An excerpt from ‘Recess Theory,’ by Axelrod MacMurray:
We need to be happy in order to be productive. We need to push the boundaries of the workplace and allow adults to tap into their inner child in order to maximize success and innovation. It is important for the adult employee to be given time to be social in an unstructured and creative way during the work day and it is incumbent upon managers to foster this. The focus of the play should not have a goal. Used properly in the workplace, an hour of playtime will ultimately increase your output exponentially.
In 2013, a squat, balding Harvard Business School professor named Axelrod MacMurray (Stanford PhD, Harvard MBA) wrote a book proposing the ‘Recess Theory.’ It was based on a proprietary study conducted over several years by Dr MacMurray himself that proved even adults needed an hour of unstructured ‘play’ to bolster their productivity in other parts of their lives.
After Eve took MacMurray’s class in 2014, she very briefly became his most devoted student and sometime late-night companion.
Their fleeting, but apparently playful and productive, time together could have been what inspired Eve to take the whole office on an outing to Spirit Cycle for a spin class. All of the mommies at school swore by Spirit Cycle, this kind of New Agey take on cardio spin that was supposed to unite body and soul. Imogen thought it sounded like bollocks. She’d been a runner in her twenties and through most of her thirties. Mainly she just ate right and did Pilates with her trainer. In the same way that she’d missed the Atkins craze in the early 2000s, spin somehow passed her by.
It would be nice to get out of the office early though. The Spirit Cycle studio was close to her town house and she planned to go home straight after, which significantly lifted her mood as she walked into the dark cycling studio with its bright yellow bikes and inspirational words written on the walls.
Eve strutted into the studio, a vision in Spirit Cycle yellow pants and stringy top, her hair pulled up into a high ponytail on top of her head.
‘Yeah, Spirit!!! I love it here. We’re gonna get our spirit on.’ She high-fived the instructor as the other girls from the office climbed onto their bikes. Imogen had taken the funny shoes with the metal clips on the bottom from the front desk and clomped the rest of the way back into the cycling room, but once she found herself on the bike she hadn’t a clue how the bloody things worked. She tried angling her foot flat against the pedal, hoping it would quickly clip in. Nothing happened. She made these odd clanging sounds as pedals and shoes around the room mated in satisfying click-clicks.
The anxiety of not doing it properly just compounded each time her foot slid off the pedal without that requisite click.
Ashley planted herself on one side of Imogen in the front row. Eve was on the other. Ashley quietly reached down to guide Imogen’s toe into place. Click.
The instructor bounced up and down on a podium lit only by candles that smelled like grapefruit.
‘Heya, Spirit sisters!’ she hollered into a headset mounted on top of her white-girl dreadlocks. Eve leaned in to Imogen to whisper, ‘The instructor is Angelina Starr. She’s, like, a spin goddess.’
Angelina Starr? It is obviously a stage name, Imogen thought. When did spin instructors start warranting stage names? Angelina Starr was too tanned and too made-up to be breaking a sweat. She wore nothing but a teensy yellow bandeau top and teeny-weeny black Lycra panties.
Eve and the girls in the room who were obviously Spirit regulars chanted back in unison, ‘Heya, Angelina!’
‘Everyone got everything?’
‘I would quite like a water.’ Imogen raised her hand politely, which made Angelina sneer.
‘Oh, would you now? Could I get you some skim milk with that? Would you like Splenda too? How about I come over there and braid your hair?’ As Imogen’s jaw dropped, Angelina just as quickly turned her attention back to the rest of the room.
‘Who’s ready to get their SPIRIT on?’ the instructor yelled.
‘We are,’ they singsonged in a chorus.
Jay-Z’s Black Album began blasting through hidden speakers as the instructor mounted her bike and began a monologue.
‘We’re here for us. We’re here for one another. No one speaks during this class. We ride together. You are here for you and for your Spirit sisters. We are all one. Before we start riding you are going to write down your Spirit sister’s name. She’s right next to you. You will write down her name and you will put it in your shoe.’ A group of employees all wearing matching yellow Spirit shirts walked around the room with small pieces of paper and miniature golf pencils.
Eve scrawled her name in cursive and thrust the small piece of paper at Imogen.
‘Put my name in your shoe,’ she commanded in a voice devoid of emotion.
Was this the stupidest thing Imogen had ever been asked to do?
‘And now your Spirit sister’s name will give you energy all the way from your feet up to your heart,’ the instructor continued. ‘Let’s ride. You Spirit warriors in the front row. You owe it to your sisters to set an example. I would rather you slapped my face than slowed down your ride.’
What was happening with the temperature in the room? Imogen suddenly felt much too hot. Buckets of sweat poured down the back of her neck. They had obviously turned the heat up to make you feel like you were working out harder than you actually were. The shoes just felt unstable. She must not be clipped in correctly. Imogen slowed to wiggle her foot out of its cage in an attempt to clip it back in properly, but Angelina Starr began staring a hole straight into her soul.
‘The front row must keep the rhythm!’ she screamed, obviously to Imogen in particular. ‘Left. Right. Left. Right.’
Pumping her legs to the beat, Imogen wondered why the fuck the spin-mommies at school paid $50 a pop for this. Carefully choreographed movements with your feet strapped to pedals flailing wildly out of control was unnatural, like being tortured. People paid good money to be abused here?
The lights went out. It was pitch-black except for the spooky Salem-like candles in a circle around the instructor.
‘Put your right hand on your head!’
‘Crunch your tummy!’
‘If you yawn, I WILL spit in your face!!!!!!’
‘Tuck your booty! Tuck your booty!’
Naturally, Eve was a pro. She bobbed her high ponytail left then right, left then right, tucking and tucking. All the while singing along to the hip-hop songs with the enthusiasm of a Hitler youth.
‘You’re a better you because you’re here!! You’re successful!! You’re amazing! You are the best you that you can be right here, right now. You love yourself so much. Life is messy! What matters is how we clean it up!!!!’ the instructor screamed as Eve pumped both her fists into the air and bellowed, ‘WOOOOOOOOO!’ This wasn’t just a fitness class. It was therapy by way of sweat. You came for the cardio, you stayed for the aphorisms.
Imogen hated it. Near the end of the class her hair was soaked with sweat. Places hurt that shouldn’t hurt. She was reminded of the Leonard Cohen lyric, ‘I ache in the places where I used to play.’ She’d almost forgotten Eve’s name languishing on a piece of paper inside her shoe. Reluctantly, Imogen rose with the rest of the room for one final push toward the finish line.
‘Faster. You can see it in the distance. That’s your goal. That’s why you came here tonight. You are the best version of you right now. Right in this moment.’
Imogen pushed harder and harder on the pedals, her legs beginning to move slightly out of control. She could see the finish line in her mind. She raced even faster, no longer paying attention to Eve or Ashley or any of the women in the room.
Click. Her right foot slipped off the pedal. She toppled over to the side. No one missed a beat. Imogen was sandwiched on her bottom in between her bike and Eve’s.
After she caught her breath, Imogen looked left and right. Eve’s pedal whirred in front of her face like a lawn mower blade.
‘Spirit sister … help?’ Imogen squeaked. And yet her Spirit sister couldn’t be bothered to stop until that bike reached the finish line. Eve just kept cycling.
Ashley had sneakily put her headphones on in the class and was completely oblivious to what was happening.
No one would help her. With Eve’s legs whirring around it was nearly impossible for Imogen to rise without being maimed. She found herself slithering forward on her stomach toward the podium, where she could finally pull herself up.
As she walked herself to the door and tossed her offensive, faulty shoes in the bin, the class just kept spinning.