Dobby Senior Project Week 4

Monday – Shadowing Chris at LifeTime

1. (10-12am) Operational work (Folding, transferring, loading towels)
2. Because Chris is at the top of the pyramid, I also want to try to be an operational staff which is at the bottom of the pyramid.
3. I met a diverse type of people there. Some of them showed up to work late, some of them connect their phone to bluetooth and listened to music that has a lot of swearing. The volume was quite loud that I suspect people can hear it while working out.
4. (1-2pm) I went back to Chris and observe his meeting. I learned some new stuff about LifeTime but feel lazy to share them.

Wednesday – Shadowing Chris at LifeTime

1. (10-12am) Operational work
2. There were like 27 operational staff in total with about 4 to 5 of them show up in a day.
3. After loading towels to the male changing room, I felt bored because there’s nothing else I can do to help. So I went to find Jamie, the operational manager, and started a conversation with him.
4. Most of those 27 staffs were paid hourly, only like 5 of them is the Lifetime permanent staff.
5. I asked about the hardest part of his job, and he said is the deployment of the schedule. He mentioned that a lot of staffs just don’t show up on time, or they just request absence without giving a reason. When they don’t show up, Jamie has to take care their work while still doing his own stuff like budgeting management.
6. Then he talked about his job and LifeTime West County before he became the operational manager.
7. He said he was once a salesperson when LifeTime West County still have selling groups for individuals. Then he was brushed off by new applicants because the amount of them was just huge.
8. Another reason was that a large amounts of LifeTime were built in rural areas rather than in big cities. And it indicates that new customers won’t keep growing forever in some rural areas. For old clubs like WestCounty, it is more important to keep old employees than recruiting new ones.
9. This trend has led to the disappearance of the sales positions toward individuals, and also reflects the importance of operational work. Because giving customers a good experience is the essence of retaining customers.
10. Then We talked about some college stuff and he shared some of his personal family stuff with me.

Tuesday, Thursday, Friday – Coursera Programming.

1. It went alright.