Anytime Fitness, anyhow fitness?

ANYTIME FITNESS REVIEW

I just had a terrible customer experience with anytimefitness, and I felt obligated to make their poor service quality and sneaky sales tactics known.

If you haven’t heard of anytimefitness, they are a 24-hour gym global franchise that has sprouted many branches in Singapore. One of the more recent ones was anytimefitness @ nex, which is conveniently located near my house. I didn’t consider working out there previously as I had an existing EnergyOne membership which was considerably cheaper.

With my recent career move, my new workplace meant my usual EnergyOne gym wasn’t convenient anymore. Thus, I was looking out for a gym to sign my life away to sign up for a new membership. One of my friends was free to workout with me, and he recommended that I try out anytimefitness, where he had a membership. He linked me a URL to sign up for a free trial (it used to say 3 days) :

Note the bolded words especially – ‘no obligation’ it says. Try to remember the phrase ‘No obligation free trial’ as you progress through this post.

I keyed in my details, and I received an email shortly:

‘Free, no obligation, 3-day trial’. Sounds good so far. I tried calling the number provided but no one picked up. I dropped them an email instead, which was replied rather promptly.

So far so good. On the day (8^th Jun 15), I went to the gym ahead of my friend, and wasn’t sure where to go when I entered the gym. The staff was sitting in the glass office but was busy on the phone, so I sat down at the couches, planning to wait for my friend to arrive to proceed.

I got a little engaged using my phone and browsing Facebook and stuff, and was waiting around for about 10 minutes at the couch and my friend wasn’t there yet. At that moment, the Australian staff (let’s call him Mr Bull) came out of the office, shot me a glare and did the finger hooking gesture you use to beckon a dog to come to you.

Here doggy!

I was slightly taken aback by the rude gesture, but realised I probably should have gone in after his phone call ended, so maybe he was upset that I just walked in. Alright, no issues, I walked in and quickly opened with “Hi, I signed up for a free trial, do I activate it with you?”

Mr Bull shot me another quick glance and probably realised his earlier assessment of ‘unwanted intruder’ was inaccurate, and his face changed slightly and he beckoned me to sit down to ‘discuss’.

I was a little confused as to what he wanted to discuss. I figured he was going to try to sell me the membership, though advertised as a free trial with ‘no obligations’. That's fine, it's part of his job as sales. 

[All quotes here are reproduced ad verbatim to the best of my memory]

Mr Bull: “Mate, I just got an email this morning, there is no more 3 day pass, the trials are all one day now.”

(his constant usage of ‘mate’ was what led to my deduction that he’s Australian)

“Oh… ok sure”. That’s a bummer, I had planned to come on Monday and Wed. Why would they still email me just the previous day that I could go for a 3-day trial? Let's just give him the benefit of a doubt that this is not a bait and switch but company policy literally changed on that morning. 
(Edit: their website now puts 1 day, as in my screenshot above, so I guess the policy really just changed) 
Ok fine, I can try out the place for a day then.

Mr Bull: “So how this works is, you have to put down a deposit of $68… - “

My ability to pay attention to the remainder of his sentence was impaired by this sudden requirement. What? I have to pay $68? I recovered quickly to catch the rest of his explanation, that it was because he would give me one of their purple tracker devices, so the money was a deposit in case I didn’t return that device. This new piece of information is annoying and should have been mentioned upfront in the email, but seems fair. I didn’t have $68 on me, and had to borrow from my friend. Well, unpleasant already, but not too bad, right?

No. He carried on by saying that if I did not return the device, they would assume I want to sign up and I would lapse into a one-month membership immediately, and I would be charged for that (at something like $148/month I can’t remember).

[Try out our gym, and we will automatically sign you up even if you don’t want to! Yay!]

Woah woah woah hold it. I am just here to try out the facilities, to see if it’s a nice place to workout, to see if it’s convenient to come here everyday after work or before work. I don’t want to sign into a pseudo membership immediately with a stupid bait and switch sales tactic! What happened to the ‘no obligations’?!

I tried to clarify the details – so I would pay the deposit, and if I returned the device after my workout, I would get my deposit back? He responded by giving me an accusing, long hard stare, for a good 10 seconds. I’m not sure what he was trying to do here, intimidate me or size me up or something, but I just kept his gaze, and gave a questioning shrug. What? After 10 awkward seconds, he finally spoke.

Mr Bull: “These trial passes, they are limited mate. I can’t just be giving them up to everyone. If I give you one, I am depriving someone else of their slot you know that mate? Are you serious about signing up or not? If you sign up now, we are having a sales promotion, we can waive the administration fee.”

