work it, girl: glam part two

If GLAM can lead Harvard graduates with degrees in business to work the midnight shift at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for $7.00 an hour, then I shouldn't be so surprised that it lead me to work at a posh gym headquartered in the Flat Iron District for a salary that was so low I'm still paying off the year's worth of Starbucks I had to put on my credit card.* What can I say? GLAM jobs make you dumb.

Other indicators that you have been sucked in by the GLAM?

1. You mistake mere proximity to the cool people's offices as validation--as in, well, I'm in the same building as Anna Wintour/Oprah Winfrey/Walt Disney Junior...

2. You mistake your employee identification card with the GLAM logo for a legitimate show and tell prop at dinner with your parents, friends, roommates...

3. You mistake company T-shirts, water bottles, and vinyl knapsacks for fair compensation for your 12 hour days.

4. You mistake your very sophisticated title (such as "Client Experience Arbitrator" or "Ambiance Associate") for anything except what you actually are--because you are uncertain exactly of what you are and, well, slave is a bit outdated and technically illegal.

The gym where I work prided itself on single-handedly making working out sexy again--not unlike Olivia Newton John did in the '70s and Jennifer Beal did in the '80s.

Gym X appealed to the snob in New Yorkers--the same snob that pays $39 for a sea salted caramel truffle. Monthly memberships cost more than most people elsewhere in the country pay each month on their mortgage.

Gym X's corporate office was minimalist by design and ran mostly by gay men and Bianca. Bianca oversaw (as one says in polite company) a marketing team that created ads with a more than slightly creepy resemblance to Calvin Klein's during his little child pornography phase. Even now, five years later, I see the the glossy ads posted on bus stops or the sides of slick buildings whenever I'm in a city with a high snob demographic. All of the ads invariably show Kate Moss and Ashton Kutcher look-a-likes engaged in well...NOT EXERCISE. Inexplicably, mud, leather wristbands, and torn t-shirts are almost always involved. Oh, Bianca.



To this day, I'm uncertain what I did there. Aside from notifying Front Desk Associates when Ethan Hawke or Jesse from Saved by the Bell was on the way to work out and sneaking into Tae Low High Spinning Yoga classes on my lunch break, I mostly just cared for the 100 year old Bonsai tree in the CFO's office I was mistakenly given when he was fired on my first day. Yes, I got lucky and pulled off what normally takes someone 25 years to pull off in Manhattan--a corner office. Had the floors not been made of exceptionally hard teak wood, I would have slept there since it was bigger than my apartment on the Upper West Side. It took my immediate boss (who I never actually met--we had a Charlie and Angel kind of relationship) seven months to realize the mistake. But by then, the GLAM had worn off and I quit.

*Hey Ryan, this is for you, since I must give credit where credit is due. Starbucks is considered a non-negotiable in my life regardless of my checking account balance. As are highlights and flights with no layovers.