..and employees and customers are reporting mixed emotions
April 1, 2022
A large US based health club chain has recently updated their sauna regulations as follows:
Gillian Estafan, Director of Customer Relations explains the new policy: “We have had several complaints from several members about not being able to throw water on the rocks, and most of the people complaining have funny foreign accents.” She continues: “They say that all sauna heaters are meant to take water on the rocks, but I’m still afraid of electrocution, so I stay far away.”
Changing sauna health club regulations is not easy
Bernie Mulish, Corporate Maintenance Supervisor, is not happy: “Whatever the boss says, we’ll do. But now I have to go out and switch 155 signs, and then I have to deal with idiots spitting on the sauna rocks and pouring pool water on the sauna rocks.”
When presented with the reported health benefits of sauna, Bernie Mulish fires back: “I don’t get it. I don’t know what the big deal is. I can’t even pronounce that word they use. I mean, why can’t they just call it steam? And what the hell, we have two types of saunas, a dry sauna and a wet sauna. If people want steam, we have a steam sauna at pretty much all our facilities. I don’t get it.”
Member mixed emotions
“I used to be able to do my stretching in the sauna with my headphones on” reports Mike Miller, a longtime health club member. “Now everything gets too hot and moist in there. My clothes, my headphones, my gym shoes… and the sauna is often full with a bunch of strangers on the benches, making it all steamy all the time and chatting and laughing. I like it the old way.”
Väinö Hämäläinen shares a different view. “It’s about f***ing time” is all he would say about the matter, ladle in hand, sitting on the sauna bench. Things became especially challenging when he was asked for the spelling of his name for this article. “We don’t talk when we make löyly” was his only other response.
But it appears that it wasn’t the silent authority of members that finally made their impact. Ms. Estafan goes on to explain: “As part of our mission statement, the health and wellbeing of our members is our top priority. We reviewed the reported health benefits of sauna, and recognize that these health studies come from Finland. We don’t understand it fully, but our CEO just returned from Finland. He came back to the office with a radiant glow and a warm smile. He called a board meeting and declared the change in sauna regulations effective immediately. He called his Finland trip a “life changing experience.”
A message from the CEO
“I’ll admit it. This löyly business is the real deal. They call Finland the happiest country in the world, and they all take saunas. And their saunas are nothing like what we have been offering our members all these years. I apologize to everybody who has been trying to tell me about real sauna, and from this day forward, we are converting to creating real sauna for our members.”
Ms. Estafan also reported that her boss, the CEO, has not been in the office much since his return from Finland.
There are rumors that the health club chain is extending free health care to all employees.