Continuity At The Gym

Continuity is very important to us. We need rituals and rules and continuity to secure and anchor us. Some of us need it more than others. So for example if I find a restaurant or café that I really like, I will go there a lot and usually try to sit at the same table.
Change is all very well in its place and time, and of course especially if it is for the better. Without change we wouldn't have progress. But maybe that's the active side. Passive continuity, perhaps, is more important. Like having continuous peacetime not interrupted by war as a backdrop providing security, which means that on the surface, things can  progress and change for the better.

I'm waffling on about continuity because I realized how important it was for me to be able to stay on at my gym. I am quite relieved that I will continue to go to my gym and not have to find another one. It does give me a feeling of security to know that things will continue as they have been.

The reason I thought I might have to change is this. A couple of months ago, I lost my gym pass. It's a plastic card with a metal strip which I use to log in and out of my gym. Just so that they know I'm there (but actually I don't think anyone really bothers to notice whether I'm there or not!). It's not an entry card you understand. The door of the gym is open and I can just walk in.

So when I lost it, the gym owners said I needed to pay 20 euros for a new one!
20 euros! Even my credit card only costs 10 euros to replace!
I was very cross. The gym is not cheap and there are all kinds of extra costs. I tried to negotiate, but there was no chance. So finally I called up and said I wanted to quit. I was sure I could find a cheaper gym where I didn't keep having to pay extra for stuff like this.

The gym owners said if I gave notice in writing by February 3, I could leave by April 30. So that's what I did. I sent a letter and faxed it to the number they gave me. I asked them to confirm in writing that they had received my letter.

In the meantime, I continued going to the gym. And the people working there said that I didn't need the card, as they knew me. And over the last couple of months, I've realized that I really enjoy going there, and that it has a lot of advantages, and especially that I need the continuity of going to that particular gym. I don't want to have to start all over again with a new one.

Anyway, I heard nothing from the gym owners, so I decided to call up and ask them if I could stay on at the gym and if they could ignore my letter of termination.
Guess what. They claimed they had never received the letter and that I had not given notice.

Well. I said that wasn't possible as I faxed it immediately after our last conversation to the number they had given me, and I had the fax report confirming that the fax had been received.
But, anyway, now I'm not giving notice anyway. They have written to me telling me that I have not quit, and confirming that I can stay on!

While I am happy about this for the sake of continuity, I am concerned about how hard it seems to be to quit sports clubs and gyms. In the 1990's, I used to take my kids to a sports club. We quit the club in the late 1990's, when the kids didn't go any more. The club stopped booking the fees off my account every 6 months for a while, but in the early 2000s, they started again. I discovered it too late, only after a couple of years, whereupon I called them up and told them that we had quit years back. So they stopped booking the money off again, only to start up again a couple of years later. When I called them up then, they claimed they had never received any letter of termination from me.

It took years to get out of that club!

Yes, continuity and change are certainly one (or even two) things!, but quitting the gym is quite another.