I've had a 24 Hour Nautilus membership for about 3 years from now but I honestly haven't been to the gym in about 2 years. What's really idiotic about that is that I have a month-to-month membership. So for 2 years I was paying $30 a month to them on my intentions to get back to the gym. Well I finally quit because I'm so poor right now, $30 is a hard hit to take. I went down to the gym to cancel and they said they couldn't cancel it there, I had to call a number. That sounds very easy, doesn't it? I tried calling this number several times and every time I called the recording says it will be about a 14-17 minute wait. First of all, "Wow, I guess a lot of people are canceling their memberships." No, I think I learned the real reason. I finally decided to hold and was subjected to terrible midi music interspersed with brainwashing tips on how to get the most out of my workout, how 24-Hour Nautilus is the best gym in the world, and promos for their special workout classes called "Group Sex"... oh wait, no it was called "Group EX". And literally the recording says "When you tell your friends you're going to a Group X workout class, you don't just SOUND cool, you ARE cool." I got to hear these repeating messages about 7-8 times each. I passed the time by playing Tetris; actually it's one of my highest scores and I had to pause it when the guy actually picked up the phone. Part of me wanted to say "Hey, you know what? I've changed my mind about canceling because I want to have Group Sex at the gym!" or "Man that brainwashing was the best workout I've had in years!" But I was afraid they would hang up on me.
Go ahead and call the number (866) 308-8179, and press 1 to "cancel your membership" and that will send you to the 15 minute brainwashing workout. It actually did make me sweat a little.
Okay, back to my best Tetris game ever. I've been trying to beat Courtney's high score for weeks!
brandon [email] said at 6:59 PM 03-01-2006: Group sex? Was it a gay gym? Gay gyms are awesome, because, as a het guy, there's no way in hell you're going to be attractive to the gym-rat homos and on top of that, the women that go there are gay themselves or assume you're gay. So, you can work out without being bothered ever. love gay gyms, not gay jims.
myriam [email] said at 7:01 PM 03-01-2006: Yeah, I've never found heterosexual men in gyms attractive; I just can't imagine that gay guys would either! Really, I bet het men in general are just invisible to those homos.
brandon [email] said at 7:04 PM 03-01-2006: Totally. And for the most part, Gay guys don't really give a shit about your numbers, they want to sculpt, and they're real nice about spotting. Plus, you can use hammerstrength machines around gay guys without feeling... gay.
brandon [email] said at 7:22 PM 03-01-2006: Ha. True, but I'll say this: I feel comfortable doing the thigh squeeze machine around the gays and not a het place, actually, I feel rushed, because they all want to use it, too. I used to question why non predominantly gay gyms even buy hammerstrength machines, but, I found, if you go in really early - I mean, before dawn - you'll find burly het-guys on them who think they're alone using them.
myriam [email] said at 7:29 PM 03-01-2006: Ha! The one where you bend down and grab handles right next to your ankles and then grunt and jerk upwards is probably my favorite totally incredibly non-faggoty heterosexual one.
The dudes bouncin' and rockin' on the calf-raise one always have this look of extreme concentration on their face... you know, in case you thought they were thinking about something ELSE, well then, you'd be mistaken, mister. They're there for the GYM.
neilbert said at 7:32 PM 03-01-2006: The gym I signed up for tried to fuck me. My contract had expired and coincidently the credit card that was attached to the membership had also expired at the same time. Well, I thought I had killed two birds with one stone. Well, two months later I got a letter from the gym stating how they were going to turn me over to a collection agency. Well, I called them and I said I wanted to cancel my membership as I had completed my contractual agreement and I was moving. They then started with the "You have to give us a month's notice before cancelling-crap" and that I owed them two months gym membership fees and most importantly, I COULD NOT CANCEL MY MEMBERSHIP UNLESS IT WAS PAID UP IN FULL. I told them that was racketeering and I was going to report them to the BBB and that their mens locker room smelled like foot concentrate.
