Leisure centre manager had a pop at me… and I can’t get it out of my head!

[ForestMum2020]

I just want to have a moan / get this off my chest I think.

I take my 2 year old twins to a gymnastics class at a leisure centre. The centre has a big soft play which we have to walk round to get to the class, and it’s all glass panels so the soft play is totally in view. There’s a gate at the back of the soft play next to the class.

At the end of their first lesson back in September, they asked to go in the soft play. The other mums from the class used the back gate to go in. So, I said yes to the girls, we went through the back gate, and I asked one of the other mums what the deal was. She just shrugged and said it was fine, they do it every week and no one has said anything. There’s only ever a couple of other people using it, and the reception looks into soft play, so there’s no way the centre weren’t aware.

Fast forward to now (9 months later) and we’ve been going into the soft play after every lesson. Nowadays the twins will play for all of five minutes, then come out and eat lunch, then go back in for five minutes and we go home. It’s a lovely easy routine for us.

Today, the manager approached me and said I shouldn’t be in there. I’d not paid to use the facility and she’s aware this has been going on for some time. She didn’t say anything to any of the other gym class mums. I apologised profusely and said I genuinely didn’t think the centre were bothered because it’s so empty and all the mums do it. She got quite rude, but she wasn’t aggressive. So I just apologised again and packed up our stuff. She asked me to make sure I paid on the way out so I did (£16! Not cheap!).

I just can’t shake how mortified I am. And frustrated. I’m such a rule follower and I let my guard down under the excuse of “everyone else was doing it!”

I’ve cancelled my membership to the class and shan’t go back. I hate that the manager had been watching me for some time and clearly took issue with me over the other mums for some reason. I just wish someone at reception had said at some stage “make sure you pay for the soft play if you’re headed in there!”.

But I also hate myself for wanting to never go back. I find it hard to do much with the twins and this was working so well. I’ve cut my nose off to spite my face.

How do I stop myself overthinking this whole thing??

I must admit that I’m a wee bit baffled no one has ever been anywhere with a soft play that’s free to use for paying customers (which I am, before anyone says I’m not, I pay a monthly membership fee). Macdonalds has a soft play which is free to use. There’s a local pub here with a soft play that’s free to use. My sister has a David Lloyd membership and takes my kids into soft play free of charge when she looks after them. I completely concur I should have checked with reception, but this really isn’t the most scandalous thing that’s ever happened. There’s no ticketed gate, there’s no security on the door.

Return and speak to the manager. Tell her it was a genuine mistake - without mentioning other mums, that your twins love the facilities, that if there’s an issue in future you’d prefer it to be discussed in private then carry on as normal.

If your friends all stole a chocolate bar every time you went in to the shops, would it be ok for you to do it too? Is it ok because you do it every week, and the shop manager has noticed but not told you to stop before, so basically he’s given you the green light to shoplift every week right? You buy a bag of crisps each week, so it’s not really that bad that you steal the chocolate bar, is it?

If one week he told you to pay for the chocolate bar in your pocket and to stop stealing again in the future - would you feel like he’d “had a pop at you”? Would you feel offended and that the shop manager had been unreasonable?

Of course not. Both scenarios are essentially the same. You should feel mortified and embarrassed.

My sense of injustice

@BrickBiscuit this genuinely made me laugh!!!

Maybe they are full members or something?

Asking one person to pay while not asking others to pay is NOT asking reasonably.

OP there are a lot of posters on here full of vitriol. I don’t think 10 mins in an empty soft play in full view of reception for months on end (why didn’t anyone call to you or a another parent the first time they saw you using it?) is really your fault. You weren’t sneaking in hoping not to be spotted, it was something multiple people have been doing for months in full view of staff. For someone to then single you out and shame you is quite baffling. Surely the staff could have put up a sign when they noticed people were using the soft play without paying, or politely mention it without monitoring you for months then bringing it up as if you’re some kind of criminal!

You missed the bit where the manager ignored the other chocolate-smeared faces sitting there and you were the only one asked to pay.

Someone else stealing doesn’t make it any less theft if you steal.
Its entirely obvious from OP’s own wording that the other comment was far from a ringing endorsement or anything like the centre telling them they didn’t need to pay.

I’m going to guess you’re a man @BrickBiscuit

God some of the replies on here, you would think the police needed to be called. The soft play haven’t lost out on any money let’s be honest. At £8 for a 2 year old (which is extortionate in my opinion) and the OP having twins, I highly doubt she would have paid £16 every week for her twins to use it for 5/10 mins, she just wouldn’t have gone.

To be honest it sounds as if you’ve been singled out because they’ve noticed you going in and out of the soft play. You said in your OP that the kids go on for 5 mins, come out eat and go back in. It’s probably drawn attention to you and then they’ve realised you haven’t paid.

