;
  • Report:  #1430520

Complaint Review: YMCA of the USA 101 N. Wacker Drive Chicago IL. 60606 - Chicago Illinois

Reported By:
Alvah - Westfield, Massachusetts, United States
Submitted:
Updated:

YMCA of the USA 101 N. Wacker Drive Chicago IL. 60606
101 Wacker Drive Chicago, Illinois, United States
Web:
N/A
Tell us has your experience with this business or person been good? What's this?

Subject:  Formal complaint against an internal policy and abuse of power

Date:  January 22, 2018

Sir:

On January 11, 2018, at approximately 11:45 in the morning, I had just left the men’s locker room to enter the exercise room of the Westfield, Massachusetts YMCA.  As I walked into this room, I found four men talking about Martin Luther King’s federal holiday scheduled for the following Monday.

There was no vulgarism or anything I perceived as “inappropriate” or “wrong,” either in their behavior or in their discussion of this topic.  It was clean!

A few moments after my arrival in this room, however, I became aware a YMCA employee, a woman with the name of “Sue” or “Susan,” had reprimanded one of the men, a retired teacher in his early 70’s, for talking about an “inappropriate subject” and talking too loud.  Then she walked out of the room to re-enter her office directly across the exercise room.

The man was obviously annoyed by her behavior and said so before leaving the exercise room. The other men were confused or frustrated; and then one other man also left the room.

Within a few minutes I struck up a conversation with a retired police officer, a man in his late 60’s.  I am in my early 70’s. We have known each other for quite some time and frequently talk about our military experiences and television documentaries on warfare. This time it was our recent experiences with a series of documentaries on Hitler’s Death Squads on the Military History Channel. We talked about seeing pictures of thousands of death bodies in the death camps and the prosecution of the n**i officers responsible for them in an international court immediately after the Second World War in Germany. 

About the time I reported these documentaries were gruesome for me to watch and, if I am not careful, I said, I might very well have some nightmares on the subject when, to my surprise, a women approached me to complain of the “inappropriate” subject-matter.  She did not approve of my talking about it.  A little annoyed, too, I responded, “That’s too bad,” and walked out of the room to go back to the men’s locker room to go home without finishing my routine.  While walking down the stairwell leading into the locker room, I remember thinking about the way the woman had spoken to me and, particularly, her facial expressions and pattern of speech. She was struggling with problems of low self-esteem and an inferiority complex, and it was clear she was afraid of men.

Immediately, as I walked into the locker room, I found several men either dressing or un-dressing.  One of them was an employee of YMCA.  I mentioned my recent experience with a woman who had disapproved of the topic in my conversation with men in the exercise room.  One of them, the employee, asked me if she were blond.  I responded, “Yes.” Then he described her physical appearance and approximate age.  It was the same person.

He responded with laughter, along with two other men, “We are familiar with her.  She is always complaining about something.” Within the hour after going home I received a telephone call from a woman in the YMCA.  Speaking very fast and loud, without stopping long time to listen to me, she gave me hell for discussing such an “inappropriate” subject, though she obviously did not know what I had been discussing at the time. She had relied upon the complainant’s description.

I tried to tell her nothing was wrong or inappropriate about me or the subject-matter; however, she would not stop long enough to hear me out.  She kept talking over me. Angry, I hung up on her in response to her dishonesty and incompetence on this issue of controversy, as well as her incompetence in social communications. She has got to learn to listen! And to talk to people properly!  It was well within my legal rights to talk about anything.  It was then I put “two and two together” to realize the blond woman was using the YMCA’s policy to avoid unpleasant experiences in the building in her complaints about men and their conversations.  This policy had empowered her over men, perhaps the only time she would have such power over a man and, for a short duration, it would elevate her self-esteem. I have seen many people do such things.

On the following morning, I went down to the YMCA to close down my account and membership.  When I had arrived home, I found a telephone message waiting for me.  It was the same woman who had called me earlier.  This time she had wanted us to talk in order to “get on the same page” with each other.  I did not respond.  I had enough of her. Her motive was obvious:  She wanted to give me a lesson on the appropriate subjects between men in the exercise room. The topics we discussed are none of her business and she should possess enough life-experience to recognize a woman’s ulterior motives behind a complaint against a man, if there is one; and there was one in this instance.



Reports & Rebuttal
Respond to this report!
Also a victim?
Repair Your Reputation!
//