Why I work where I work

I had a moment at work today where I almost cried.  That made me realize why I love working here, despite some hardships that have come up recently. 

F0r those of you who don’t know, I work at the YMCA.  Our motto is “we build strong kids, strong families, and strong communities.”  We work hard to build a community atmosphere instead of a gym atmosphere.  We provide financial assistance to families who do not make enough money to join but either need to or want to.  We try to keep our members feeling like family to use, and it shows and you can even feel it. 

We had a member today who was at our old location and came with us when we moved to this new location.  She has a son who has a birthday approaching and she put some money down to have a birthday party at the YMCA on a sunday.  She want to use the rockwall, Yland (play area) and then decided to use the group exercise room to do a fun obstacle course for them.  While trying to plan ahead, she came in this past sunday to scope everything out.  To her disappoinment, she saw that the Junior Jammers (like the spurs dancers but for kids) hold practice in the group exercise room on sunday afternoons (this is new for us).  She then went into a panic mode and did not know what to do.  Her only solution was to cancel the party at the Y and use her own house.  But what if it rains?  What will she do?  She really wanted the YMCA. 

She came in a spoke with a co-worker regarding the situation and they spoke about just cancelling and she deal with the “what ifs.”  Well, I’m not nosey but I want to try to help wherever I can so I listened into their coversation.  I came up with the suggestion to clear the bikes out of the cycle room and use that as an extra area for an obstacle course.  It’s something neither of them even thought about.  Amazing what one more mind can do!  Well, she had unfortunaly already sent the invitations to the printer, so she was out of luck.  On the flip side, she is using us as backup in case it rains that day.  We made things a little better. 

She was just in tonight and I said “back again!”  She said she was now there to workout.  But she then told me that my comment/solution made her feel so good and a little less stressed that there was a solution to that issue.  It’s something they never thought about and only reassured her reasoning for staying with the YMCA.  I made her feel good today…and that’s what matters…and that’s why I work for the YMCA.