Chiropractor in his 60’s (70's?) has a room inside the office he is willing to sublet at a fair percentage of square footage value in rent of whole office.

He currently has a therapist who has been using his office and has been siphoning off her clients from a local Hand & Stone but has been using the office less and less to the point of only showing up once every few weeks.

SHE changed the lock on her office door and didn’t give him a copy of the key. He finally got it and now he can show me the office he is offering. 

It is a pig sty. A room that looks like a literal dump full of stuff. I am horrified. An artificial plant or leaf haphazardly hung on one wall across from an oversized poster of a horse on the other. At least five half-used candles in jars sitting along the baseboard on the floor (fire hazard). A table full of “stuff”. A storage closet hidden by a fabric on a rod pole and a wicker room divider that is filled from floor to ceiling with more random junk. This room is the epitome of trailer park delusions of being classier than you are. And this is most likely why she can't keep the clients she is siphoning off her main employer because who the hell wants a mediocre massage in THAT mess?

Of note: I have had a massage in someone's trailer. Self employed therapist living with disabled spouse and grand-daughter. Making the best of what they have to work with. It felt like I was getting a massage in the living room of a trailer but I was prepared for that and it was fine. Walking into an office, and suddenly, feeling like you are in the living room of someone's double wide trailer because it is so cheap and trashy is NOT fine.


I asked him if all this stuff was hers and if the stuff in the closet was hers or his because there is SO. MUCH. STUFF.

He says it is all hers including the closet from the bottom shelf up. (Oh good god)

The front waiting area is junkie too but he is in his 70’s so I figure his ability to make dumpster runs is a bit impaired as many older people don’t notice that 20 years have passed and that decrepit thing is STILL sitting there waiting to be trashed. I am willing to do a deep purge and clean out for the entire office to bring it up to professional standards because it needs it and because there is no way in hell I am working in office conditions like this but something isn’t setting right with me.

He seems offended that I am not comfortable with her mountains of random junk and decor choices in that room. This is surprising since none of this is his stuff and he certainly didn’t decorate in there. His uncomfortable micro-reactions to gentle observation about HER mess is suspicious (his head turned red, he momentarily pressed his lips shut tightly, and the veins on his forehead became engorged). He was obviously personally invested in her mess but why? He offers to have ME call and talk to her about it. Why am I talking to her? She sublets from you, buddy. I am just here to take over the space and if she wants to be able to keep using it later, her stuff STILL has to go and she is going to have to help ME pay this share of the rent but first… ALL this junk has to go. What is going on here?

I also ask if he knows that there were scriptures handwritten on notebook paper thumbtacked to the wall across from the toilet and next to the sink mirror. Now, he is getting even more uncomfortable (his whole head is turning beet red and the veins are popping out more than when we were talking about all the stuff in the massage room) and he says, “Its propaganda.” I am thoroughly confused and repeat the word twice asking for clarification. “Propaganda? For what? You said propaganda..." He finally responds with a deadpan, “I was joking. A client gave those to me.”

He was weird when I met him and he is getting more weird by the second. Then he says, “If you are taking umbrage with those scriptures being there, then this is not going to work.”

Fun fact: Any time someone whips out the big words like “umbrage” when a simple one would do AND it is not a normal part of their vocabulary so far, it is because they are trying to intimidate you and convince you that they are smarter than you are. It is a weak move by marginally intelligent people.

I pointed out that I don’t have a problem with whatever religion people choose to practice but it was unexpected to see here given that this is a chiropractor’s office, not a church. And also, it is hand written on notebook paper and thumb tacked to the wall….

He asks if it would be better if it were on pretty stationary and typed. 

I don’t like where this is going because this is totally missing the point and a weird hill to try and die on. I point out that some of my clients are Muslim and Buddhist and might be uncomfortable seeing this type of material in a professional office.

