About 2 weeks ago Jack bought home a colouring in sheet. It was for a competition to win a family pass to the Royal Easter Show. He diligently coloured in the picture of the Easter Bunny and gave it to me, instructing me to send it off to the address so he could win. He is fairly full of himself when it comes to these things. I must admit, it was fairly cool colouring.
So I filled out the form part and sent it off for judging. Little did I know it would start a chain of events that would get my knickers in a twist.
Turns out the competition was being run by one of those Lady-Only gyms. They had distributed the sheets at the kids school. And now, it seems, I had unwillingly added my personal details to their database of harassment.
Each day, at about 4pm, I now get a call from Amanda, Susie or Helen, inviting me to come and "activate" my two week free trial at their gym. Now I am all for gyms! I hear that they are excellent. But what is with the incessant badgering for me to join one?
I have stopped picking up the phone at 4pm and instead listen to the chirpy messages. The last one was the best.
"Hi Mrs Woog! I hope you are enjoying the Easter Break. This is Helen from (insert lady-gym name here - let's just call it Contours for the sake of it) and I want to invite you in for a look around our gym and check out Jack's colouring in entry up on the wall. Please call me back on XXXX and we will make a time. Please say Hi to Jack from the team at Contours!"
I listened to the message, looked at Jack and told him the Team at Contours said hi. He asked who that was and I told him that I had no freaking idea. But I do know that from now on I will be mailing all corporate colouring in competition entries right into the bin.
This little exercise has bought two of my most feared things into play together. Gym memberships and unwanted sales calls. I am fairly horrified that this chain of gyms are attempting to use mother-guilt to sell memberships. The only call I want to get from them is the one saying that we have won the freaking Family Pass to the Royal Easter Show.
But so far no bananas.
Would you be pissed off if this happened to you?
And what should I say to Helen when she calls again this afternoon?
