Two Sides to Every Pancake, and This One Is Mine

A member I liked. Genuinely liked. Looked forward to seeing, would have called a friend.

One night they wrote into the studio phone about a mistake they had made themselves, and what came through was the most vicious thing I had read in months. All of it aimed at my employee.

My employee was off that night. I was the one holding the phone.

I typed back that they were talking to me.

You could feel the embarrassment arrive through the screen.

There is very little I like less than being treated like gold by somebody who treats my staff like shit. That membership ended that night. And I would end it again tomorrow. There is no monthly rate high enough to make me want them in here.

Somebody came in for a first class and went down the line, employee by employee, finding something wrong with each one of them.

Then I would walk into the room and suddenly I was the greatest guy in Utah.

And then I would walk back out.

Every employee working that night came to me separately, none of them knowing the others had. First class, last class.

This one still makes me wince, and nobody did anything wrong.

A completely lovely person with a body odor problem that cleared a ten foot radius. Nobody could share a table with them. The complaints did not stop arriving.

So I tried. More than once. Hygiene is the single most uncomfortable conversation this job asks of me, I am not good at it, and I would rather be hit by a car than start one.

Do you have any idea how a person opens that conversation? Neither do I.

In the end I had to ask them to find another studio. I have never felt good about it and I do not expect to.

An employee who was fantastic, right up until the moments they were not.

Something would trip a wire somewhere and they would come apart at me. One of those turned into a shouting match with another employee in the middle of a class.

Eventually it was one time too many, so I let them go, and I had to say out loud that I would take legal action if the threats kept coming.

Then they calmed down on the way out and used the calm to explain that I am a raging narcissist. A raging narcissist. Who knew.

And then they promised to take their whole group of studio friends with them.

Those friends are all still here, as far as I know. Hi, friends.

A member emailed a genuinely nice suggestion. Make all the signs bilingual for our Spanish speaking neighbors.

I could not do it on every sign, so I found them in class to explain why, and to throw out something I thought was better. QR codes on the ones that matter, going to real translations. I was actually excited about it.

They were not interested in an alternative, and kept circling back to the idea that the real reason was that I am a racist.

So I let it go. People have days.

A couple of months later, mid-conversation about what we are trying to build in here and what has gone into it, in front of several other members, they informed me that I deserve none of it and that the only reason this place exists is white male privilege.

I walked away. That was their last class.

Day one. Complained about every single way we do things, then refused to clean up and be done.

By the end of the night two employees had come to me about it separately.

I sent a message suggesting another studio might be a better fit, and what came back was weeks. Dozens and dozens of texts we stopped answering early on. A promise, sworn by God, that they would sue me and not rest until they had fifty thousand dollars out of me.

Then they showed up during a class with their fiancé, after being told plainly that showing up would be trespassing. I threatened police while walking them out, and the fiancé used the walk to say sexually aggressive things to me at full volume.

A week or two after that, they sent their parents in. During a class. To fight it for them.

I had to threaten police again to get the parents out.

And then the one star review. Of course.

This is the one where I was also in the wrong, so that is how it gets told.

I dated a member once. As of writing this, they were the only member I’ve had a relationship with. They had taken a hiatus, and we were rebuilding a friendship.

Then a different member said something to one of my employees in class that was bad enough that two separate people came to me about it. I brought that member into the office and offered them the floor.

They used the floor to tell me, very calmly, that nobody likes me, that nobody wants to be my friend, and that I am the fakest person alive. And then they said a thing about the person I had dated that was built to land.

It landed. I asked them to leave the room.

Then my part. I wanted to ask that person about it, and I did not want to do it while they were still in the building, so I opened the studio cameras to see whether they had gone. I was not spying. I saw something anyway, I took a screenshot, and I sent it.

I should not have done that. Of everything on this list, it is the piece I would take back first, and it definitely belongs to me.

