[stuckinarut]

I go to the gym and I interact with 1, sometimes 2 staff members. The people at the front who check my card and sometimes the guy who works in the locker room if I can't get mine open.

They are on staff anyways. It costs them nothing extra.

What is true is that they can understaff (and have less equipment) than if they had 100% regular participation.

[kalleboo]

The gym I went to before was 24/7 and completely unstaffed outside of daytime hours. When the place was unstaffed, a fingerprint reader was used to verify you were the owner of the card.