I Spend My Money On The Regular Miracles

Here come the jets hide my money in your tube socks
Run like me, like hell, like everybody else

                          -New Politics

On Monday I decided to use my new office's gym for the first time. I had gotten access just recently and honestly, it's a nice gym! And going to the gym during work hours like that is a nice tricky way to get your workout in, while making everyone still think you are working the full day. Nobody ever questions someone who uses their "lunch break" to go to the gym, even if that same person then sits at her computer for another hour, catching up on Twitter and actually eating lunch. And that way I am home to make dinner and spend what time two teenagers have to give me.

I don't know if anyone who reads this has experience with office gyms, but I do and I can tell you they are very often empty or close to empty. I think they get enough use, but it's not like your other gyms. At my last office gym it was perfectly common for me to be the only one in there, especially during the summer. During the winter it gets more use and you can get into some righteous treadmill fights. Anyway, so today I was the only one in the locker room and the only woman in the gym.

Anyway, so I get down there, and they only have the kind of lockers where you enter in your own combination, which is temporary. They don't have any where you can just use your own lock. Damn. I don't like those kind of lockers and I never use them. But I gamely read the instructions, practice a couple of times and I think I've got it. 
I realize I have forgotten a sports bra. Damn. I quickly decide to just go ahead and run in the lacy bra I am wearing, I mean, how bad could it be and I don't want to mess up my plan just because of this. I lock up all my stuff and go run. The lacy bra quickly chafes the shit out of me and while running I realize I have also forgotten deodorant while simultaneously remembering that in two hours I have a meeting with an executive. So I'm looking at the prospect of meeting with said executive in a sweaty bra and with no deodorant. But I have brought a towel to shower, so I figure it can't be too bad and I finish my run. 

I go back to the locker room after my run, put everything (EVERYTHING) including my phone and headphones, into the locker, grab my towel, lock the locker again (because I can't have my phone being stolen in the two minutes I am rinsing off in the shower, see, even though I AM ALONE HERE) and head to the shower. 

I get out of the shower and that locker won't open. I frantically try a million different ways that I might have gotten the four digit code that I use for every single thing in my life that requires a four digit code wrong and nothing. NOTHING. I search all the lockers for possible clothing people may have left behind. I scour the locker room for some kind of emergency call button. Nothing.

So, to summarize: I am in a locker room with nothing but a towel. Every stitch of clothing I have AND MY PHONE are in the locker which I cannot open and I have a meeting with an executive this afternoon. DAMN. 

I have also left my phone on when I put it in the locker, so it is blaring music and I have also somehow managed to put it on repeat, so it is playing the song I put at the beginning of this post over and over again while I'm trying to figure out what to do and now I'm probably going to have to remove that song from my playlist given how it now reminds me of all this trauma.

There is one more girl in the gym now, I had seen her get going just as I was finishing up, and I can see that one other locker is in use. So I plan to just wait for her and then beg her for help when she comes into the locker room. The management of the building is just around the corner (but through the lobby, I can't just walk over there in my towel) and I'm sure they have a way to deal with this. 

I keep trying different four digit codes in the meantime. But then someone came in to use the bathroom, so I practically leap on her when she's done and ask for help. She tries my combination and I'm like "I was hoping you could just go over to the management office and let them know" and she goes "I am the management" and I'm like "OMG THANK GOD PLEASE HELP I AM MORTIFIED AND SO SORRY!!!!!"

So she put in some default code and I was free to put on my gross sweaty bra and not put on deodorant. I then proceeded to leave my blow dryer there, which I retrieved the next morning. I don't think stuff gets stolen much in there.

The only good news came when I got back to my desk and my meeting with the executive had been rescheduled. 

Anyway, so today I am trying this office gym again and I am not bothering to lock anything up. So for anyone who wants to know, my phone will be available for theft for about five minutes some time today while I shower.