How to handle people not waking up from their float session – DSP 41

Alright. Here’s something that is pretty pervasive in the industry, and that’s dealing with the floater that just won’t wake up. What do you do? Well, here’s Graham and Ashkahn’s step-by-step process for Float On, at least. So give it a listen!

FTS BLOG: What to do when you have a sinker

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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Graham: Today’s question is, “What do I do when people won’t get out of the tank when I play music at the end of their floats?”, which I guess… “Won’t” is an interesting word there. Sort of implies that they heard the music and actively chose not to get out.

Ashkahn: Yeah. What happens if they just don’t … They’re in float land and they’re just not coming out.

Graham: First of all, we call these people “sinkers”.

Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s our special term for it. There’s kind of an escalating level of responses we have to this.

Graham: Up to calling the fire department.

Ashkahn: Closing our business down. Realizing they won, they can just keep floating.

Graham: You can just float as long as you want.

Ashkahn: Step one is turn your volume up a little bit. That’s the first, “All right, let’s just see if a slightly louder volume gets them out.”

Graham: Yep, and I would say step two’s almost like turning the volume all the way down and then back up.

Ashkahn: Like off.

Graham: Yeah, like off, back up, off, back up kind of thing. We’ve had people who the music comes on at the end and they know when the music comes on that they’re supposed to get out. They know that at the beginning of the float. Then the music comes on, they’re so floaty, like, “This music’s awesome. I definitely want to stay in here and listen to this.”

So sometimes I think turning it back down can cue that part of their brain that remembers that it actually triggers the end of the session.

Ashkahn: Or just, you know, that kind of abrupt change. What I used to do is, I’d turn it off and I’d wait like 30 seconds and then turn it back on. That start up of music again was sometimes enough to … Sometimes I think people are not aware that the music is playing. They’re like either half asleep or just so deep into their float world that it’s not even registering with them, you know?

Graham: Totally. Okay, so turn it up, turn it off, and then up. What’s step three?

Ashkahn: Step three for us is playing a different track of music, so instead our very relaxing “welcome back to the world” music that we have, we play “Get Up, Stand Up”, is what we play at our place.

Graham: Such a good track for that. That’s a really good one to play. We also actually recorded a voice-over of me talking, basically, actively telling people that it’s time to get out of the tank as the next track after that, which is basically like, “Hey, I know that you enjoy floating here, but your session’s over. You might not have realized it. Time to get the heck out of here.”

I think it actually says, “Stand up. Open the door. Get out and shower.” Just very concrete instructions in case their brain isn’t processing that well, you know?

What step are we on now? Four or five?

Ashkahn: So, the next step. I mean, that’s the end of pleasant steps, really. From there, it pretty much goes straight to knocking on the door.

Graham: Yep. Yeah. So knocking on the door to the room.

Ashkahn: Yeah, yeah. There’s gentle knock and then more forceful-

Graham: Police knock.

Ashkahn: Yeah, police knock is two stages of that.

Graham: So then if they still don’t get out of the room, or really, if we don’t, in our case, see our shower sensor light come on, but in other cases, hear the shower come on, then the next step is to actually go into the room and knock on the tank itself.

Ashkahn: I usually just open the door and say something first. I’ve had that work. Be like, “Hey, you know, just checking in,” and they’ll usually respond.

Graham: Yeah, yeah, that’s true. Okay, so shout through the crack in the door.

Ashkahn: Step seven and a half is …

Graham: Then going in and actually knocking on the back of the tank or something like that is good. You can usually get a sense when you’re going in there. Again, I guess the shouting is actually really good for figuring out if they really are actually out of the tank or anything. You don’t want to, hopefully, catch someone naked, or anything like that, if you can avoid it, so knocking on the back of the tank is definitely the next step after that.

Then, usually, that does it. Rare is the case when I’ve had to progress past actually just knocking really loudly on the back of the tank. But-

Ashkahn: It does happen.

Graham: And we’re open 24 hours a day, so if you can imagine getting sinkers during normal float hours, the people who go really deep in it at 2 a.m. are also equally hard to get out at 4:30 in the morning for us. We have some pretty extreme people.

The next step after that is to actually open the door of the tank and shout in. Be like, “Hey, everything okay in there? Your session’s up.”

After that is the weirdest part.

Ashkahn: Poking them with a pool noodle?

Graham: Yeah, exactly. Just giving them a little pool noodle tap on the toe or something like that. Or actively poking their toe or grabbing it and giving them a little shake to wake them up.

It sounds super weird, but at some point, you’re like, “Okay, well, I can’t leave this person in my tank forever and it has been this escalating progression of trying to get them out,” and the cool thing is that no matter the length you have to go to, pretty much, to get someone out of the tank, it’s the level at which they don’t care because they were so deep in a float and are so blissed out coming out afterwards.

I feel like everyone’s reaction, when I’ve gotten them out of the tank, after … I think I’ve only done it to two people, where I actually had to poke them with the pool noodle or give their toe a little nudge. They’d both just had come out. I’m like, “How was the float?” They’re like, “Oh, it was awesome.” Mentioned nothing about being woken up abruptly. They’re just almost puddles of goo and settle into the couch after that.

Ashkahn: It’s true. I’ve never had anyone have a bad experience as a result of any level of escalation we’ve had to do to get them out.

Graham: That, at least, is Float On, is the full operating procedure. Then, yeah, of course, next call the fire department. But that’s the full escalation that we do for getting people out of the tank. Honestly, by the time you hit, “Get Up, Stand Up,” usually that’s enough. You don’t usually actually have to progress that much further than that.

Ashkahn: And the other thing to maybe talk about is, what do you tell the next customer who’s waiting to go into that room?

Graham: Sure. Right. Because if someone’s taking a while to get out, it’s causing your tank to be full. I guess one nice thing … We run a six tank center, so if there’s one person who’s staying in there and taking a while to get out, chances are, it’s going to be the last person to get out of the tank.

In the meantime, we can be cleaning every other room and be getting people into those rooms. With luck, even still, we don’t get them out too late, where we’re not getting the next person in on time. We could, despite all of this, we could still get the next floater in in a timely manner.

Ashkahn: Usually they don’t mind too much. I think people are kind of understanding and realize that this is probably a pretty rare occurrence and there’s not much you could be doing, other than what you are doing. We can try to get that one person to have a slightly longer float. We’ll get them out a little bit longer, or a little bit later, to accommodate.

Those two things in combination, them not caring a huge amount and us trying to be as flexible as we can, usually solves the problem.

Graham: Yeah, definitely. You can roll it forward even by a couple of sessions. If you get the next person out 10 minutes later and let them know that they should shower off faster and respect the time of the person after them. Then you get that person out five minutes later. You can do this little rolling correction.

Ashkahn: It almost never happens for more than one. I can usually correct within a single session.

Graham: Totally. We do two and a half hours when we do our night floats so, for those people, it’s actually not that big a deal. The times when I’ve had it happen most to me, personally, are when I’m working the night shift. An extra 10 minutes off of two and a half hours, I think, bugs people a lot less than it would if it was 10 minutes shaved off of their 60 minute float, or something like that.

Ashkahn: Yeah, definitely.

Graham: The longer your float sessions, also, I think, the little bit more leeway you’re allowed in that. Alright, thanks for tuning into today’s episode. As always, if you have any float tank questions, or any concerns, feel free to shoot them our way. You can do that at floattanksolutions.com/podcast and we’ll cover them on an upcoming episode.

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