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Writer's pictureRyan Tracy

Confessions of a Club Manager

You all have stories; member stories, staff stories, board stories. Some from your current club, a previously club, and more. We'd like to share them with our community for everyone's enlightenment. We will use this avenue for GM's to submit their stories and we will post them to our Members Blog anonymously. Email your stories to ryan@clubstudy.ca and we will share them here anonymously, here's one to kick it off...


We all have one, that certain member that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, no matter what the situation, they are never happy. They are the kind of person that when you ask how they are, they say “I’m ok for now” or “Well I woke up today” or my favourite “Well nothing bad has happened yet”.


At a previous Club, we had the classic unhappy person and here is their story...

This member would come every year for our Mother’s Day Brunch since it would eat up about 50% of his Minimum House Account (MHA). Just so you know when his MHA was complete he would then only drink water and eat free snack mix, Every. Single. Day!


So like every other year he is in with his family for our brunch. The next day he goes on line to see we have charged him for two cups of coffee and calls to say it was included in the brunch, which it was, and we take it off his bill.

So about two days later I see him in the lounge, say good morning and ask “how are you doing?” and instead of the regular “the sky is falling” response I get a grunt, that’s right a grunt. So I see him later in the afternoon say “hello” again and “how are you doing?” and get another grunt.


So every day for the next four months I see this member and every day I say “good morning” or “good afternoon” and every time, and I mean every time, I get a grunt back. I started going out of my way to say hello so I could get the grunt, I thought let's have some fun with this, if it wasn’t so sad it would be hilarious!

So fast forward to September 30th. It is a cold and rainy day and there is no one around the Club except for this member, drinking water and eating free snack mix (MHA is all used)! I am having a slightly bad day and decide it is time to approach him and find out why he has been so rude all year and only ever grunted at me.


So I head to the lounge where he is sitting all alone and I sit across from him and say : “What did I do wrong for you to be so rude to me all year by only ever grunting at me whenever I say hello” and he responds “Mothers Day”. Well now I am confused and say "I knew about the coffee and we fixed that so was there something else". He goes on to explain how he wasn’t happy with the buffet and I did nothing about. I explain that I had no knowledge that he wasn’t happy and asked why he didn’t say anything four months earlier to me. Yup, he doesn’t answer, he grunts. I ask what it will take to make him happy, he says “you’re a smart guy, you figure it out” I respond with “I want to make sure I get it right so let’s stop playing around and just tell me”. Well, of course he won’t say a thing so I head back to the office and look up his Mothers Day bill. It is $175 bucks and I ask the accountant to credit his account for that amount. I head back to the lounge and tell him I have refunded him the full amount of his bill at which point he shakes my hand and says he feels I have done the right thing. Later that day I see him again, say “hello, how are you?" and he responds back “Doing great how are you”? Apparently all is good again!


So the next morning, October 1st, I receive the unused Minimum House Account report, since September 30th is our last day before we bill any member who has not spent a minimum of $400, guess what, my favourite member, who I gave the $175 refund too is now $175 short on his minimum spending. So as per club policy we bill him the $175 as unused minimum. Perfect, absolutely perfect!


About three days later, after he has had a chance to go online and see his statement from September 30th, I see him in the lounge ask him “how are you doing?” and guess what…he grunts.


In the end, beware of Karma, which is defined as "the quality of somebody's current and future lives as determined by that person's behaviour in this and in previous lives".

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