This made me pissed because firstly, why do I need to be ‘serious about signing up’ when I am just TRYING out the damn place? Secondly, why are the trial passes even limited? That made no sense to me. If there was a capacity issue, I’d understand, but the place was pretty empty – I think there were less than 10 people in the whole gym at that point of time. Thirdly, this whole bait and switch tactic just felt quite unethical so I was annoyed.

I tried to respond calmly and sensibly, explaining that yes, I was interested in eventually signing up, but I couldn’t decide then, as my work had not started. I also wanted to try out FitnessFirst (I didn’t tell him this) and compare the two, as there is a FF very near my workplace.

This was followed by another intense 10 second staring contest. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat as Mr FingerBeckoner continued his creepy silent gaze. Why is he so weird? He finally spoke after he won the staring contest (I glanced out to see if there was anyone paying attention to this strange interaction and also to see where my friend was).

Mr Bull: “Look mate, if you aren’t going to sign up, I’m not going to give you the trial pass mate. You can train with your mate, but I will charge you the walk-in rate of $34. Oh wait, since you are here with him, I’ll give you 50% off the walk-in rate.”

???

So now I was being rejected for a “NO OBLIGATIONS FREE TRIAL” because I apparently need to be very obligated to get the trial. And I’m not familiar with commercial rates, but only knowing Energyone’s walk-in rate of $5.30/$10.70, $34 sounded exorbitant.

I tried to persuade him to just let me have the trial, but this was met with further accusing dirty looks, and he seemed to have made the assessment that I wasn’t a worthy ‘trial-er’, and continued:

Mr Bull: “No mate, you just want to work out for free. These passes are for those who are serious mate. There is a limited number. I’m not going to give you one. You can pay the walk-in rate, at 50%. If you do sign up in the next 2 weeks, I can factor in the $17.”

I was getting very annoyed with his condescending tone and the false promise of a ‘no obligations free trial’. If I wasn’t working out with my friend, I would have just walked out then I think. But because I didn’t want to abandon my friend, I decided to succumb to Mr Bull’s pushy and annoying demands, and just pay the $17.

Is this standard industry practice for gyms – to offer a ‘free’ trial to get people to come down, then make them sign up for stuff and refuse them a trial when they have already came down if they are assessed as ‘not serious’? Just wanted to know if I was treated unfairly or if this was standard practice. Whatever it is, Mr Bull just came across as obnoxious and condescending the whole time. It was a terrible customer experience.

Did you have a bad customer service experience at anytimefitness nex too? Leave your reviews of anytimefitness in the comments below! 

UPDATE (10 Jun)  : I posted on the anytimefitness nex Facebook page, but it just got deleted within 24h and I am blocked. Guess they want to silence this... 

UPDATE (12 Jun) : I wrote a part 2, which can be found here.

Lessons for a Fresh Graduate

Have you recently graduated from school / university? Are you thinking about what career path to go down? Can't figure out what job to try for? Are you in your first job but looking to move out?

In the past year, I have learnt many things that I hope to share with people who are going through similar situations. Hopefully, you learn from my mistakes and not commit the same errors I made.


1. Money is a strong but flawed motivator

I still remember why I was motivated to work at MIN D E F when I was still in school - I knew they were the highest paying government organisation, so I set my sights on them. When the offer came, I instinctively knew I shouldn't take it - the location was retarded (it takes 3hours total for me to go to and fro work), the work didn't sound that exciting - but I tried to rationalise why I should take it. And eventually I did. That was a mistake.

I didn't enjoy what I was doing, and despite the high salary, I was bored to death. I kept feeling uncomfortable thinking about my long-term career, knowing that I was going nowhere. I wasn't learning anything new, and I wasn't doing things that I enjoyed. I looked forward to 5.30/6PM everyday, and found no meaning in my work.

Having a lot of money is never bad, but money shouldn't be your primary motivator. A high starting pay is pointless in the grand scheme of things. Heck, even a high pay is pointless.

There is a simple concept in Psychology called the hedonic treadmill. The gist is that while we may experience blips of significant happiness (e.g. you got a huge raise), we eventually return to a baseline level of happiness as we adapt to our new situation. Thus, let's say I earned $3000 now, and I got a pay raise to $4000. I'm ecstatic! But then I soon figure out how to 'live the lifestyle of a $4000 income person' and I won't feel considerably happier than before. You can't fight it. It is only human.

2. Find an industry that makes you curious.

I had a conversation with a wise friend Jiamin who shared why she enjoyed her job, and one recurring line that kept appearing in what she said was this: 'You have to be curious about your industry'.

