The Prudent Hedonist

I’ve previously mentioned my disdain for employees at my gym. I probably wasn’t being totally fair, because I was basing my opinion entirely on the sales monkey and the extremely sparkly personal trainer that he tried to hook me up with. I’m not kidding, the girl wears glitter blush, eyeshadow, and 2″ hoop earrings while she “trains” people. No thanks.

Truth be told however, the quality of human beings employed at my local LA Fitness can be expressed as various points on a spectrum. Salesnozzle and GlitterGirl make up the low end, the assortment of salesdrones-that-I-don’t-have-to-interact-with, teenagers whose only job seems to be to take my key fob to check me in, and the actual competent looking personal trainers crowd up the middle area in standard normal distribution style, and on the high end of the scale is Nice Dude.

I first noticed Nice Dude around the beginning of March. He’s older than the average employee by at least 15 years, seems to spend most of his time doing check-ins, but on occasion can be seen out on the floor actually fixing something, or at least seeming to be useful. I’ve always just figured he was the evening manager or somesuch. He usually has something nice to say on my way in, and asks how my workout was on my way out. He’s not hitting on me or being creepy like Salesdouche is every time I see him. He just seems to be a genuinely nice dude, which is an accomplishment, considering how much I generally hate the gym and anyone involved with it.

So where this is headed is that last Friday, I head into the gym a little flustered and already running behind my very tight schedule (those cookies weren’t gonna bake themselves, dammit), and Nice Dude decides to try to have a conversation with me. Which is fine, except that he starts it with: “So, what do you do in Building [insert the label of the building where my cubicle resides at HedoCorp]?”

“Um…” <-- this is me trying to remember if I had told them where I worked when I filled out the initial membership forms, and then realizing that I wouldn't have put the specific building on there anyways, and then extra realizing that the name that he used was from before the buildings were named in the aftermath of HedoCorp merging with EvenBiggerCorp a few years back, and then wondering how he has managed this feat of stalking and then realizing that I've been quiet for quite some time and maybe I should say something before finally managing to blurt out “I’m a software engineer”.

At which point there was another long pause before I ask “So, do you work at HedoCorp too?” Which he does, in the building across the street, though evidently he spends some time in my building and has seen me, and probably even said “Hi” and wondered why I never acknowledged the fact that we are acquainted with each other in our shadow lives.

What can I say? Middle-aged white guys must all look the same to me.