Dear Manager on Vacation
A letter I did not choose to write
Free markets, like many things in life, are a two-sided coin.
On the positive side, we get miraculous innovation. Space travel. Drip irrigation. Electric toothbrushes. Profit incentives can inspire creativity that changes the course of humanity.
I encountered the other side of the free market coin yesterday, the one that creates conditions in which companies are compelled by that same profit incentive to make life obnoxiously difficult.
As I walked with my girlfriend through the parking lot of Gold’s Gym to cancel my membership, we shared horror stories about our past attempts to break up with our gyms. I told her about how the cancellation of my LA Fitness membership last year required four visits to three different locations. Their policy was that, in order to cancel your membership, you had to visit a physical location and speak with a manager, the only person who had been vested with the power to formally cut ties with the gym’s customers.
This round with Gold’s was shaping up similarly. We had originally gone to another location, but we were told that, even though my membership allowed me to work out at any Gold’s Gym facility across the country, I had to cancel the membership at the location at which I had signed up. Awesome.
We walked into our second Gold’s in as many hours and saw two kids behind the front desk laughing at something on one of their phones. I told them I needed to cancel my membership, which caused the laughter to give way to a pained grimace and a deep sigh. I was in for another treat.
“Yeah, so…unfortunately the manager is the only person who can cancel memberships, and he’s on vacation for the next two weeks…”
Obscenities flew out of my mouth before I had time to run them through any kind of filter.
“So I can’t cancel today? I have to come back in two weeks and hope that this person is here?”
“Oh no, you can write a letter.”
Finding that to be a strange choice of words, I asked for clarification. “You mean send an email?”
“No, like…a letter. We have paper and pen if you need it.”
Ah. Of course.
Unfortunately for the employees of the Gold’s Gym on Cary Street, I had a surplus of both time and Greek anger. I sat down at a round table near the free weight section and my hand started scribbling like the arm of a polygraph machine.
Dear Manager on Vacation,
I am writing—by hand, in 2023—to cancel my membership at Gold’s.
The fact that you make it this difficult to cancel a membership—that instead of either of the two employees sitting at the front desk with nothing to do being able to cancel it, or me being able to log in to a simple online portal, or being able to send you an email—that, to cancel a membership when you’re not physically present, Manager on Vacation, I have to, in the year 2023, a year in which we have language learning models cable of drafting complex legal agreements in milliseconds and in which we are able to grow meat in a lab, write a fucking HAND-WRITTEN LETTER (and then mail it to the building I’m currently sitting in, which is your gym)—is laughably, impossibly, excruciatingly absurd.
So with that said, here’s your stupid letter. You require a reason for leaving; mine was originally that I found a better, cheaper gym (shocker), but, now, you can note in my file—which I assume is digital and allows you to cancel my membership with the click of a button—that my reason for leaving is your very awesome, high-tech cancellation process.
Please cancel this membership as of today, July 18, 2023.
“It’s a bit…long,” I warned the kids as I handed them the letter.
They laughed. We commiserated for a bit about the ridiculous shit that big companies do before I headed out to start my new life, finally free from the burden of this toxic gym relationship.
To be fair, the whole free market thing also played a large part in making it possible for me to quit my job and buy a business and start writing and thus end up with the free time, the linguistic tools, and the audacity to write letters like this. Two-sided coin, indeed.
Did they reply? Were you finally free??
P.S. I don't understand how this is legal...
Remind me to never, ever join a gym! This is why the free market works best with a good system of regulations; otherwise abuses tend to happen when customers don't have good information and can't easily move their business from one competitor to another. A rule requiring one-click cancellation was recently being discussed at the FTC. For my part, I've decided never to sign up for anything again if I can't cancel it with a click of a button (which is why I am not a Wall Street Journal subscriber, for example, even though I would gladly pay for their reporting).