Equinox reviews

- The company is, at the top, run by a calculator (private equity / real estate holdings company) and, sadly, the higher up you climb in the corporation, the farther it gets from feeling 'human'. Very sad. - Equinox believes in rewarding strong performance. Yes. Your reward for a strong month is a bigger goal the next month. This is so '90s in its thinking it's absurd. Life is a wave, not a perpetual growth model. - The company motto of "It's not fitness, it's life" applies only to member$$$. The company motto for employees could be something more along the lines of, "It's not a healthy life, it's free fitness." - The pay structure for trainers is, as mentioned above, a death march. They will throw numbers in your face when you are in the interview (and on-boarding) of 6-figure sums you can make as a trainer, and you absolutely can.. if you're willing to work yourself into such an unhealthy work-life 'balance' that you can't help but feel like a complete hypocrite for not practicing at all the very thing you're trying to preach to your clients. - Playing the long-game at Equinox is not advised. Unless you are planning to climb/scratch/claw your way up their Corporate ladder. If you are a trainer, do not plan to stay much longer than 3 years. - The way Eqx teaches you to sell training to clients is, to put it mildly, quite toxic. Dated, used-car-salesman tactics and turning prospecting clients into a pure 'numbers game' rather than teaching their employees to sell by using their inspiration.. to sell by taking that thing-that-drew-them-to-training-in-the-first-place and offering some of that light to a potential client. And yes, sales is a numbers game to some extent, but it's not the *only* ingredient. Some practical discernment when choosing a prospect in the club can go a long way. (i.e. "I'm running intervals on the treadmill with headphones on and I'm not looking at you when you walk by. No. I don't want to talk to you right now about training. And I don't care that your boss, the training manager, just told you to get out there and book 3 Equifits in the next 15 minutes. And I already have 6 towels. Thanks.") - As mentioned above, in the almost-10-years I worked there, I never had a single strongly-positive interaction with a member of Corporate. And here's the thing: Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, on the club level, Equinox is a revolving door of employees. Very few people stay longer than 18 months. So I can understand why Corporate doesn't engage every employee.. a lot of them won't be there long enough for their energy output to be justified. But there are two problems now: (1) The fact that your company is a revolving door is a problem. This problem has been around for a while now. Do you intend to fix it or..? (2) I wasn't one of those employees. I was there for a long time, saying hello and being polite (making an effort to engage), all while diligently training my clients and, ultimately, helping the company and that very corporate employee be more successful. At what point do you begin engaging your employees? Or do you just.. not? Important note at this point: I am writing this from a perspective of 'openness'.. not negativity or resentment. As I'm reading all this, I'm seeing how negatively it could be sounding, and I'm not sure what to do about it because all I'm doing is expressing what it was like to work there. I'm not one of those employees that needs hand-holding or appreciation. On the contrary, I like doing my own thing. As I mentioned up in the Pros, that was even one of the bright spots to me is that management did leave me alone for the most part. This was more something I simply couldn't-help-but-notice when, after several *years* in a row of seeing the same Corporate employees, looking them in the eye, greeting them by name and saying, "Hey {insert name here} it's nice to see you," the only response was some variation of an eyebrow raise, chin nod, or, every once in a while, "Hey." Again, I get that for the first few months. Equinox is a huge company. I really do get it. But after years of seeing the same person? Just seems to me like you would *want* to engage with the employees who are sticking around. Like you would want to reinforce that.

Equinox clearly does not value their employees. I have seen so many people attempt to make their model work, and for the very few that it works for, that's great, but the majority of employees end up leaving within a year of starting. It's sad. I could literally make more money working at a McDonalds than with this company. Their management is underpaid, which makes them self-serving and not want to be helpful. Additionally, many of the employees have spent a lot of money to get training in their field and are being paid minimum wage. It is not worth the experience. Employees make a lot of money for the company and see little to no return. Clients feel the hit when their favorite trainer/pilates instructor/massage therapist leaves and they are stuck with a package that they don't want to use with anyone else. Also - if you give in to ANY extra demands (oh come in for this one client) they will expect it from you constantly. It is not worth the time and effort here.