A woman says she recently had a terrifying experience at a Planet Fitness. And she’s on a mission to warn others so they avoid the same fate.
It was an average day at the gym for Alyssa Max (@alyssamax7). After her workout, she got in one of the on-site tanning beds.
Her regular gym was undergoing renovations, so she was at a different Planet Fitness, Max says. Otherwise, it was business as usual.
Then she got out of the tanning bed.
She couldn’t believe what she saw.
“The door to the tanning room was wide open and I was [expletive] naked,” she says in a TikTok filmed immediately after leaving the gym. “…I am certain that I closed and locked it.”
No one was in the room at the time. This was little comfort.
“I don’t know if someone came into the room while I was tanning,” Max says in the TikTok.
Frightened but determined
Max says she got dressed as quickly as possible then immediately went to the front desk.
“She assured me that nobody had come back there,” Max told the Mary Sue in a direct message on Wednesday. “But I was the third person who reported the exact same thing happening in that specific room.”
Her first thought, Max said, was why were they still letting people use the tanning bed if the door kept getting opened.
Max says she still doesn’t have a good answer to that question.
According to Max, one of her friends subsequently went to the gym to investigate. What she found, Max says, was “alarming.”
“Those doors can be unlocked from the outside by anyone and everyone. It doesn’t take a manager’s key,” she says in a follow-up post.
The friend was reportedly able to unlock the door with her fingernail.
Max says the company’s response thus far has left a lot to be desired.
Planet Fitness corporate did not respond to an email sent Wednesday afternoon.
The Planet Fitness saga continues
Max’s TikTok about her experience swiftly went viral. As of this writing, it’s been watched 337,000 times.
A few days later, Max says she returned to her home gym, as its renovations were completed.
She told the Mary Sue that the branch manager approached her and requested that she fill out an incident report. Then she says the area manager came up to her.
“It led to a conversation that gave me mixed feelings,” Max said. “While he initially came off friendly & professional, he insinuated that what I experienced was my own fault by saying, ‘Maybe the door wasn’t closed all the way.’”
@alyssamax7 #fyp ♬ original sound – Alyssa Max
Max is certain that she closed and locked the door just like she does every single time she tans.
She says that manager claims they’d inspected the door and found no issue. However, she says he did concede that they were looking into other options for the doors.
Although the experience left her with a bad feeling overall, Max says she doesn’t intend to cancel her membership. In the future, she says she’s going to put a chair in front of the door to both deter people from coming in and alert her if anyone tries.
She’s urging others to do the same.
“I understand Planet Fitness is an affordable option for people compared to other gyms, but safety precautions should be non-negotiable & I’m disappointed that this happened in the first place,” Max said.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
