The following is a short story that’s a part of our annual “Tales from the Gym” series to celebrate Halloween.
This horror story began two years ago in the men’s locker room. Yes, the area of the facility which is already terrifying to most staff.
It was being reported that there was a foul smell in the men’s locker room. Well this is nothing new, but this was a different foul smell. The occurrences became frequent. The opening manager would check each morning and report everything was just as it should be. By the late afternoon, the odor would return.
What could this be? After about two weeks of trying to figure this out, we received a comment card that stated “there’s someone relieving himself in the drain outside of the steam room.”
YIKES Are you kidding me? What horror! How can we capture this creature?
We decided to engage our male membership. We put a poster size sign at the drain. It stated “No Urinating in the Drain.” There was no being polite, we were dealing with a monster. This terrifying creature had to be stopped.
After just a few days, it worked! This foul odor disappeared (the usual smells still exists). To this day we do not know where the creature came from or where it returned to, but it is gone.
Karen Raisch-Siegel is the executive director of LifeWorks of Southwest General.
