Hello! For some background, I am a female (18yo) and I moved away for my first year of college, and got a job at a well know commercial gym. I’m the only female on staff and I work at the front desk, basically just to greet people, help with memberships and whatnot. The area that my gym is located in is in a big city, with lots of extremely weird characters, like… very odd. Pretty much every single shift something weird would happen to me, so it just became second nature to me and I moved on from it pretty quickly.
The business had cut our clubs hours, so only one person was able to close at night, and it was typically me. I already found this odd and was slightly irritated with my manager because I told her I would rather not close by myself due to the already jarring encounters I would have on a daily basis. Anyways, I didn’t care, I’m a broke college student and needed any shifts I could get so I still continued to do it.
One night at about 5pm, a guy walked into the building and checked in, something was wrong with his account but I can’t even remember what it was, I ended up just telling him to go in and he could call the next morning to talk to my manager as I was the only one left. I’m always super nice and welcoming to everyone who comes in, and usually become friends with the regulars, so I acted just as welcoming with him and thought nothing of it.
The one thing I noticed that was a bit concerning was when he walked in, he had a bloody knuckle and asked me for a bandaid, and the second I was able to look at him I remember getting a horrible gut feeling, but I’m always riddled with anxiety so I just brushed it off and assumed it was the anxious thoughts taking over. I give him a makeshift bandaid (a gauze pad with some tape) since we had ran out of bandaids, and that was the entire interaction.
Then fast forward to 8:00pm. Our gym closed that day at 8, and I was doing my rounds upstairs and downstairs (this was a 3 story gym) and as I was heading back down to the lobby floor, he began walking up the stairs where I was. (To remind you, we are about 10 minutes pat closed at this point, there is no exit upstairs and there are no lockers up there either. He stops in his tracks and kind if fumbles his words, but he ends up asking me for a trash bag, to which I still was dumb enough to not think anything of it and told him yes. I told him to follow me back down the stairs and as we walked back to the front desk, he asks if we are the last two people in the gym, I respond with yes as it was obvious there weren’t any other people left at that point, then he tells me he has to go grab his stuff from the locker room, and the reason he needed a trash bag was to put his wet clothes in. Mind you, this man came in with the same clothes and was wearing the same clothes when he said this, so at this point I knew something wasn’t right. He walks back downstairs, and 10 minutes go by, I start to get a horrible gut feeling and call my coworker who lives about 5 minutes away. Much to my dismay he wasn’t home and was about 20 minutes away, so I made him stay on the phone with me.
At some point I was just frustrated, he knew I was waiting on him and it was about 8:45 when I got the courage to walk downstairs with a box cutter in one hand and a witness on FaceTime in the other. I call out hello 3 or 4 times, and can literally hear him tip toeing around, coming closer towards the entrance of the locker room, where I am standing right outside of. At this point I literally book it back upstairs, and I call my other guy friend who lived in the same apartment complex as my coworker and told him to come help me get this guy out. 5 minutes later he arrives and we walk downstairs, check the entire gym before he has me stand in the women’s locker room while he goes into the men’s.
He walks in, about 30 seconds later walks back out, with a pale face,and I knew something was wrong but all he tells me is this guy was sitting on the bench and wasn’t doing anything, seemed like he was just packing up his bag and sitting there. Before he could even finish this guy was halfway up the stairs already, and once he reached the top of the stairs we heard him stop. We start walking up to the top of the stairs and he begins to practically jog to the exit, stops and says that he’s sorry, then leaves.
The entire situation was already scary enough, and writing it doesn’t do enough justice, but the worst part was when about a week later, the same friend who helped me that night told me he was standing by the entrance to the locker room, with the trash bag in his hands opened, and the second that he saw it wasn’t me walking into that locker room he shoved it out of my friends sight (or atleast thought he did) and left not even a minute later. My friend said he’s convinced he was trying to do something that night, honestly lord knows what he would’ve done.
I ended up quitting that job and am so glad I did because thinking back to the situations I was put in I would never do it again, especially not for the shit pay. I have so many creepy stories about this job, but this one was definitely the worst for sure. Learned my lesson, never close by yourself, especially as a young girl!