#103: My Gym Changed the Scan-In Protocol and I Feel Personally Attacked
HUMOR
This past week Adam and I have gotten back in the habit of going to the gym. We go to different gyms, but we leave the apartment together, walk in the same direction, and then diverge when we reach my gymnasium. (Isn’t it weird calling it a gymnasium instead of just gym? Can you imagine if I insisted on spelling things out like that? Are you reading this on your cellular phone? Did you open the Substack application to read it? Okay, let’s get back to this piece about me doing an abdominal muscle workout.)
Anyway, we walk together and I force myself not to turn around and go home or hide in the frozen yogurt shop as soon as I see him turn the corner. Naturally, I use up all my willpower before I even go inside.
The first time I went back — after literal months of not using my membership to this fancy gym frequented by influencers and men with muscles that look like they’re going to burst through their skin, gain their own autonomy, and start parading around the space hunting for free weights to pump on their own, now free from the skeletons of the humans who grew them and shaped them with iron and whey protein — the swipe-in mechanism had changed. (You’re right. That sentence is too long. I’m choosing to be meta about it and validate you rather than editing it. That’s right. I’m a rebel.)
This was humiliating, obviously. And not at all something perfectly understandable to ask about. Clearly, it was inexcusable and shameful that I didn’t know the new protocol. And it would have been ridiculous, and quite frankly rude, to ask the employees on the clock how the new system worked. This was signaled to me through the fact that the employees (gorgeous, ripped, probably 1M Instagram followers each) watched me try to swipe my QR code to enter through the gates, saw it didn’t work, made painful eye contact with me, and then said nothing to help. That’s how you know you’re a stupid idiot beyond redemption. It’s not your anxiety talking at that point. It’s cold, hard fact.
So there I am, in the starting gate, like a bucking bronco ready to launch my pride into the dirt of this rodeo cosplaying as a gym. I’m startled. I’m panicked. I’m whipping my mane and stomping my hooves. I’m surrounded on three sides. So I reverse out of the gate, feeling reeeeeally cool and chill about it. I look around sort of like “uuuuuuuhhhhhhh? ummmmmmm…” or maybe even “neeeeiiiighhhh???” to continue with the horse thing I was doing.
Still, for some reason (the fact that they probably definitely hate me and clearly see I need help and yet haven’t offered it) I don’t ask the employees at the desk for help. Instead, I stand oh-so-casually a few paces back from the mouth of the gates. Free enough to not have to move in reverse since I could practically hear the metaphorical BEEEEEP-BEEEEEP-BEEEEEP (this time I’m a truck, not a horse) of that first unbearable reversal. Finally, I see someone else come into the building.
She walks right up to the desk (incredibly brave), holds up her phone showcasing the QR code to the guy behind it, and he pulls the scanner from behind some secret ledge and SCANS HER IN!
Can you believe it? I looked around for prank show cameras, but the only plot line was my silly little life!
So I took a breath, marched up to the desk, and showed that pearly-smiled man my QR code. He scanned it pleasantly and said, “Would you like a towel?”
All of that is to say, Adam left yesterday for a long weekend in New York, and I didn’t make it to the gym. Let’s call it a rest day. Permission to bully me in the comments to get back at it.
ily bye,
Ariana