This happened with me at swimming, the toddler pool and leisure pool were next to each other and all the parents used to let the kids go in the leisure pool while waiting for the lesson to start for 5/10 mins instead of making them wait (when I say use I mean sit in the shallow end or go down a tiny slide nothing major). Did it for months and then one day everyone on lessons got a email to say you couldn’t use the leisure pool before lessons unless you paid. i didn’t do it after that, just told my 2 year old we weren’t allowed to use that pool anymore and he was fine, no big deal. But they didn’t loose out on any money because if they said from the start about paying, I wouldn’t have let my son use the pool for 5 mins.

a private business asking customers to pay a fee-paying service is perfectly reasonable.

You don't know the circumstances of the other customers, you don't know how much they spend and how they use the facilities.

and frankly, if a private business is giving free access to someone for any reason, it has nothing to do with you.

If a coffee shop gives a free coffee to a regular who spends a fair amount every single day, but ask you to pay for your coffee when you come once a week, of course it's reasonable.

@ForestMum2020yup, you’re completely right. There are places where the softplay is included in the membership. This could easily have been one of those places.

it was not a big deal. People just want to stick the knife in and call you a thief. It’s super pathetic. Don’t worry about it. Leave this thread. It’s not a representation of reality.

I just don’t believe that the op knows all these other mums weren’t paying week in week out for 9 months BUT also doesn’t know the name of not even ONE of these mums.

OP, are you saying that there is genuinely nothing at reception with a price list which says the soft play has to be paid for? That there is no sign anywhere and that going in the back door is exactly the same as go in in the front door, and not somehow ‘hidden’ from reception or away from staff view? Are you saying that the membership fee covers everything else and there are no other optional extras?

If this is the case, then I think you could reasonably assume it was included. But then, if that was the case, no parents would be checking with each other and people would be going in the front door and not feeling they could only use it for 5 mins.

You suggested in your first posts that you clearly thought payment was likely required. You asked others. You weren’t entirely surprised to be spoken to by the member of staff, although it was a horrible experience.

So did you have reasonable cause to think it was quite likely a payable service, or zero reason to suspect this at all? If the latter, then the conversation with the manager would have been totally out of the blue. In that scenario, I think I’d have expressed total surprise and asked her to show me the info about it being payable, given everything else in the centre was included. But that isn’t quite the sense that comes from your post.

Did you have a suspicion you were all being a bit cheeky, even if you were getting away with it? Or did you have zero sense of this at any point?

Oh come on. You know that a soft play at a MacDonalds or a Pub or in a cafe - where they are using it to draw in customers who will buy other things and stay longer while their kids play - is completely different that going to a different (gated) area of somewhere set up to make money from selling activities. It’s like taking a packet of paper napkins from the shelves in Tesco and then when the security guard stops you saying, ‘oh but they gives these away free at Burger King’.

@Hollietreeim assuming most people know shoplifting is illegal and wrong. OP didn’t know and was never told that she wasn’t allowed to use the soft play so it’s not comparable at all. And yes there are loads of free soft play facilities in leisure centres, shopping centres, family restaurants etc.

Now you’re claiming you thought the leisure centre had a free soft play 😂

Oh, and you also know that if you went into MacDonalds or a pub and used their soft play without buying and food or drink you’d be out on your ear.

I apologised profusely and said I genuinely didn’t think the centre were bothered because it’s so empty

yes that’s how businesses work 😂 There’s not many people using it, so fuck it, I get to use it for free.

When you entered through the back gate that first time, perhaps the other mum was referring to exactly that -using a different entrance. Did she say to you outright “we haven’t paid”. They and the other Mums may have paid upon entry before the gymnastics class. -this is what I do at our leisure centre before we go swimming. You may well have been the only one not paying for nine months and it is no wonder you’ve finally been pulled up on it.

I wonder how people would feel if the soft play charged OP to use it with her monthly membership, refused entry and then said they thought that was ok because a) OP or anyone else didn't say anything and b) other companies do it and c) wrote it off as not being a big deal.

I don't think there'd be such a blasé attitude if the roles were reversed somehow.

OP's embarrassed because of her own actions but trying to find a way to make it someone else's, namely the managers, fault.

Not at all uncommon for people to downplay their own behaviour and embellish on that of the other person because they feel that 'staff' should be the ones in the wrong no matter what the circumstances are.

@Sofiewoo I think you’ve got yourself muddled with my response. In answer to MelanieLaughs question about how I knew they weren’t paying, I said because I asked them. In answer to her question around whether I knew if there was an additional charge, I said I should have checked. (And my latest post is just saying… I don’t believe it would have been as insane as some posters are claiming to think soft play would be included in my membership.)

Just own it. You had a good run, if you're going to do something like that, you have to do it knowing that you might get caught out one day. You took the risk, you had a good run, you've finally got caught out. It's fine, own it, take it on the chin. Don't penalise your kids by taking them out of their class! It's natural to be embarrassed, just hold your head up and pretend you aren't.

Ffs calm yourself down. The situation you’ve described is literally nothing like what’s happened here 😂