A Trendy Exercise Class Turned Me into an Old Man
The class itself was fine. The relentless text messages were out of control.
Nothing has ever made me feel as old as the Trendy Exercise class I recently attended. It wasn’t the exercises themselves, which involved little squats and wrestling a plastic tube around my thighs. Those were fine. It was everything surrounding the class, like the six text messages, four emails, and one voicemail I received before the class. I can certainly be forgetful at times, but I don’t need eleven reminders to do anything. Even if I were Drew Barrymore’s character in 50 First Dates, I wouldn't have needed that many reminders (maybe just a well-placed sticky note).
“You sound like an old man,” my husband informed me when I grumbled about the notifications blowing up my phone – and yes, I for sure did. But I’m not into businesses contacting me on my phone in general. It’s why I’m always cagey about giving out my phone number. I nearly shut down a local clothing chain when I declined to give my phone number in exchange for the ability to buy a blouse. I caused a situation at a prescription eyeglasses place when they kept insisting they needed to look me up in their system by my phone number so I could buy prescriptionless sunglasses. I’d never purchased anything from there before, so I was certain I wasn’t in the system, and thus began our never-ending, circular conversation.
It’s not the fault of the people working at registers, obviously. As a teenager, I worked as a cashier at a movie theater in town. At that job, I was tasked with “upselling,” which was exponentially more annoying than asking for a phone number. We were trained to ask everyone who requested a small pop if they’d like a medium, medium if they’d like a large, and so on. (Technically, we were threatened to upsell. We were told undercover people might go through the line at any time to make sure we were actually doing it. I now wonder if those were fictional characters.) At least that interaction only lasted seconds, though. I refuse to give a business permission to text me later, whenever they feel like chatting about that shirt I bought.
Devin (my spouse) jumps to quiet his phone the moment he gets a notification like he’s comforting a baby. It’s clear who’s in charge in that relationship. I like to have a more distant relationship with my technology. I prefer to be a little withholding – neglecting, even.
I went to the exercise class – a free trial session – despite my mild annoyance. When I arrived, I was asked to fill out a form with detailed questions about my fitness regimen and goals. My fitness goals are best described as “continue to be able to eat doughnuts,” but that answer didn’t seem to match the energy of the form, which requested a lot of personal details. One question asked whether my family supports my fitness goals, and I think they most certainly do, as they also enjoy eating doughnuts.
After a brief explanation about the concept of the exercise regimen, we began. I was immediately blasted with loud music – or at least beats. The word “music” feels generous. Very loud music in a small space makes my entire brain shut down, and my instinct was to hunker into the fetal position, which was not an approved exercise move.
“I can’t hear you,” I told the instructor as she tried to tell me how to move correctly. She then gently and silently re-positioned me while “unce unce unce” shook the floor. It was like being at a club with someone manually correcting my dancing.
I sound like my parents, who choose restaurants based on noise volume and noise volume alone. This class, which was supposed to improve my vitality, aged me 30 years. I don’t think the health benefits of the squats balanced out the negative effects of my curmudgeonly attitude.
I know that getting overly personal with customers is the modern business model. I respect that getting anyone’s attention for any amount of time is a ridiculously hard task nowadays. But protecting your own attention span – such as by ignoring your phone – is equally hard in this era. I can’t fault any business for doing what they need to do, but I’m striving for a little peace and quiet.
“How do you feel today?” the class instructor asked via voicemail the next day. About 97, thanks. I couldn’t answer right away, which was probably a good thing. The voicemail had been sent directly to my email, thanks to the fact that I provided my Google Voice number and not my actual phone number. Not long ago, my Google account sent me several stern warnings letting me know that my Google Voice number would no longer be able to ring through to my cell phone due to an out-of-date verification. I did nothing to rectify that problem. Instead, ever so peacefully, I let it disconnect.