I've been a 24-Hour Fitness member for 7+ years, and have only recently begun having problems with them as far as lack of professionalism in dealing with managers, but that's out here in California and is basically a side-issue of what the main problem is, which is that club policy doesn't include handling any level of use beyond your basic gym-goer who uses the gym for an hour a day max and never goes late at night (which has always been my level of use).
Personally, if I were to go to a gym on my own after midnight or before 6am, I would either stay within eyeshot of an employee or in a well-lit, well-traveled area of the gym. I'm of two minds on the issue: on one hand, 24-Hour Fitness should certainly provide better security in areas of the gym that might cause danger to its clients, but on the other hand, everybody is personally responsible for their own safety and shouldn't naively do things they recognize as dangerous with the blind assumption that someone else is looking out for them.
Also, I suspect that problems like this would be very difficult, practically speaking, to combat in a place that's open to the public 24 hours a day. Is the solution to hire a rent-a-cop to patrol the problem areas, and would that really fix the problem? It seems like it could potentially bring up other issues (for instance, privacy complaints from clients who don't want a rent-a-cop leering at them in the restroom).
Anyway, the least the club should have done is refund the woman's membership in full. There's no reason she should have to put up with that kind of behavior. Though it also occurs to me that if she has security tapes of the incident, and the club should be able to identify the man based on that and his membership card scan (they scan your card and check your ID every time you use the club), she should be able to go to the cops and nail him for exposing himself in public or whatever.
The thing I like about 24-Hour Fitness, and the reason I'll still use them, is that they have clubs in every state and a pretty good international club system. I haven't and don't plan to use them as a true 24 hour club.
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Personally, if I were to go to a gym on my own after midnight or before 6am, I would either stay within eyeshot of an employee or in a well-lit, well-traveled area of the gym. I'm of two minds on the issue: on one hand, 24-Hour Fitness should certainly provide better security in areas of the gym that might cause danger to its clients, but on the other hand, everybody is personally responsible for their own safety and shouldn't naively do things they recognize as dangerous with the blind assumption that someone else is looking out for them.
Also, I suspect that problems like this would be very difficult, practically speaking, to combat in a place that's open to the public 24 hours a day. Is the solution to hire a rent-a-cop to patrol the problem areas, and would that really fix the problem? It seems like it could potentially bring up other issues (for instance, privacy complaints from clients who don't want a rent-a-cop leering at them in the restroom).
Anyway, the least the club should have done is refund the woman's membership in full. There's no reason she should have to put up with that kind of behavior. Though it also occurs to me that if she has security tapes of the incident, and the club should be able to identify the man based on that and his membership card scan (they scan your card and check your ID every time you use the club), she should be able to go to the cops and nail him for exposing himself in public or whatever.
The thing I like about 24-Hour Fitness, and the reason I'll still use them, is that they have clubs in every state and a pretty good international club system. I haven't and don't plan to use them as a true 24 hour club.