Now I have to clarify that an industry and a job are two different things. It may seem obvious, but I think people (including myself) may conflate the two sometimes. I used to think 'I want to find a job that is interesting', but I realised this is too micro a level to start thinking from. There are literally THOUSANDS of jobs out there and it's really difficult to scroll through all of them to figure out what you want to do.

A better starting point is to think 'What industry interests me?' Some examples could be Fashion, Travel, Sports, Healthcare, This is important as when you are in an industry you have a genuine, personal interest in, you are going to be more willing to invest time and effort to find out more, to learn more, to work harder, and to perform better. When you have narrowed down the industry, then you can ask the next question : 'What skills / experiences do I have that will allow me to work in this industry?'. And with that, you can start narrowing down companies and jobs to apply for.

3. Timing is very important.

Life is about doing the right thing at the right time. Some of life's biggest success stories were of people who got 'lucky' and made the right decisions at the right time. If they had done what they did at any other time, they wouldn't have had the same success as they had.

When hunting for a new job from Feb - May this year, I had very little luck finding anything that interested me. There just weren't things that caught my eye. Sometimes, when you want to find a job, it may not be the right timing for you and there aren't those windows of opportunity for you to capitalize on. Thus, if you are planning to find a new job, I'd advise you to start early, and keep your eyes open. Opportunities come rarely, and you need to seize them when they come.

For me, I had a 'job search' routine that I performed weekly, where I would browse a fix set of job sites and comb through for any potential new jobs, exploring with different sets of keywords. This wasn't really working after some time, so I decided to try a different job portal. I happened to see a job opening for my current company then - one that was up since April (this was in May). I decided to apply for it.
I think a combination of factors led to a very quick selection process - the company was expanding into this sector, they were trying to fill this position for a while, and I kinda pressed them to expedite my process (citing reasons like I had other interviews / potential offers).

If I had applied earlier, maybe they would have weighed me against other potential applicants and found me unsuitable. If I had applied later, maybe they would have found other better applicants. Who knows? I think what I took out of this was that you must not be afraid to try new methods, and be decisive about what you want, and take advantage of windows of opportunity.


4, Real goals versus lazy goals

If you were to ask me to describe my ideal job a year ago, I would have said something like this: " A stable, well-paying job that gives me time to spend time with my family and do my own things"

It took me several months to learn and realise this, but this was a lazy goal. In essence, I didn't want to work hard. I wanted free time. I wanted leisure time. I wanted to go to the gym, play my computer games, spend time with my gf. I didn't want to work hard. I wanted to be lazy.

The funny thing was I actually had my ideal job, if the above descriptor was all I wanted. My job was a government job, paying me way above the median salary for fresh graduates, and I had time to gym often and do my own things. It was only when I considered the long-term implications of having such a job - no personal growth, no skills acquired, no successful career- that I realised I was stuck in a rut and I needed to wake up. I needed to stop being lazy. Having all those things are good in the short run, but extremely detrimental in the long run. I felt little sense of accomplishment nor mastery.I would deeply regret it if I looked back 5 years later and I realised I have wasted 5 years of my life.

Of course, there is an assumption here that you are not genuinely happy and comfortable with being a lazy sloth doing nothing. But I'd like to think that most people of my generation desire a sense of accomplishment. Most people want to feel like they've done something with their lives. Even if the motivation to spend time with your family is one of your key desires/pursuits in life, I believe many want more than just that.

You spend 1/3 of your day at your job. That's a huge amount of time. In fact, most people spend more hours on their job than on their family/friends (excluding weekends). And I'm talking about the average person, not a 80 hour workweek doctor or something. Thus, you need to have real goals for your career, otherwise you're shortchanging yourself. A big part of your life will be empty and directionless and purposeless.

Think of what gives you meaning in life. What do you get satisfaction doing? What do you enjoy doing? How can this be translated into a career? Make some real goals. And work towards them.

Just to reinforce and end off this section with a personal example.... I enjoy gaming. I've played games since young, and I would really like to work in the gaming industry. I also enjoy having a comfortable life with my gf/wife/family. Thus I need to do something that would have long term prospects for me to get a well-paying job. Simply doing something like games management/operations/community management is very attractive to me, but doesn't seem like it will be good for me long term nor transferable to other jobs. Thus, I decided on a marketing position, which will equip me with many useful skills for LIFE. If I eventually move to another industry, or move to another type of job in the gaming industry, I know that my skills/experience acquired in this position will be very useful.

