MENS AND WOMANS WHIRLPOOL/HOTTUB WATER TEMPERATURE COMPLAINT:
I've been working at Lifetime Fitness - Moore Lake in Fridley, Minnesota for 2 years now. I love working there but I have a couple complaints I'll share with you. About a year ago I contacted the Minnesota State Attorney, District Attorney, Meshbesher & Spence attorney, Minnesota Department of Health, Hennepin County, ConsumerAction.gov, Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, Anoka County, and the City of Fridley because all 3 of my managers were consistantly keeping the womans and mens hot tub water temperature above 105 degrees... usually mid 105's it would be. They had sheets in their pump room stating the law says no higher than 104 degrees for whirlpool hot tub temperature. The managers each gave me many reasons why it was 'ok' for the water temp. to be over 104 degrees. We had 1 old man fall and hit his head after getting out of the hottub on my shift and while the ambulance was there with him... I tested the water... and it was 105.7 degrees fahrenheit. A few months later an older woman fell after getting out of the womans hottub and felt dizzy and layed on our couch downstairs by the tv area that use to be there. I told my 3 managers many times to fix the water temp. and none of them felt it was a big deal. I felt forced to contact authorities to stand up and protect our members since my managers wouldn't... so I spent a weeks time contacting the companies above and finally the City of Fridley went out twice but was not much help either. Turns out it's the same inspector from the city of Fridley that inspects their pools when the club opens the outdoor pools. It appears that the hottub water is usually between 104-105 these days... but the law clearly states that the water temp. must never go 'over' 104 degrees.

WORKING EXTREMELY HARD FOR THIS COMPANY DID NOT GIVE ME A RAISE:
My 2nd complaint is that even though I've worked way above and beyond the call of duty for my job position... I was not given a fair raise. Our department is Facility Operations, Maintenance and we are in charge of cleaning the health club and locker rooms maily. Here is a list of things I did to the Lifetime Fitness - Moore Lake club in Fridley, Minnesota:
1. Cut almost all their trees. Their trees were touching the ground around the pond... could barely see the pond... all 90% of their trees were in need of trimming. It took me 5 months of running around inside cleaning, taking care of mens locker room... then running outside cutting tree branches with 'not' a chain-saw... but a loop-saw... manually cutting each tree branch. I cut at least 100 trees and over a thousand branches I am sure. This is a huge club and property! I cut trees in the parking lot, around their pond,
along the north side of their building, back of the building, south sides, along the service road and main road areas. Many members said it now looks like a country club here.
2. Painted all their exterior doors which were faded and had red berries splattered on them. And I bought some of the paint with my own money.
3. I'm really good with computer website and graphic design... so I spent many hours at home making things for the club FOR FREE on my time. This club has a sprinkler system... I read the sprinkler manual... and would turn ON a sprinkler station... run outside and try to find it... and then write down the location on a topical google earth map I printed out. This took at least 3 days to find all the sprinkler heads and write down their locations. I then made a professional computer graphics printout showing where their sprinkler heads and locations are all color coded nice. I then went to OfficeMax and bought a clear sheet holder to protect the printout and screwed it to the sprinkler machine nice.
4. Did LOTS and LOTS of painting. Painted their front entrance... which has been remodeled since. Painted their elevator room floor, back area floor, water softener tanks, walls in our back area, door way entrances inside the building... making this old building look nicer to the members. To do this I had to work extra fast in the club so I could quick come paint. I went through 4 uniforms getting paint on them... I couldn't take them off because I had to run and work.
5. With a 4" wide vacume end I vacumed their whole swimming pool/whirlpool pump room area... a huge project... This room has long tunnels that go around their aerobic and lap pool and act as a ventalation system. All the floors I vacumed around their black round filters and pumps, I vacumed up on the ledge around the sides and back of the swimming pools and there were piles of sand in some areas. Imagine vacuming 1500sq with a 4" wide vacume end. I got inbetween all their pvc gray swimming pool water pipes as well. This room was in much need of cleaning... lots of sand and debres from repairs to the swimming pools.
6. The first week I worked at Lifetime I noticed that when they setup the badmitten nets... they were tying 6 knots (2 knots for each of the 3 nets) and when taking 'down' badmitten... slowing trying to untie the 6 knots. Well... I realized this was a problem immediately... and ended up tying the string around 'S' hooks... so now all the employees have to do is hook the 6 'S' hooks quickly on the badmitten posts. This saves lots of time.
7. I also noticed when they were setting up badmitten... that when raising/lowering the basketball hoops... they were holding 2 light switches for 2 basketball hoops at a time to make them go UP when setting up badmitten/DOWN when taking down badmitten. There are 6 basketball hoops that need to be raised/lowered... and they would hold 2 light switches at a time waiting 2 minutes for the hoops to raise/lower completely before raising the next 2 hoops. This was very time consuming... so I invented something that allowed all 6 basketball hoops to go up at the 'same time' WITHOUT holding the light switches... which allows a person to setup badmitten WHILE the basketball hoops are going up/vise-versa. I basically bent an 'S' hook in such a way that one side loops around the light switch... and the other side latches on the top/bottom of the light switch box holding the light switch in an UP/DOWN position. EVERY TIME badmitten is setup/taken down... I saved this club time and money from my ideas.
8. I've spent time at home helping my manager re-design our worksheets, pool sheets. I've made custom labels that show product images that I put on our shelves in our supply room so we are more organized when stacking our shelves. I've printed signs we put on the wall above supplies using ink from my computer... full page signs with big letters.
9. I bought spray paint and painted all their 5 exterior cement garbage cans that had a brown metal turn lid. They are gone now since the remodel... but I made them look new from their faded condition. Members appreciated it... as did my manager said great job they look nice.
10. On the North-East corner of the building... They have 4 heavy cement bollards that form a square around the water shut offs for the building. One of the cement bollards was laying in the grass (a man from the building next door said it's been laying there for 5+ years). I ran up and bought anchors for cement, a big masonary bit for a drill... and drilled 4 big holes in the cement and re-attached the very heavy bollard. Then I bought paint and painted them yellow, spray painted the water shut offs red, and other water pipes gold. Keeping them their original color but painting them so they look new. I also cut and installed 'new' chain going from bollard to bollard enclosing the water shut offs. Looks really nice now.
11. And regarding all the ‘men’ in our department… Only the men have been shoveling show, lifting heavy chlorine buckets and washing machine detergent, moving/lifting heavy posts when setting up badmitten/volleyball. The ‘men’ in our dept. should be paid a little bit more than the women for this extra work. But that’s not so at this club. I don’t mind doing the extra work… but pay me a little more than the people who don’t do it.

