Gym Tables
Gym tables have been the bane of my existence since I arrived at Assumption. When I got here, we were paying someone part-time specifically to check the doors at night and to set up tables for events. The doors I understood, but the tables seemed silly to me, based on my experience at other parishes. As I later learned, this was implemented when we decided to put a wood floor in our gym, with the desire to preserve the floor against the hard use that can come from groups of people setting up and taking down tables.
Nevertheless, we are a non-profit organization, and do not really have the luxury of paying someone to set up tables. That should be an expected, volunteer task associated with any event in the gym. I made this position known and have slowly been working to solidify this expectation.
Unfortunately, there continues to be a barrier to this policy, which is that our tables are heavy, and the round ones are especially hard to set up. So, for some events and groups, especially if the volunteer core are no longer spring chickens, we still pay our maintenance guy, Ted, to set up and take down tables.
And then everything changed! Recently, someone taught me how to use our “Table Toters” – the raised racks that two of our four sets of round tables sit on. My dear Assumption parishioners, these products are GAME CHANGERS. I was able to set up all the tables for our first Tuesday Partners input session by myself with no trouble or back strain. I have now made it my personal mission to teach all of our parishioners how to use these, because it makes using the gym infinitely easier.
Please, watch this video, and have your life changed with me.
To that end, I would like to make sure all of our gym tables, both round and rectangular, sit on Table Toters. Unfortunately, there are two barriers. First, the Round Table Toters that we need are no longer being made. For the product to work, it needs to fit between our table legs, and our round tables have legs that set between 34” and 36” apart. The currently manufactured Table Toter is 37” wide, because it is made for tables whose legs are much wider. I am desperately looking around for used versions of the original product for the other half of our round tables. Second, these things are stupidly expensive. To store 10 rectangular tables will cost us $713.00 + shipping. And we likely need 3 carts for all our rectangular tables, plus 2 more for our round tables. Still, I think it is worth it if we can make our gym and tables that much more usable. Please let me know if you want to sponsor purchasing one or more of these.
Fr. Moore 