PureGym’s corporate line is that it does not tolerate harassment. A longtime member at its Bed-Stuy location says what its front desk actually did was tell her she was not the first woman to complain about the same man, and then treat her like a problem.
Tanya Ridley, an MTA conductor and Transport Workers Union Local 100 member, says she was sexually harassed by a male member at the PureGym on Fulton Street. When she reported it, she says, a manager told her she was not the first woman to complain about him, and that staff would keep an eye on him. She has described being made to feel like the angry Black woman for pushing it. The account here comes from Ridley, as reported by Our Time Press, the one outlet that covered her case; Our Time Press later noted no formal sexual harassment charge was filed.
The police response did not help. Ridley says responding NYPD officers suggested she consider going to a different gym rather than removing or charging the accused man. Her civil rights attorney, Benjamin Pinczewski, called the accused a stalker and said it was appalling he remained a member.
PureGym says it investigated and took appropriate action. By Ridley’s account, the appropriate action was a verbal warning, and the man kept his membership. That gap, between a corporate policy that reads well and a front desk that points the woman toward the door, is the whole story. The harassment policy is only as real as the lowest-paid employee enforcing it at 7 p.m.
It is worth knowing who runs this gym. PureGym is a UK operator that bought the bankrupt Blink Fitness chain out of Chapter 11 for $121 million, taking over 67 gyms across New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the Bed-Stuy one among them. At the same network, the FDNY has flagged app-locked entry pods as fire-safety violations across several gyms, a separate sign of a chain still figuring out how to run the buildings it inherited.
Ridley took the fight public, posting a video about the incident that drew tens of thousands of views, which is often the only escalation path a member has. If you have been harassed at a gym, the staff complaint is the first step but rarely the last; the company’s own code of conduct, your account of the timeline in writing, and, where it rises to it, a police report or a lawyer like Pinczewski are how a verbal warning turns into something that sticks.
Featured image: Bushwick Daily
