A job offer?
Warning: rambling ahead!
I may have gotten a job. Last week I responded to an ad for a gym hiring management trainees. I had been trying to avoid the gym scene, but in a moment of desperation I grabbed my resume and ran right over. I met with the guy, who is going to be running the gym. He has been quite successful with other gyms across the country. We talked for over an hour. His ideas interest me. I think I could learn a lot from working with him. In fact, I think I learned a few things just from our conversation last week.
He started to tell me about the position of a personal training director. The job sounds very interesting to me. I would have the opportunity to gain management experience, mentor trainers (probably young trainers), and hopefully gain some business sense. He never came out and said “Alicia, you’re hired!”. But by the end of our conversation he was no longer saying “The p.t. director will do this”, he was saying “You will do this”. So, I got the impression that he wants me to be his p.t. director.
There is a lot about this job that interests me, that I think would be good for me, yet, there is also a couple things that make me feel slightly uncomfortable.
The good stuff: I think this job could really stretch me to a better professional in the fitness industry. I want a job that will help me move forward, not stand still. I want to grow. I want to learn. I want to have good experiences. I think I could find all of that in this job.
Now for the stuff I don’t feel so comfortable with. First, the gym is about 25-30 minutes away. This may seem a little petty. But I hated driving 30 mins to my last gym. Adding an hour of travel time onto a long day doesn’t make me happy. And I’m certain that this job will require long days. Life in Maryland was so disconnected. I often felt like I was living multiple lives. I had my Dan life in Owings Mills, BSW life in the city, and college life in Towson…rarely did these lives cross paths. I hated that because it made the world feel too big and too lonely. I would love to have a connected life here in Richmond. I want to see my neighbors at my place of work, I want to run into my co-workers at the neighborhood bar/coffee shop. I want the people that I’m getting to know to be involved in more than one part of my life. Anyway, I’m scared of that big disconnect happening if I work half an hour away from home.
On to the next issue that I’m not so comfortable with. The guy in charge seems like a very wise businessman. He has had great success in the industry and I am very interested in most of his ideas. However, I don’t agree with everything he said. Mainly how he chooses to “discipline” employees. His methods include forcing the employee to clean the gym or parking lot, or to do push-ups. Yeah, if you’re wondering he was in the military. There is no way I will ever feel comfortable punishing someone physically. Looking back to high school sports I remember we often had to run extra sprints for losing a game, goofing off during practice or whatever. I didn’t think much about it then. But looking back I hate the idea of using running as punishment. There has to be an alternative, especially in this industry where we are challenged with trying to help others obtain a healthy life through exercise, how can we do that if we use physical activity as a punishment? We are then equating physcial activity with something negative. Right now I don’t have an alternate solution. I don’t have another punishment that could replace push-ups. And I don’t really want to come up with one. I want a better way of managing a staff.
So, that is my recent employment dilemma. Thanks for letting me working some of it out on here.