--

That's all folks! Have any questions? Feel free to drop me an email at atqhteo [at] gmail [dot] com. I reply them fairly quickly! :)

SNL Retreat 2015 Games Explained

I planned a mass escape game for SNL retreat which turned out better received than I expected. After the games, I realised I didn't do a debrief for every puzzle and because groups generally split and delegated work, not everyone knew what every puzzle was or how to solve them. I shall run through each puzzle in this post, and also share a bit about my thought process in designing each puzzle.


Overall Concept
I knew I wanted to make a puzzle-centric game, but I was worried that not everyone might like / appreciate puzzles. I decided to aim for a balance with some tasks ('Objectives') and puzzles, so that there is a greater team-bonding element as well. The trick was then how to weave both together in a coherent and understandable way without being too confusing, and also have some sort of storyline to anchor it. The result is what you guys played :)



#1 - Photograph
This word was given for completing the wefie task from any GM.

#2 - GuyFawkesDay (Difficulty: 1/5)
The phrase 'Remember, remember, the fifth of November, the gunpowder, treason and plot' was written, one word on each poker card, on the whole suit of hearts. If you keyed in this phrase into Google, one of the first results is the Wiki pages to 'Guy Fawkes Night', and if you clicked on it, the first line said '... also known as Guy Fawkes Day'.

The testers actually had some problem with this one, with guesses like Vforvendetta or being fixated on Guy Fawkes Night. But I think most groups had no problems with this, and quickly found the answer when they realised they had to fit the number of boxes provided.

#3 - Sound (Difficulty: 1.5/5)
This riddle was found in the starter pack:

My first is like a donkey
My second is a shape
My third is a magnet
My fourth inverts the third
My last is a musical note.
Together, I bounce off walls
Together, I move in waves

It can be solved two ways - the last 2 lines kind of hints at 'sound' being the answer, since it travels in waves and bounces off walls. The more straightforward one would be to solve each line:
First - like a donkey - ass (s)
Second - a shape - a circle (o) [This is a little harder]
Third - is a magnet - U shape (u)
Fourth - inverts the U (n)
Last - Musical note - a crotchet (d)

#4 - Morse (Difficulty: 1/5)
Stuck on a wall was a piece of paper

#4 .-- .... .- - / .-.. .- -. --. ..- .- --. . / .. ... / - .... .. ... ..--..

If you googled for any Morse code translator, you would have got the message 'What language is this?' - Morse. Straightforward and simple.

#5 - Sheep 

This word was given for completing Szehong's objective

#6 - Noon (Difficulty: 1/5)

Some groups didn't find this, but there was a small picture of a clock stuck somewhere, with the hands pointing at 12, and "(PM)" written at the bottom. What do you call this time of day? Noon!

#7 - Brain (Difficulty: 2/5 after clue, 5/5 before clue)

This was the substitution cypher, which all groups started with:

IU BENOP EO WJ EJOAYP PDWP CKAO XQVV

IU OAYKJZ EO PDA LHQNWH KB EO

IU PDEMZ EO PDA BENOP RKSAH

IU BKQNPD EO SDWP UKQ QOA PK OAA

IU HWOP EO EJZAAZ PDA AJZ.

A substitution cypher is simply a message that has each letter replaced with another letter. This replacement can be a fixed pattern of replacement as in this case  (count backwards 5 letters), or a completely random choice (e.g. A = C, B= Z, and so on).

Substitution cyphers can be solved in 2 general ways:

a) Observing patterns in how frequently some letter patterns appear and comparing with the natural language - e.g. 'The' appears very frequently, so a set of 3 letters appearing frequently may be 'The' (e.g. PDA in this case). Or knowing that 'E' is the most frequent letter, make a guess that the most frequent letter in the cypher is 'E' and see if that makes sense.

b) Using a cypher key - which was what you all got in this case with 'BENOP = FIRST'.

With the clue, all groups realised that the trick was simply to count forward to the 5th letter (e.g. B, C, D, E F : B = F!) and then decode the whole message, which gave a riddle (I put the answers in brackets)

My first is an insect that goes buzz (bee = B)

My second is the plural of is (are = R)

My third is the first vowel (A)

My fourth is what you use to see (Eye = I)

My last is indeed the end. (End = N)

#8 - Bottle

This word was given for completing my objective.

#9 - Post (Difficulty : 3/5)

Four pictures telling the story of a man opening an umbrella in the rain were stuck around the room. Not sure how easy this turned out, but it was intended to be moderately tricky.

The trick was to rearrange the pictures in the form of a story (e.g. He was walking with his umbrella; It began to rain; He opened up his umbrella; He continued walking), and notice that there was one letter hidden in each picture. In the right order, it spelt out P O S T. 

