void of my boss, my friend who I had made since my walking into the once warming establishment.

It was strange to me, yet not surprising that he decided to be absent that day due to many different factors I won't bore you with here.  But so how he decided to end it, and thus it was.

I called LA Fitness about the position, and there were a few concerning hiccups.  The guy I was in contact with wasn't there for a few days.  When I came back, he told me to come in the next morning.  Then he called me back saying instead coming in for an interview with a guy named Al.

Heart racing.  Blood pressure rising.  What did he mean an interview?  I had already done the hiring paperwork.  I filled out those forms.  I was given his word on the position.  I was offered a full time position and I had quit my job to make this transfer, from the less than stellar world of bartending, late nights, no social life, and lots of bitch work, to a field in which I could thrive and put my actual passions into play.

I went in for this so-called "interview" with Al.  One of the first things he asked me was a question about whether I'm looking for full time or part time work.  I began with, "So I'm a little confused..."  I think he was too, be he recovered by telling me to chill out and that he just needs to meet everyone before their officially on board.  I think there were some mistakes made in this little process that scared and stressed the ever-living bejeezus out of me, but all was well in the world.

So that's where I am now.  And I know now more about the position.  Essentially I am selling personal training, in itself involves a bit of personal training from me to the potential clients.  So it's a step in the right direction.  But it's still sales.  That's never been in my best graces, but I will try my best until I make the position what I want for it to be.

And now I have that schedule, the unusual one where I have 4 hour lunch breaks.  I'm on one of those lunch breaks.  I had my food, and came into Starbucks, and I brought my computer with me.  So I can sit here at this Starbucks, like all the great writers of the world, and deliver you a much delayed continuation of my adventures since moving from Seattle.