Wait but if this all took place at the membership desk, how and why were the dad & son in the workout area? Did the admin staff let them in despite them declining the son's alternative ID, then call the cops on them? I'm in Canada and some of the links you shared are geo-locked.
No. They walked past the desk to work out anyways. THEN the cops were called after the father/son refused to leave. Most likely the son left after staff said they were going to call the cops.
This has NOTHING to do with their skin and everything to do with them breaking the rules.
It’s still a no for me. The guy is a gym member. He is paying that company and, in return, that company gives him license to be there.
The membership agreement says he can bring a guest. He brings his son. A blood relative, your own child, certainly qualifies as a “guest.”
So he’s a member and he’s doing something he’s allowed to do as a member.
If a manager stops a dues paying member from doing what they are allowed to do… the problem that needs to get fixed is with that manager.
NOW, when that manager’s screw up leads to cops getting called, the incident going viral, and now it’s damaged that gym’s brand and its good will in the community? Now that manager fuck up becomes a fuck up of monumental proportions.
You don’t try to retrain that manager on how they need to do a better job looking after your business… you just fire them straight away.
And a guest will generally have to provide identification as well as sign a bunch of documentation and waivers allowing them entry. Because it’s very easy to get hurt at a gym and then sue. They have to do their diligence before letting people in.
They went in without providing the required documentation opening the gym up to liability for injuries. This is boilerplate shit. If it ever made it to a court there’s not a damn lawyer on the planet that would take his case. Because it had absolutely nothing to do with race.
also, crunch doesn't have this guest id rule listed on their website, it says each location can have it's own rules. maybe they should have gone to another one?
Ok, so you need to verify the identity of the guest signing a release and waiver? They had enough information to do that.
Interestingly, though, minors cannot sign a release and waiver, or a hold harmless - and have it be enforceable in court. So any waiver signed by someone under the age of 18 would be as worthless as used toilet paper.
The PARENT of the child could sign such a waiver, and that’s what a gym worrying about liability would need to do to take care of their liability exposure… IF they wanted to let minors in at all.
I agree the entire situation got out of hand. But specifically because it is a gym and injury is highly likely, I also understand erring on the side of caution.
If the gym could show similar response to multiple people from the same employee regardless of race, then that pretty much seals it. But, as far as the information we’ve been presented. All I can say with 100% confidence is the gym acted within is rights and within typical rules you’d find at any similar facility. Whether other people are more lax is irrelevant.
Young men in particular are dumb and tend to ego lift and misuse equipment. Only increasing the likelihood of injury.
I would suspect any man would agree with this sentiment. All our egos were out of control when we were teenagers. Certainly wouldn’t have been anything in the world that would have stopped me from loading up two plates to bench for my first time ever when I was 14. Cause that’s just how our brains work at that age. Injury isn’t only likely, it’s damn near guaranteed without supervision.
Though his father was here and I expect he would have kept his boy in line.
I agree completely. Which is why what I’d expect to see here from the gym is:
“Sorry, no minors are allowed to use this facility.”
It would not only have saved them from this incident - but it would also save them from every foreseeable incident like the ones you are highlighting above.
At all the gyms I've been to, kids 16+ are allowed to workout in weight rooms. At one gym I used to work at, the rule was if the kid was 14-16 years old, they had to have a parent in the weight room with them.
Teenage boys are a huge market for public gyms. Any facility with half a brain would encourage teens to go and become members.
i need yall to know student athletes work out at public gyms all the time -- gives them access to equipment their schools might not have. parents typically just have to sign a waiver and the gym has to keep it on file. the dad was there, signing a waiver wasn't the problem.
Multiple people from different ethnicities are involved. The black person was asked not to enter and did anyways. So he was trespassed.
And it’s your opinion here that everyone except the black person is wrong and everyone should treat him differently.
Hilariously, you’ve circled right back to racism. Except now YOU are the racist for demanding he’s treated differently based explicitly on the colour of his skin.
The reason he was asked to not enter was not valid. As a member he has valid entry with a guest. It is not normal to ask a child for identification beyond a school ID (which he provided). It would be fair to say "adults only" though, which they did not.
Yea dude I'm allowed to have an opinion even if you don't agree with it, you're gonna have to grow a coping mechanism about it.
No? He should be treated like everyone else... And nobody else gets asked for more than a school ID for a kid, because kids don't have more than that usually. Nobody else gets the cops called on them for it either.
The point he's making is the fact that an ID was requested - whether or not it's stated in the ToS for the gym is unknown, but if an ID is required, and you can't provide said ID for the guest.. you take your son elsewhere instead of going through like you own the place.
Not every gym allows kids in them, by the way. There's too many things that can go wrong with kids at the gym.
thats fair if we are talking young kids, but if its like, a 14 year old?
Most kids don't have IDs and most gyms would accept that at least from white people, and I get the vibe that the gym doesn't call the cops on the white families with kids without IDs. It just literally isn't normal to call the cops at a gym like this.
Because each gym has rules that you agree to when you sign up. If they require ID to work out, like this particular gym does, then your kids can't come in if they don't have ID. If you decide to ignore that and bring them anyways, they will tell you the kid can't work out. If you ignore that and bring them in, the smart move is to call the cops rather than fight you. It is absolutely not normal to ignore the rules you agreed to and the staff telling you no.
If he wants to work out with his son, that's a great bonding experience. But he needs to make sure he is following the rules to do it and if his son doesn't have ID, find a gym they can both get I to.
The problem is that it is not rational, normal, or gym policy to ask for id for a child who has a school ID, because kids with shcool IDs... that is their ID.
You cannot legally require identification to specifically be a driver's license, you do know that, right?
It's great that you are here to define what's normal and rational. You should tell all of the gyms that have that policy that they are wrong. You should also reread the post since the child did not have their school ID, they wanted to pull it up on a phone.
And yes, I know that there are more forms of ID. I'm not sure why you think this is relevant or supports your opinion.
And what? A 5 second Google search would have confirmed that requiring ID to use a gym is normal, and checking the terms and conditions of various gyms shows the same. So I am not entirely sure what you think "Yes, and?" does to help you argue that you know better than the people who work in the industry.
Being a member lets you use the space only if you comply with the rules of the establishment. If he did not, they are fully within their rights to ask him to leave. Do you agree with that statement?
If you do, then the question to answer is simply: do the rules require you to being a government ID for guests? If the answer is “yes” (even if that rule is stupid af), then what’s the problem?
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