LA Fitness — Attraction in Clifton

For the past 7 months, I worked at LA Fitness as a yoga instructor and as an aqua fit instructor. I received many complaints about the regional manager, Joy Jesperson, from clients and from co-workers. She was demeaning, racist (in that black and brown customers complained about how they were treated and she refused to teach at black majority clubs), and never showed any empathy to her instructors. I reached out to her manager about the complaints that she was racist and to explain how she created a hostile work environment and my classes started being taken away. Joy Jesperson actually showed up to one of my classes and sent all the patrons home when she had no right to do so. I wasn't paid for that class. When I complained that I was being retaliated against, they fired me.

LA Fitness of NJ and NY is one of the worst work environments I have ever been subject to. The clubs are also often dirty. I know a yoga instructor that brings her own mop to the Lodi location because she feels so bad that the patrons have to do yoga on a dirty floor. I would rather work for the mafia at a strip club as they seem to be more organized and efficient than LA Fitness. LA Fitness has three different people in charge of scheduling and one woman lives in Boston. I never understood why you would have a woman in Boston scheduling classes for all of NJ. She would often ask me if I could get from one place to the next in 20 minutes and I would have to respond with something like, "it is physically impossible to drive from Paramus, NJ to Parsipanny, NJ in 20 minutes on a Tuesday at 5 pm." It was incredibly frustrating to constantly be explaining why I couldn't substitute a class when I shouldn't have had to in the first place.

I felt that time was constantly wasted there and they were always in such desperate need for substitutes, that I allowed my own time to be abused and underpaid for. I was physically exhausted, anxious about the phone calls and text messages at 10 pm from my manager, and straddling an uncomfortable, ever-growing divide between how much I cared about teaching yoga to the patrons and how I knew I deserved better treatment as an employee.

Training at Crunch has been so organized and straight-forward that I am filled with hope that this will be an amazing company to work for. LA Fitness had zero training before I started working there. I was interviewed, then given a start date for my classes, and that was it. I have only spent two weeks at the gym in Clifton, NJ, but everyone, especially the manager, Erica, has been so welcoming and helpful that I feel like I can finally breathe easily at work again. Opportunities to learn new skills, like facilitating stretching for clients, have already presented themselves and I could not be more grateful for the chance to fill the hours that LA Fitness wrongfully took away from me.

The Crunch motto, "NO JUDGEMENTS. NO LIMITS," means a new start for me. Maybe I will feel finally accepted here. Maybe I will finally feel appreciated here. Maybe I will work here for a long, long time. Whatever the outcome, I am grateful for the chance to find out and thoroughly optimistic that that I will find everything that LA...

For the record ZERO STARS. I recently visited LA Fitness in Clifton after multiple attempts in setting up a meeting with management. They have been giving me a runaround on cancelation and I was forced to freeze my account until I had time to go in person since their hours of operation to speak to a manager is 9 to 5. I have attempted time after time and since there’s no manager I cannot cancel. This makes it extremely hard to do therefore I have called several times during different times of the day and have been left on hold for 25 minutes and then the call drops. When I call once again they leave me on hold or ignore the calls. One manager Daryl said the phone lines were possibly down. But that couldn’t be the case since December !! on Friday February 21 at around 530 the treatment we received by “manager Darryl” was disgraceful. He proceeded to say that he did not need to look at my mother who is part of the account in order to listen to what she had to say. Again we asked for help since we were finally able to speak to someone and he said that he wasn’t the operational manager and that we would need to speak to Eric who is operational and that he couldn’t do a thing except write a note on the account. We have been having the same thing happen since December having someone “write a note or give our number to management for a call back “ but NOTHING !This location is horrific it was incredibly disappointed with the customer service I received at the front desk via phone. Everyone just blames each other on why we haven’t receive a response. The staff including manager Darryl appeared uninterested in helping me, responded rudely to questions, and seemed completely unprepared to address concerns. Despite multiple attempts to explain my issue, I was met with dismissive attitudes and no real solutions. This experience left me feeling frustrated and unwelcome, and I would not recommend this business to anyone due to the poor treatment I received from the front desk personnel and management . My issue is still not resolved and I had to call corporate offices to get a response on cancellation. They answered in 2 minutes versus months of waiting on a response in this location ! Also their “kids club “ has ONE lady taking care of multiples kids of all age groups. I had left my baby in the kids club for a Pilates workout to come back to him (once they notified me on the app) screaming red and sweaty. The attendant never even took him out of his car seat/stroller she just waited on me to come back to take him out. That is when I decided I could no longer workout and take my kids there and feel like they were safe. It wasn’t like she was super busy there was only two or three kids there. Run turn the other way and DO NOT SIGN UP IN CLIFTON go...

WORST gym ive ever had the displeasure to attend. The men openly stare, all the equipment is dirty and broken, broken machines are “scheduled for service” but NEVER get fixed, no one re-racks their weights either, stair steppers have been broken for 4 months

When i brought these issues up to the front desk they said “i dont handle that” and “sorry thats not my job” and offered no further assistance

managers dont come in until 9 and do not stay until close so its a mess first thing in the morning (managers said theres nothing they can do about it)

someone took the cable attachment i was using right from me one day - i went to speak w management about this later that day as they were not on the premises at that hour (6am) and Julian (a manager) told me he would have just taken the equipment back and said “that i was “a settler” for not grabbing the equipment out of their hands

the showers are also vial and the water does not spray in the center - only on the walls which makes it extremely difficult to shower and maneuver

i went in to voice my complaints to the managers and they did not offer any assistance or reassurance, said they were doing all they could and when i asked what they were doing abt the broken equipment they said “waiting for the repair guy” im sorry but no gym i’ve ever been to has had to wait 3+ months to get equipment fixed

when i asked what their harassment policy was the response was “pull the footage and speak to the patron” when i asked jay what would happen if they did that but the patron still caused issues the only response was “escalate further” with no description of what that entails and no written policy for dealing with harassment of any kind

when i signed up they told me all of the issues i was concerned abt would be remedied by the end of the month, when i pointed out that they were still major issues and not fixed, the manager julian said i was impatient and he would have given it another week before coming in to complain. he then went on to, raise his voice in my direction and continuously interrupt me while i was speaking. he ended our conversation by answering the phone while i was speaking (not great customer service or very kind imo)

i’ve never felt so unsupported by staff at a fitness facility - they are there to get to u sign up for a membership but do not care about you at all once they have your money

one staff member told me she only goes there because it’s free (employee discount) and that she would never pay to workout there because of how run down it is

bottom line: DON’T SIGN UP - GO...