I move on from the topic and return to asking him again about the other therapist and what arrangements they have and if the intention is to continue letting her have access to this space after I have moved in. (Am I sharing this space with her too? Is she helping to pay rent? How are we going to schedule this? And many more questions from here if this is the expectation)

He refuses to give a straight answer and continues bringing up a few other, random things to try and change the subject. When I keep pressing for an answer about the arrangements with the other therapist and if she expects to continue having access to this space. Without warning, he announces that this isn’t going to work out and the sublet is off the table.

What kind of business person turns his nose up at someone willing to bring foot traffic to your door AND raise the professional appearance of your office AND pay part of your rent also but instead show preference for the dumpster queen/hoarder who … from my best guess isn’t actually paying to use the office? And it seems suspiciously clear that he had full intention of letting her continue to have access to that office I would be paying rent for … and expected to be able to let her keep her things in there.

Its not what people say these days, it is what they refuse to give a clear, direct answer to that tells you what they are hiding. Listen to politicians closer next time. They use this tactic ALL the time when they know the only straight answer they have is going to tell an ugly truth about themselves. His refusal to give a clear, simple answer and his defensiveness about her mess raised all kinds of red flags about their relationship.

I am not a young girl in this world so I have seen a few things in life and I am betting good money Mr. Christian Life there is having an affair with this massage therapist and was trying to have the best of both worlds – a paying office sublet and continued access to his mistress he gives office space to, in exchange for intimate access. I could be wrong but nothing so far makes any other good sense for his weirdo behavior and vague answers and refusal to be clear about the future arrangements with the other therapist moving forward and his personal investment to the point of being defensive about a gentle (but horrified) observation of 'So. Much. Stuff' in that room.

Notably, there were also Christian magazines on the coffee table that weren't there the first time I saw the office and now suddenly were on top of a stack of expired magazines. Consider that he's in his 60s and there are things/debris/junk strewn about the back of the front room that clearly haven't moved an inch in years so new magazines would only show up IF they were deliberately put there. If you know anything about the blatant racial profiling and stereotyping of these pervert Christians and their "sex trafficking" fantasies, you know where this nonsense suddenly sprang up from... because you know, those Asian/Latinx people.... meanwhile, his social-security-collecting-behind appears to be using his office to cheat on his wife in exchange for letting the female therapist use the room to steal clients from her employer. Because you know, a person who is doing something high profile illegal is obviously going to look for a SHARED office with other people to do it in but cheating, stealing and exchanging sex for office space is hardly something worth passing judgment on. In fact there's no reason to get weird or raise a suspicious eyebrow about her with all that on board because she's not one of those Asian/Latinx people they single out and profile as a suspect group in these human trafficking meetings.

5 pages of google search results for sexual assualt + massage envy + class action lawsuit and I can guarantee you that nearly every one of those guilty parties are NOT Asian or Latinx but sure, let's pretend we don't know who the real problem people are here.

I literally can’t make these stories up.

And now we move on to the next office search. Meanwhile, I have received no less than 6 phone calls this past week from folks trying to make appointments with me that I can't work on because I have nowhere to work on them.

I am ready to just walk away from all this permanently like so many other good therapists have done. I don't want to work out of my home for the same reasons I DO want to work in a shared office. Around here creepy, insulting, problematic male clients are worse behaved when you are clearly NOT a White or Black therapist (If this sounds racist because race is mentioned, it is not. There's an entire, decades long body of evidence supporting racial biases and how people form their opinion of acceptable treatment of another person based on both their race, and modifications if you share a race with them). It is just as likely to be Suit-Wearing Suburban Steve being an insulting creep as Blue Collar Bob in t-shirts and cultural ignorance is and I am so tired of uninvited sexualized behavior and the insult that built into it that I don't trust myself to control my response if I have to deal with that uninvited nonsense again. So, the best defense is NOT giving them any excuse to confuse your massage office with a cheap Tindr date but finding a shared office - as you can read - isn't a straightforward process because everyone from every angle seems to be on the hustle trying to use massage therapists, one way or another.

If you find a therapist you like, be good to them. They have less reason to exist these days than you realize.