LA Fitness reviews

If you are a sales-driven, cut-throat/competitive person that can handle constant complaining without letting it get to you, go for it. OTHERWISE: -Your commission is heavily based on clearing up bad accounts (declined credit cards). If you and your staff don't overly harass customers with phone calls (collections), your paycheck will be low. -If you can't make your collection goals, your staff hours are "taken away" leaving you to do more work and receive less support from your staff (and less man power to make these calls in the first place). -Low pay causes part-time staff to not care about showing up on time, doing their jobs or even showing up at all. You have to be a certain type of tenacious manager to 'motivate' them to make calls or else they will be as miserable as you. -Customers are always complaining and yelling at you for everything; you're a sounding board and you can't do anything about it but smile and apologize. -Many customers are dirty and don't care about basic hygiene; they expect you to clean up their messes (but you do - I've cleaned up hair and filth everyday and just learned to deal with it). -No holiday fun (it's "offensive"), no appreciation events, no team bonding; upper management thinks that just because you still have a job is a benefit in itself. -When sales fabricates or "forgets" to tell customers certain things just to get a deal, you have to handle the backlash. -Pay is low for what you deal with- especially in California. I have never worked so hard to get so little pay while getting yelled at by management and entitled customers. -Un-paid overtime: OM's work "40 hours; no more, no less." LOL I have put in TONS of overtime; picking up slack from careless employees, trying to get all your duties done while being customer service King/Queen and training your staff, and making clear-up phones calls. You can't get this done in 8 hours if you're by yourself at the front desk. Oh and your sales team won't help; they hate the front desk (and I can't blame 'em)! -Perfect Product: 3 times a year when some VP comes in and "audits" your club. It's supposed to be a "team effort" to clean up your club, but realistically no one cleans except you and your janitors, and you sure as hell aren't paid overtime for it. If you get lower than a 90%, you're "job is on the line." -Upper management is constantly micro-managing you on everything from credit card clear ups, Yelp reviews, angry customers, schedules, appearances, and if you (GOD FORBID) take a little extra long lunch because you get to work at 6AM to make collection calls (to make your GOALS) and leave at 7 PM (to deal with everything you couldn't get to). I know, I seem like I have bad time management and can't deal with retail but I will say: I have worked at many companies before this (I'm older than most OMs) and let's just say this was the most stressful and disorganized job I've EVER had. TO SUM IT UP: You cannot be a sensitive, caring person here; you have to be money-driven, have NO children or outside life, and have the energy and time to put everything into this low-paid, mid management position that deals with all the BS while VP level and up gets to reap the benefit$$$. GOOD LUCK!

When I interviewed for this position, it was presented to me that I would be involved in personal training sales, as well as training clients I signed up. This was not even remotely the case. It’s a desk job all in all. I have two degrees in the exercise science field, and was grossly overqualified for this position. My coworkers in my same position were all “fitness enthusiasts” who had sales experience. Even though we spent some time training members, the other PTC’s had little knowledge of the physiologic workings of the exercises they were prescribing to clients, and had zero understanding of how to progress or regress for specific or general injuries. My daily duties included making cold calls to new members (we were expected to begin calls at the start of our work day - 9 am on the weekdays, 8 am on Saturday’s - interrupting many members mornings as they prepared for work, or still asleep on saturdays), as well as “marketing”. LA Fitness’s marketing strategies included walking around the gym and interrupting members’ workouts to give them a sales pitch about personal training. My boss placed me in many uncomfortable situations interrupting people to the point where I was was having breakdowns in the bathroom daily. The hours are extremely long, having split shifts with a break that was not long enough to get in a workout, eat, and finish household chores, but long enough to be bored out of your mind if you simply workout and have lunch. The pay is extremely low. You will make minimum wage, unless you are generating $10,000 or more EFT each month. Meaning unless you are conning at least 10 or so members into buying low-grade personal training each month, you are making pennies. The work is downright criminal. You’re essentially using used car salesman tactics to get people (mainly older folks with money to spend) to purchase training packages. The sessions themselves are only 25 minutes long, and the prices are high compared to market rivals with longer sessions. You set up “sets” with people, spend about 30 minutes degrading their current lifestyle choices, then knowing very little about their background or history, put them through a workout too difficult for their population to make it seem like they desperately need training. One of our “lessons” in training was on a topic they called sleeping giants. Essentially, if someone has not been in for their training sessions for more than 2 months or so, we were instructed not to call them to bring their attention to this, in order to continue receiving their monthly payments under their nose. This was a huge tipping point for me. My second week there I began applying for positions as a trainer elsewhere. After about a month at LA, I received an offer during my lunch break, came back to work and quit on the spot. Best decision I ever made.