Operation ‘Beach Bod’: Day 2  (Tan Time -54 days)

The boss is away this week and while he’s hardly comparable to fire-happy Sir Alan Sugar (as in ‘You’re fired’ not ‘Oh look at me I’m twirling fire sticks’), none the less it’s just that little more calm when he’s not around. As with most offices, when the boss is out everyone seems a little more relaxed and much more chatty. Suits are replaced by jeans and shirt, lunch hours suddenly gain 30 minutes and no-one will be caught dead staying late. This week I’m being a bit of a loser. Instead of joining the team for a pub lunch today, I decided to, yep you guessed it, head to the gym.

It was another Body Pump class and yet again I found myself drowning in sweat, squatting along to the thunderous (and frankly horrendous) beatz of Scooter.

But it’s not the class I want to talk about. It was, in all honesty, fairly routine and uneventful except for when the new hot personal trainer walked into the classroom briefly and everyone immediately stopped paying attention to our instructor ‘Ladies. LADIES. Focus now. Come on, who wants to get rid of those bingo wings?’

We DID want to get rid of those bingo wings (without the use of...a black sock?)

I want to talk about post-work-out antics, for you have never quite experienced chaos until you’ve had to endure the women’s change room at lunchtime.

Now boys, most of you will know what it’s like to wait for a woman to get ready. “I’ll be 10 minutes” tends to equal “I’m actually going to be an hour and I’ll probably need another 5 minutes to change my lipstick because this rouge-red doesn’t go quite as well as the red-rouge”.

Right, well take all the faffing and multiply it by 10. And then add on the fact that there are about 60 lockers and only 15 showers, 3 toilets, 4 hairdryers, 5 mirrors, 2 power points and 1 very crap air-con vent. While I’ve never had to queue for a shower, it’s absolute bedlam in the hair and make-up ‘zone’. This, my friends, is how it looks:

Or more accurately:

'Give me that hairdryer!' BAM! 'Not until you let me get to that power socket so I can plug in my hair straightener!' BOOM!

At the four hairdryer ‘stations’ cram at least 10 women all trying to tease, fluff, smooth and straighten ALL at the same time. Some are fully dressed, other are battling it out in their underwear. A few have precariously placed towels. Under only one of these four stations is a power point; the other is across the room. At power point (A), one lady manages to plug in her straightener, a triumphant grin on her face as emerges from under the desk.  At power point (B), across the room, there’s a queue forming and one woman is actually huffing and looking at her watch as she waits.

That’s the hair department. It gets worse.

There now begins to form a group of women who have moved on from hair and want to get their slap on. This gaggle of make-up wielding females begins to hover around the hairdryer stations, bopping up and down in vain attempts to find some spare mirror space. I watch and can’t help but think they all look a bit like this:

Oh, hang on. More like this:

It wasn't meat they were smelling...

Eventually the chaos subsides and soon the change room empties. I smile and  walk over to the stations. Oh it’s so spacious and there are FOUR dryers for me to use! As if to emphasize this point I click one on, blast my hair for a few seconds and then hop over to the next desk and switch another dryer on and use  TWO at THE SAME TIME!

My crazy hot wind machine moment is interrupted when one of the receptionists walks in. She smiles. “Boss away this week Soph?”  I nod. “Yep, extra half hour for lunch!” I reply. “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” she nods acknowledging my spacious twin-drying action from earlier. Turning the dryers back on I decide that perhaps gym sessions are best left for after work. At least then I only have to deal with the pole dancers. But that’s another story…