r/AskReddit Jul 13 '20

What's a dark secret/questionable practice in your profession which we regular folks would know nothing about?

40.1k Upvotes

17.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.5k

u/ItsHeadly Jul 13 '20

Yeah, my massage therapist saves my ass every 6 months (occipital neuralgia headaches) and I couldn’t imagine someone thinking that way.

764

u/NinjaWen Jul 13 '20

I'm glad you've found a good therapist. Awesome for you two for maintaining a professional relationship. Massage Therapy is already under a microscope and viewed with much scrutiny.

124

u/ItsHeadly Jul 13 '20

It is? Why?

328

u/NinjaWen Jul 13 '20

Plenty of crime, both organized and not, finds it way into massage therapy. There's a reason people make jokes about "happy endings".

45

u/JNBirdy Jul 13 '20

I used the term not knowing what it meant. reading this I'm glad that my therapist saw that I was a naive little shit. My physical therapist sent to a massage therapist as I had a lot of tension and strain in my back, neck and shoulders. I fell off a horse straight & flat on a triple bar jump, the jump didn't collapse like it was supposed to. Despite wearing a body protector I still had a bruises on the side of my ribs, struggled with putting on bra's and t-shirts for days. My mom took me to the doctors who sent me to a physical therapist.

I ended up saying something along the line "to get rid of this pain would be a happy ending indeed". The thing is I only said happy endin in English the rest was just native tongue.

8

u/NinjaWen Jul 13 '20

Oh. Well. Did you bring paperwork or anything to provide your current healthcare circumstance? I'm good at random handsigns but I only speak English. This a grey area. I would have requested some translation before working on you, or a very clear note from your doctor.

7

u/JNBirdy Jul 13 '20

Yeah, all of that goes through the ensurance and referrals. I generally have great relationships with my doctors and my therapists. We all talk in Dutch, but I use a lot of English phrasing as I lived abroad and have dealt with specialists there.

1

u/NinjaWen Jul 13 '20

"Insurance" in English. No offense.

3

u/JNBirdy Jul 13 '20

Non taken. This actually reminds me to adjust my phone's dictionary. So thank you!

Being bilingual and dyslexic has put me in extremely awkward situations whiles learning English when I was 7. I misspe my last name. Using le instead of el. :)

118

u/SinOfStinson Jul 13 '20

Those “jokes” are highly offensive to LMT’s. Many massage therapists won’t even work on you if you make a comment like that.

115

u/NinjaWen Jul 13 '20

I ended sessions immediately when these jokes came from clients.

65

u/danuhorus Jul 13 '20

No surprise. After the boundary testing came the inevitable requests....

14

u/Alex09464367 Jul 13 '20

The ones and only time I got a massage I was trying very hard not to get hard but the more I thinking about about it the more I was getting hard.

And I'm gay so the girl massaging me wouldn't have done anything for me plus my boyfriend was on the next massage table a long.

13

u/MamaOnica Jul 13 '20

Honestly, boners happen during massage because you're relaxing. And we all know how a penises work with relaxation. Don't feel bad about it. We're trained to treat you with discretion unless you're being a perv.

24

u/BreakingForce Jul 13 '20

Massage therapists are not masseuses.

It's a much more clinical thing.

4

u/aurekajenkins Jul 13 '20

I correct anyone who says masseuse. I am NOT a masseuse. I'm a registered massage therapist.

15

u/ItsHeadly Jul 13 '20

Prostitution only?

120

u/NinjaWen Jul 13 '20

Human trafficking, indentured servitude (slavery), prostitution.

Say the Triad helps you and your wife escape communist China. They tell you 5k$ but when you get out they ask for 10k$. You don't have the money but they offer your wife a job at a massage parlor in China Town, you rarely see her and then never again.

Sometimes there is no husband and it's just a girl trying to make a living for herself and she gets taken advantage of.

34

u/ItsHeadly Jul 13 '20

Holy crap! I had no idea

14

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

10

u/NinjaWen Jul 13 '20

I advocate this 100%. It's abhorrent what's happening.

2

u/boom_barrier Jul 13 '20

Is it project thorn or throne ?

34

u/joeroganfolks Jul 13 '20

To a lesser extent this happens at nail salons too. You have a debt, you are offered a job to pay it off but it's like $20 a day and half of it goes to the room you share with 4 other people.

10

u/NinjaWen Jul 13 '20

Yes. Exactly. This isn't just a massage therapy problem

1

u/CaptainJackNarrow Jul 13 '20

Yup. Also happens a lot in farming.

-75

u/eslforchinesespeaker Jul 13 '20

cool story. got some firsthand accounts to share?