Last week bedbugs were found at the upscale Reebok Sports Club on the Upper West Side, where Taye Diggs, Chris Cuomo, and PR big shot Ronn Torossian all work out (it's also where Jerry Seinfeld met his future wife, who was married to someone else at the time!). The club admitted it had a problem, but not to its members, most of whom found out about it by reading a gossip item in the NY Post. Now members are lashing out at the management for allegedly trying to hush up the whole thing, with "Marketing and Brand Strategy Consultant" Ashley Hart leading the charge on Facebook. Hart writes on Reebok's wall:
I just saw on the news that Reebok has bed bugs?! Seriously, was the club not going to tell it's members that you guys have had bed bugs in the locker rooms and not tell any of us. What is the club doing to take care of this? It's a pretty bad way to find out your club has bed bugs, on the news. The club have at least notified all of us...
What bothers me most, is that you say that you have posted on Facebook, but if it was not for me posting about the bed bugs issue, you would have never said anything to the members and there are only a small amount of members that use your Facebook page, as we can see from how many people have 'liked' the page. We pay a lot of money to work out at this club and expect top service in all respects to the club. I think management has failed to deliver that top service that I was so sold on, when I first became a member 4 years ago.
The club management insists bedbugs "there were only 3 lockers identified: 2 in the men's executive locker room and 1 in the women's executive locker room. Since they are executive members, we were able to notify the owners of the lockers effected and even doubled the recommended perimeter on either side of them during the clean up process. It was handled by Stern Environmental and they assured us that we were bed-bug free the next night.... We certainly weren't hiding anything. Since this particular instance was so isolated and addressed so quickly, we decided not to bother anyone else that was not affected."
Heh, that isn't really cutting it with Hart—she spins stuff like this for a living. The whole exchange is pretty enjoyable for the way Hart refuses to let them off the hook, and why should she? She pays at least $209 a month to use this gym, and bedbugs are notorious for traveling in the folds of clothes to find new hosts. Bedbug expert Gil Bloom tells Brick Underground that we should all start carrying around bedbug pouches to store our belongings inside when using lockers, especially if you're keeping anything there overnight. The way we live now: like fastidious drifters with portable pouches for everything.