#10 - Bars (Difficulty : 2/5)

There were four fruits stuck around the room - an apple, a banana, a rambutan, and a starfruit.

I think one of the fruits dropped/was stuck in a difficult to notice position so some groups were left confused as to why they only had 3 letters. But basically if you followed the order of the fruits and took the first letter of each, it would spell B A R S. I hope you didn't spell anything else.

#11 - Cobra (Difficulty - 1/5)

A picture of a connect-the-dots cobra was given in the starter pack. I thought some groups may mistakenly put Snake instead of Cobra, but looks like everyone got it right.

#12 - Shuffleboard 

This word was given for completing Leroy's objective

#13 - Melody

This word was given for completing Clara's objective

#14 - Fish (Difficulty - 5/5)

This puzzle was my personal favourite. 

All groups received a series of dots like this:

?? What is this?? Fibonacci sequence? Some sadistic cypher with numbers to letters? How am I supposed to get words from this?

I don't think anyone knew for sure what exactly to do with it until they received the next clue around the 45 minute mark. in fact, I heard some groups massively over-thought it and tried to do all sorts of funny things with this scary-looking number array.

CLUE: "Look carefully at the numbers. Notice any recurring numbers? I'll leave it to you to connect the dots. No diagonals!"

If you had paused and taken a deep breath to examine the numbers carefully, you'll notice some numbers repeat - the numbers 7 , 16, 12, 3, 8, 4. With the clue to 'connect the dots', if you had drawn lines to connect the recurring numbers to each other, you would have got this:

I intentionally made it difficult to see at first glance... but if you look long enough, 4 letters should appear. 

Random trivia - the original version of this puzzle was to have a large picture with many tiny details, and a big caption that said 'Look Closely' 

Then instead of within the picture, the phrase 'the answer is fish' would be hidden somewhere in the words 'Look Closely'. After some thought, I decided this was a boring puzzle, and it was too obvious, thus I switched it up entirely.

#15 - Seasons (Difficulty : 1/5)

A simple riddle was stuck on the wall:

"You're hot then you're cold

Four times a year

Not in Singapore"

Think everyone got it fast.

#16 - Doodles (Difficulty: 4/5)

A series of little symbols and a grid of letters was found on poker cards of the Clubs suit. I don't have a picture of this, but the way to solve it was to realise the little symbols corresponded with the grid and basically spelt out a certain word.

There were two mistakes which I have to apologise for : The last two letters were switched up, something we actually discovered in testing but I forgot to rectify ; the first and fourth letter card was pasted upside down, so many groups had 'EOOELES' and were confused.

Some errors observed by the groups:

- Some groups assumed the number on the poker card corresponded with which letter the word was, and thus stopped looking for more cards at the 8 of clubs, and only had 7 letters. But the Ace of clubs had no symbol on it, so the word actually started from the 2 of clubs.

- One group thought 'D' was an 'O', as they were referring to a picture taken on their phones so it was a little smaller.

#17 - Linked 

This word was given for completing Jono's objective.

#18 - Cone (Difficulty 3/5)

All groups started with a strange number string in their pack. 

321478901236987407415963032145654789

This is virtually unsolvable by itself, unless you have a great sense of mind to automatically put them in a grid. I think it also puzzled a few people who tried to look for some sort of pattern in the numbers.

But if you had done your scouting well, you would have notice the clue tagged as #18 on one of the walls, and a number grid was there.

Further thinking would have led you to trace the numbers as they appeared on the grid - thus spelling out the letters (each separated by a zero) C , O , N, E. Tahdah!

#19 - Tangled

This word was given for completing Sherman's objective.

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All in all, I thought it went pretty well, apart from the buggy puzzle #16. In designing the overall game, I wanted the game to be sufficiently challenging, but all groups should be able to complete it within the time limit. This way everyone feels a sense of 'closure' and achievement. Thus I decided on the gated release of clues to add a progressive element to the game, and indeed, most groups finished at around the same time. I won't reveal which group took how long so people don't feel bad, but the spread was like this:

66 minutes, 71, 74, 77, 79, 80, 81, 83

I have to take my hat off to Group 8, who completed everything with virtually zero additional clues from me. I was surprised when they suddenly came to me at the 65th minute and said they were done. 

Random Trivia: The GameMasters who tested the game, but had the advantage of having all the clues very close to each other, took about 30 minutes to complete the puzzles (without performing objectives).

It was a fun experience planning and running this, hope everyone had a good time cracking their heads over this! :D