Gym Cleaning

[bjarvis]

On weekends and holidays, I tend to be at the gym for 8am opening. I like to get my workout done so I can move on with the rest of the day, the boys may not be active at that hour so I get more waking time with them later in the day, and I can beat most of the crowds to the weight floor and not have to interrupt my routine for equipment to be available.

The downside of being there very early is that you are faced with the mess from the night before:

Dumbbells everywhere, not to mention discarded water bottles, tissues, hand towels, etc.. And because it is my role & purpose in life to bring order to a chaotic universe, I put everything back where it should be.

Part of it is to resist the forces of chaos, part of it is for my own safety so I don't trip over someone else's unracked weights. A huge part though is empathy for other gym users: there's nothing more frustrating than knowing there should be plenty of 15lb or 20lb dumbbells around but none of them are in the racks or in obvious use by anyone else. A general walk around the entire floor will find the missing pieces laying about in odd corners of the weight floor, the yoga studio, the spin class, the basketball court, the strairwell, the fire escapes and, interstingly, the elevator. I collect them all and bring them back to the racks where they belong.

The staff are no doubt underpaid --even the trainers are paid a pittance-- but I would think the night crew should be walking through the gym to remove forgotten items from the equipment and clean up the obvious garbage. I don't expect them to heft around 125 lb dumbbells, but there's no excuse for not at least moving the 5 lb ones.

Comments

[apparentparadox]

I do the same thing, although my gym is much smaller & less frequented, so there generally isn't much to put away. I think of it as part of my work-out routine to carry weights from one part of the gym to another. I haven't gotten to the point where I'm willing to do lunges, though.