And what came after was months of it. Reviews painting me as a predator with my own staff and members. Reviews on my books. Texts still arriving months later. Rumors carried to other studios and to anybody whose Instagram they had. My employees contacted and worked on. Wedges driven between me and my friends.

I lost a real studio friend out of it, and the person I had dated wanted no part of any of it, which I understand completely. If it starts up again it goes to lawyers and police.

Hardest thing that I’ve had to deal with here. It’s not even close.

A member who found a genuinely impressive number of ways to sexually harass me.

Every time, I would talk to them about it. And every next time it came back in a shape that did not quite cross the line I had just drawn. So I could never say you did it again.

I do not know how to describe how tiring that is.

Then one day in class they reached over and squeezed my instructor’s bare stomach and told them they were so cute.

It got reported. I pulled the video. I sent them the video.

Never saw them again.

A member who would tickle my back when they walked past me. Affectionately. Repeatedly.

I asked them once, plainly, to please not do that.

They did it again.

That was the end.

Small, right? I know exactly how it looks sitting next to the rest of this list. But it is not about a tickle. It is about asking a grown adult for one thing, one time, and finding out the answer is no.

A member who was usually drunk and got sexually harassing toward me, almost always in the corners where nobody else could hear it.

Then one afternoon they grabbed me and dry humped me, theatrically, in front of a full room.

I still do not know whether they thought it was funny.

It was the last thing they ever did in here as a member.

Here is another one with my own fingerprints on it.

A married member who flirted with me at every class. Heavily. I read it as banter, harmless, meaning nothing.

Then it turned into wanting to hang out. Wanting to go get drinks. Wanting to be real friends.

And I own my part. I got a little enamored. I thought it sounded fun.

So I finally said yes and tried to make an actual plan.

And the moment I did, they were morally outraged. The people closest to them started hearing that I would not stop hitting on them.

I have never had anybody work that hard to get me over my own line and then put me in the pillory for stepping across it. I am still a little hurt by it. I am still a little confused by it.

They moved away and that was the end of it. I wrote to apologize for my half. I never heard back.

This one I liked enough to put on the payroll.

The sexual comments started while they were a member and did not stop when they became an employee. Small ones, constant ones, always aimed at me.

Every time I raised it I got wide eyes and an I had no idea, and then nothing changed. There is no correcting somebody who will not admit the thing happened.

So I brought them into the office and put them on permanent probation. Zero strikes left.

What came back was weeks of quiet work. Wedges driven between me and my employees. Bad-mouthing to members behind my back, in DMs and out in the open online.

The day I saw the whole shape of it, they were done here. It kept going anyway, anywhere this place got mentioned, for a long time after.

And they took a few beloved members with them on the way out. That one still stings.

I liked this member for a long time. Really liked them. Good for the room, good with new people, and stubborn as a mule about the rules, so we had a few of those four minute chats.

Then they crossed a real line, and I brought them in knowing roughly how it was going to end.

I did not get far. They looked at me and said, do you know what I did to the last guy who made me mad? I stuck a knife in him. Not enough to kill him. Just enough for him to feel it.

So that one got decided for me.

One from the early days. Everybody liked them at first, me included.

Then they started getting aggressive with my staff.

We were all hanging out together outside of work one night. This member spent a chunk of it lecturing one of my employees about a rough patch that employee was going through with their partner. Nobody had asked.

After that it was trying to sleep with my employees. More than one of them.

And then an employee brought their partner into the studio, and the alpha came out. Territorial, chest puffed, in my building.

That was the end of that membership.

The oldest one on the list, and still the one nobody believes.

I hired an instructor. Over a few months, members started coming to me one at a time about what this person was quietly bringing into my studio and quietly asking members about.

I brought them into the office. I was not calm. I was furious.

They looked at me, entirely relaxed, and said, “do you know what you need? A session.”

I really did think I had seen everything by then. I had not.

And they later brought a friend in on the same errand. It took threatening to call police and walking them both out to finish it.