I joined a gym, and for a while I went there. I worked out at their facil­i­ties and found them clean, and brim­ming with machines and weights in which to sculpt my body. I used their excep­tion­ally clean and well kept bath­rooms and facil­i­ties. The staff was always cour­te­ous, the light­ing great, the music well selected, and the food offered was healthy and scrump­tious. They even had a cloth­ing store where one could buy stuff 30% with the mem­ber­ship card, and a day car for those who dragged their chil­dren around.

All in all, a fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence from a cus­tomer point of view. Every­thing scored 7/10 or higher (more often higher). So why am I angry with this chain? They dropped the ball in a key area: my leaving.

So I’m making this post while bla­tantly aware that some of my read­ers will prob­a­bly have no Idea what I’m talk­ing about. If you’re one of those people, just nod your head and pre­tend to listen.

Setting up the scene

A while back I came across a little web­site called 9rules. As it turned out 9rules was very much sim­i­lar to Digg.com, Design Float, Mixx, and so on. It was a social hub where ideas were exchanged, par­tic­i­pa­tion was rewarded, and all was well. Some­what of an oppor­tunist, I took advan­tage of 9rules and their con­tent sub­mis­sion to help my site gain some pop­u­lar­ity (I’m sure I gained noth­ing from it) by sub­mit­ting my design-​related posts to their ever-​flowing river of content.

I admit that this is a bit dubi­ous in nature, but it is a white hat way to get your name out there, and that’s some­thing I’m still work­ing on doing. Hate me if you want, but that’s what I used it for. I regret that a little in ret­ro­spect, because they had a good com­mu­nity, and I chose to throw my sto­ries into the pile instead of par­tic­i­pat­ing and making it better.

The lament­ing has a point, so stick with me.