Little Fishy

So my child who used to be water phobic is now so in love with swimming, I can't keep him out of the pool.  He's a backstroking, front crawling, somersaulting fool. 

Which was all perfectly great until we went to the health club on Saturday.  And that's where my story gets good.  (I'm going to try to keep the "and then she saids" to a minimum.)

We entered the health club and checked in like always.  The woman checking us in calls another woman over and points at something on the screen.  I'm then told, in a pretty rude tone, that I'm violating policy and owe $10 to bring in a guest and owe $10 for each time we'd previously come to the club.  I explained that we're members, and my child is enrolled in private swimming lessons.  She continued to quote policies to me, getting louder and louder, as I was getting more and more confused as to why we owed $10.  Finally, she said she'd "let it pass this time, but if member services found out she'd be in big trouble," and turned her back to me when I informed her that she was going to be in bigger trouble when member services found out why I was canceling my membership.

I was so angry, I swear the pool water boiled for the hour that I was in it.  So as soon as we got home, I fired off an email to the club.  (If there's one thing I can do well, it's write a well-crafted screw you email.)

I got a message a few hours later from their headquarters with huge apologies for their behavior.  The next day I actually spoke to him.  The corporate guy apologized again and went on to tell me that it never should have happened, and they have been clearly spoken to so it doesn't happen again to another member.  I have to say, he handled it really well.  And as it turns out, C-man wasn't on my membership with a health waiver.  Something I was ignorant and totally in the wrong about, but truly would have had no way of knowing that never got added.  And get this, it's only $12.50 per month to have him on it.  So the evil screamer lady wanted to charge me $10 per time, when all it would have taken was for her to politely inform me that I needed to add C-man to the membership for $12.50 a month.  She could have been a hero for the day with a membership upgrade.  Instead, she got nasty.

I'm a total weenie in situations like this.  Give me crappy food? I say it's fine and make a peanut butter sandwich when I get home.  But lately, I'm been a little better about standing up for myself.  And American TV, the Village of Bayside and now the WAC have all had the pleasure of seeing the "new me".  And I've got the next 3 months of a free health club membership to prove it.