NO RAISE:
After all my hard work above… a month ago my pay went back down to almost where it was when I started 2 years ago as a new Lifetime employee! I did get a $0.24 cent raise about a year ago... hardly a raise for all the hard work I've done for this club and it's members. I asked the General Manger for a raise a week ago, and he said no. The general manager is nice... but I don't agree that I don't deserve more money per hour than a new employee. Not to mention I've learned a lot working at the club for 2 years. I also have hurt feelings some because I don't feel much appreciated there after all I've done.

EMPLOYEE COMPLAINTS:
A. I should also mention that they recently made one of the slowest workers in my department a 'manager' and are paying him much more money than me. I feel like I'm taking 'crazy pills'... that makes no sense. This guy they made manager digs through the trash and dumpster outside looking for plastic to recycle... That is a big waste of the companies time and money. The club has 2 trash cans for people... 1 for trash and 1 for plastic. He'll dig through the trash for plastic... and literally will go through the garbage in the outside dumpster for cans and plastic. The new assistant manager is upset because this worker is slow... as am I… It’s because he’s busy finding plastic. When I brand new working at this club… this employee took advantage of me… My job was what they call a ‘roamer’… meaning roaming the club cleaning. This employee was assigned ‘mens locker room’ and responsible for cleaning it. Well… one day he asked me if I saw the mens locker room… I’m thinking to myself… Why? I’m roamer. I said No… but went to look… and it was a complete mess. He expected ‘me’ to clean it… which I did… and while ‘I’ was cleaning it he went out and sat and watched tv. He did this with another ‘new’ employee as well. I also had an African American boy come up to me and tell me that this employee told him, “Why don’t you go back to your own country.” This employee also swore out loud regarding members making a mess, make a terrible comment as to what he’d want to do to the person who broke into the mens lockers… they caught a person who was breaking into lockers. And I will add that this person got mad at me one day because I through out an empty McDonalds cup that was sitting on the lunch room table that I am suppose to keep clean… so one day he takes my big coffee thermos and shirt and throws them in the garbage can sitting next to the table they were on. Anyways… not the best employee… and he’s getting paid more than me. Lifetime rewards this man by making him manager and paying him more than me.
B. One day I was MOD (manager on duty) and was verbally threatened by a new employee. The assistant manager witnessed the threats, an incident report was made with the club, and with the police. This person is now managing in the club as well. I emailed the head office asking if they do criminal background checks… I got no response.


HARRASSMENT:
Because the company does not have enough employees working in the operations department I am consistantly getting harrassed by fellow employees and managers. I love the long list of things Lifetime Fitness wants our department to keep clean/do... it's great. But the problem is we don't have enough employees to get the work done 'consistantly'. I am a very fast and efficient worker... and no matter how fast I run and clean... I can't keep up. None of us can. We all work hard. And what ends up happening is... the night crew will complain that the day crew isn't working hard... and the day crew will complain about the night crew. Many times I've had employees and managers get mad at me for not doing SOMETHING ELSE! I have tried to explain to everyone that when you don't have enough employees to do everything nice... that means that SOMETHING is always going to sacrifice. The reason this turns INTO a complaint is because I work very hard to TRY and keep my managers happy... in hopes to someday get paid more... and after a hard days work... the managers will sometimes come to me and be mad and ask me why I didn't do something ELSE better. They have no idea how hard I worked doing what I DID do. So this is starting to wear on me... and it's feeling like harrassment as well. If I work hard constantly... I should not be yelled at about something I did NOT do. Even the managers feel the stress of the situation of not being able to get things the way the club says they want.

I will say again... I love working at the club... great people... fun working environment it can be... but I am very unhappy with some of the things I see going on at this club. I want ‘this’ Lifetime club to make sense… I like things in general to make sense. It makes sense to pay people who work very hard better than people who don’t work quite as hard/efficient. I risked my job for the safety of the Lifetime Fitness members when I reported the club for keeping the whirlpool/hot-tub water temperature over 105 degrees consistently. I’d think Lifetime would want to keep good employees like me around… putting my paycheck back to start pay after being with the company 2 years isn’t very nice of the company. There’s nothing I can do about it… except voice my words about this… That is why I typed this.

James Limborg
[email protected]
http://www.musicdownloadinstrumentalsongs.com/