running with thoughtcrimes

She should’ve just listened to Sophocles. Or perhaps, she should’ve just heeded her mother’s text message asking her to think things through. But she didn’t. And now some Greek philosopher’s words come back to bite her in the “buh-hind” with haunting precision, “Quick decisions are unsafe decisions.”

Right, if only she used her brains for what they were for! But alas, life has a cruel sense of humor. She should’ve known better.

Some three months ago, after quitting a job that had “H” fermenting in recorded calls and a distorted body clock for five months, a reckless youth who we shall call “H”, because she prefers anonymity (out of a wounded pride), decided to revolutionize herself. She was enrolling herself in a gym. A thought bubble expands above her head with comic-book perfection, in images of “H” dropping calorie by calorie, with vengeance, that left our heroine with a giddy feeling – something like hope. 

So “H” picked up the local telephone directory, flipped through the yellow pages, and finally zeroed in on that tag-line, “Where fitness comes first.”

The line was the clincher. It was just what she needed.

And the room illuminated with a saturated rose-colored glow. Who would’ve thought of it as an omen for the unfortunate things to come?

She was greeted by an account agent named May, who looked like a fourteen year old donning her mother’s business suit. She had the deceiving demeanor of a frail and struggling white collar earner guising the cunning linguistic acrobatics of Don King as a salesman that made a willing fool out of “H”; and had her enrolling for a 12-month contract at the end.

When asked if contracted members could choose to discontinue a contract, May casually said that quitting is not a problem, we would just have to inform the club a month before the cancellation takes effect. A swipe of a card and a swish of ink on paper sealed the fitness deal. It was that easy, it had been too easy.

Fast tracking to a month after that meeting, we see “H” unhappy with her stay at the gym. It was lonely and boring, running stationary on a treadmill is not as fun as it looks in the movies. And dancing in a class full of forty-something strangers is not really a rad time. Furthermore, “H” soon finds out that the “helpful personal trainers” were not so helpful at all without paying them at least Php760 a day. So naturally, gym time became a down time for “H”. She wanted to quit.

And here lies the rub.

When “H” informed the gym administration office (a calendar month before) that she was cancelling her contract, she was told that:

1) She cannot cancel her account because she must either find a “replacement member” *what?* or…

3) Pay, in what is called “liquidation damages” (fancy legal mumbo-jumbo), for the remaining months of her membership term (that’s Php 2,190 x 11 months)!

4) Or she could just freeze her account and pay 30-50 percent of her monthly due, for the rest of the membership term.

Doomed. Stupefied. Quitting this gym seemed harder than quitting drinking or quitting Johnny Depp. At least you would’nt have to break the bank to pay for “liquidated damages” to quit the two. Either way, “H” would still have to spend money. She ended up being financially held hostage all because she wanted to quit.

So much for a hassle free world in a gym where “fitness comes first”. If she had known, “H” would’ve scribbled a note below the tag-line in a red pen marker: “But money comes ‘firster’…or ‘firstest’.”

“H” now works her back off to pay for the bills, and has sworn off the entire it’s-so-friggin’-cool-to-be-spontaneous delusion. She has learned her lessons well, and it cost her some extra 5Gs or more. And may succesfully lose the pounds to stressing over the hefty portion of a month’s salary that gets lost to credit card bills.

And what about May and her lying ways? Well, suffice it to say that she flies low under “H’s” radar since then. That, and the prospect of the gym’s maintenance crew finding her buried under a pile of dumbbells and free weights one day.

But of course, that would be just too inhumane, really.