So – remember that time a couple weeks ago, when I was so proud of myself because I’d signed up for the gym, and actually intended to go? Well – it didn’t work out as planned. Mainly because something ridiculous happened.
On my second visit to the new gym, I went with my sister. As we were leaving the house, I offered to grab the lock off my gym bag, but she said we wouldn’t need it, since she “never” locked her things in the locker.
Right there – you know this story isn’t fun.
When we got to the gym we put our purses into a locker, then went to work out. After about 45 minutes (because I was whiny and lazy) we went back into the locker room and noticed that the locker we had put our things in was slightly opened. We both stopped in our tracks and stared. I finally started walking toward it, trying to reassure myself that no one would steal something from the local gym full of people from my town and the town next-door. Someone probably just opened the locker to see if it was empty, saw it was occupied, and didn’t shut it all the way. Right?
Wrong. When we got to the locker, both of our purses were missing. The purse I had brought with me was my black leather Coach tote bag, and contained: my car keys (and since I had driven my car to the gym, theoretically my car could be missing as well), my Ray-Bans, my Coach wallet, my passport (I recently started a new job, and needed my passport for my paperwork and just never took it out of my bag), my checkbook, and my medications (which for some reason struck me as the most important thing). I instantly freaked out, and rushed out to the front desk. The front desk lady asked us if we’d checked all of the lockers, and I said we hadn’t, so the three of us (my sister, the front desk lady, and myself) went back into the locker room to start opening the lockers. Other women in the locker room joined in the search, but our bags were no where to be found.
While my sister went back to the front desk with the lady to file a complaint, I took my iPhone (which I thankfully had kept with me while I was working out) and called the police station to file a police report. Since the gym was pretty loud (and so was the main part of the locker room), I made the call from the back of the room where the toilet stalls are located.
From there, I called the police station and explained that my purse and my sister’s purse had been stolen from the locker room of the gym, and that I wanted to file a report. I described the purses and the value of each (all told, just my purse and it’s contents were worth $700… not to mention if my car got stolen from the lot!). I then walked out of the locker room to meet my sister at the desk.
About one minute later, an older lady walked out of the locker room and came up to me at the front desk. “Excuse me,” she said, “I don’t want to cause any trouble, but that girl behind you – the one texting – she was in a bathroom stall when you were on the phone with the police, and when you hung up she ran from there like a bat out of hell. I’m not saying she had anything to do with your missing purse but…” she trailed off. I had noticed the girl before, but it didn’t seem strange to me that a teenage girl would be texting at the gym while standing near the desk – I just assumed she was waiting for her ride to get there, or waiting for a friend to join her. And quite frankly, it would have been more awkward if a teenage girl had just been standing there, not texting or using her cell phone, don’t you think?
While I called the police to tell them that someone had seen “the suspect,” and could they please get here quicker, the front desk lady has the girl swipe her membership card again (watching her try to hatch a plan to ask the girl for her card was quite amusing), and my sister went to check the toilet stalls.
Low and behold – there were our purses. Both opened, with things haphazardly strewn about, but with nothing missing except our cash (unfortunately for the thief, between my sister and I we only had $4 in cash on us).
When the police arrived (three of them!), they took a statement from me, and spoke with the girl. I’m not sure what happened with her because when we left they were still all speaking with her and a friend of hers, however the police officer that I gave my statement to said that at least one time per week, the police were called to that gym to investigate car break-ins and thefts. He said that recently there had been four thefts in one week!
That evening, upon the advice of a friend, I cancelled my credit cards. Even though they weren’t stolen, she told me that something similar happened to her father, and the thief had taken pictures of her fathers license and credit cards and then racked up quite a bit of money doing some online shopping. The next morning, I also cancelled my gym membership. I hadn’t really loved the gym the first time I went (the people were kind of sketchy, and the gym itself wasn’t very clean and smelled very strongly of B.O.), but having my things stolen was the icing on the cake. I made sure to relay all of those points to the lady at the call center when I cancelled.
So – the moral of the story? Always lock your things up at the gym. And if the gym is super gross and smelly, and the people are gross and weird – you probably shouldn’t join, even if they do have free classes included in your $20/month membership.