ATHLETIC HORIZONS IN CHICO: UNSAFE ENVIRONMENT !!
My child has been taken gymnastic class at Athletic Horizon for some months now. He likes it well. It seems to be a clean, well appointed facility with a high regard for student safety and fun. I wish, therefore, that I could write a glowing review without qualification; unfortunately, I cannot.
It seems that AH is _not_ a safe place for a parent to quietly read a book and wait for their child to be done with class. This afternoon, I was sitting with my daughter, both of us quietly reading library books. Basically minding our own business. A small child came into the play area near our seats and started screaming into the nearby fan at the top of his lungs. The first few times I curtailed my reaction...who among us hasn't screamed into a fan, after all (the blades distort the sound in a fun way). Finally, however, I asked the boy to stop. He said, "what" and I repeated myself a few times in a fairly calm tone (I teach children's arts classes and am used to trying to be firm by not scary). Then he started screaming into the fan again. I told him, more loudly since he, again, kept saying, "what?" ( I assumed that noise from the very fan kept him from hearing me) to go get his mom and he scampered off. Understand that there are 2-3 dozen parents with kids waiting for other kids to get out of class. No way to tell who belongs to whom unless they are sitting with them. Younger siblings are often somewhat loosely attended - playground rules, right? We keep a general track of our own and everybody watches out for everybody's? A few minutes later, a grandmotherly woman walked up and asked if the boy had done something wrong. I told her quietly, calmly, and politely and she wandered off, seemingly satisfied. I even said, "No big deal. It's just kids playing. Don't get him in too much trouble!"
Imagine my surprise when, several minutes passed and the same grandmotherly woman came back with "Lisa", an Athletic Horizon's employee (who, fairly politely at first, asked for my side of the story). Within moments, the grandmotherly started screaming threats at me that she would call the police if I ever talked to her kid again and that I should only have talked to her if her child misbehaved...crazy, right, since I had sent the message with her kid to bring her and had no way of knowing which one she was. I'll admit, I somewhat lost my cool, but essentially told her she had no right to walk up and threaten me and that she was welcome to use my phone to call the police right then and there.
Well, I would write the whole thing off as one crazy parent were it not for the fact that Lisa, seemed to want to pursue the issue in some way, saying she was not herself the manager, refused to give me the name and contact info of anyone in authority (owner,manager, etc.) but was very intent on getting _my_ name and number. While she said that she was impartial and did not ("could not") have all the facts, it seemed very clear to me that she had made up her mind that I was the one at fault, though in what way she declined to articulate. She basically refused to even inquire of my daughter, who was sitting three feet away for the entire episode as to my daughter's point of view and then, when I finally insisted she do so, quickly made light of her input. I did ask Lisa if this were the sort of business where parents minding their own business with their nose stuck in a book were routinely accosted by other, irrational threat making parents while "management" stood idly by. She took great offense at this and, though I apologized several times, she never really seemed to get over it. She was so...creepy...about not giving me the name of anyone in authority that I could talk to that I declined to give her my name (or my child's) inasmuch as, in such a surreal case where she obviously wasn't that interested in either my side of the story or the facts of the matter, I, perhaps irrationally, feared that my child would bear the brunt somehow. This met with pretty much open derision from Lisa, who, in general, persistently turned the conversation to how weird this was for _her_ , and pretty blasé about the fact the I was the one who had just been yelled at, threatened, embarrassed in front of all the other parents, etc.
Now I don't really expect AH to be able to control all the crazy parents there are in the world. Heaven's no! Not even possible! But if AH staff is going to interject themselves into an issue like this, I would expect it to be on the side of objectivity, reason, calmness, and customer service (like maybe, "hey crazy lady, please calm down. It is not okay to stand there and threaten other customers like that"). I certainly expect that, when I ask to speak to someone in authority, I am, promptly, given a name and contact info, not this mysterious, "I can't tell you their name, but I'll have someone call you."
Poor, poor, customer service! read more
