Today was a demonstration of how companies can drive their potential customers up the wall. A seemingly simple exercise of signing up for a new gym membership, turned into an early morning of nasty surprises & a frantic afternoon of re-arranging schedules, delayed lunch & raised blood pressure.
Those who know me will vouch for how little I enthuse about physical exertions, especially of the sit-ups/push-ups/benchpress/stomach crunch variety. I’ve always seen myself more of the “round is a shape” variety. But a growing desire to play football again (that’s my story & I’m sticking to it!), alongwith a “special corporate discount” logo on top made me take the plunge. Heck, I even got my wife all excited about the “combo deal”. She gets the same deal for just being married to someone eligible for a “corporate discount”; what a catch I am turning out to be!!
That was till today morning – the nice lady from the gym flew all the way from Hong Kong to sign us up. Wow, we must be some important corporate customers! That was till the forms came out – and the “filling up of particulars” started. Name, Gender, DOB, address, ID number, home phone, office phone, handphone, etc. And I was lucky enough to fill ‘em up twice, as a privilege for taking the “combo deal”. After that, came another form – for credit card payment. Here we go – name, address, credit card number, credit card type, expiry date, etc. And you guessed it – combo deal privilege kicked in again, do it all twice!! By this time, I musta burned more calories than I ate at breakfast – wow, this is a good deal already! Then the nice lady from HK proceeded to read out the T&C, one by one – after each one, I signed in a tiny box nex to it. 5 signatures later, I was done – with my form. It’s combo deal time – so here we go again. As co-signee for my better half, she reads the T&C again – one by one. I sign again – one by one. Till we reached the end, when she popped the clincher – I need ur wife to sign too in person!
Cut to afternoon – frantic MSN & SMS exchanges (speed typing burned 10 more calories!) trying to arrange for wife to meet nice lady from HK. Meeting has to be interrupted, lunch can happen later (more calories lost!), take the train to gym office – the possibilities are flying thick & fast. Finally, she gets the signature she wanted – all done! Where’s the water cooler & the shower?
And then I sat back to wonder – these gym clubs must be really clever to have found a way to get me sweating even before I hit the gym. Else, I’d have just stayed on my lazy butt while they signed me up with just my name, credit card details & ID proof. The “doing it twice” part was my favourite – instead of just stamping my wife’s id proof as “married to corporate discount”.
I can’t wait to see the further tricks up their sleeve – submit a form in triplicate for getting a towel?
Posted by narayananrajgopalan (Naari) 
