Gym People

Some places just bring out the worst in people. But nowhere does this phenomenon occur quite to same degree as at the gym.

We have quite a cast of characters at ours. The most prominent example is Mohawk Trainer Guy. He's a short, stocky Asian guy (with Mohawk) who is almost always there, wearing his trademark jeans and flip-flops. Without fail, he is accompanied by a (different) slim female protege who he somehow conned into paying him for a personal training session. Best I can tell, the sessions consist of two elements: (1) Mohawk Trainer Guy trying to make trainee laugh during the middle of exercise in the hope of getting her number later; and (2) Mohawk Trainer allowing trainee the privilege of watching him work out alongside her in a cartoonishly exaggerated, grunt-filled manner, in the hope of getting her number later. One time, I saw him, trainee in tow, doing "sprints" back and forth across a 10-foot wide corner of the gym for an extended period of time, grunting for all he was worth all the while. The trainee, no doubt paying good money for this endeavor, looked as if she was strongly considering bolting for the door. Strangely, I never see him with the same trainee more than once.

He's relatively harmless (unless you're the trainee), but the constant grunting gets annoying. But his grunting has nothing on that of Air Guitar Guy. The first time I saw AGG, he was strumming (and singing) along to a Jimi Hendrix song on the gym radio, which seemed somewhat understandable. He was very nice and chatted me up in between riffs, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt, at least until he started doing the exact same musical routine to he next song, which was something along the lines of "Love Life Us Up Where We Belong." I see him often, and he always spends more time pretending to be a musician and trying to make friends than he does working out. Although, to be fair, when he does work out, he grunts loudly enough to make up for his lack of activity otherwise. He is a 120-pound weakling, but his lungs are strong, that I know.

I can laugh at both of these guys. But what is not remotely funny, and shouldn't even be legal, is High Shorts Guy. HSG is a middle aged light-skinned man who insists on wearing shorts that barely cover his posterior. He wears the same set of skin tight floss-length shorts for every workout, which inevitably includes lunges, leg lifts, or some similar cringing-inducing skin-exposing exercise, invariably performed directly in front of me. I think he gets some bizarre sexual satisfaction from it. It's either that or he's hoping people will eventually give him money to buy new pants. There can't be any other explanation. There just can't.

Here's my point: why do people lose all semblance of common sense and social etiquette the minute they walk through the front door of a gym? I doubt High Shorts Guy goes to work wearing a tank top every day. Air Guitar Guy can't possibly strum to his car radio nonstop while he is driving. If Mohawk Trainer Guy worked at Subway, I can't believe he'd insist that customers watch him make his own sandwich as he was making theirs, nor would he grunt when he reached for the olives.

But there's something about walking into a gym that makes people lose their minds. Every gym has at least one Cell Phone Work Out Guy, who doubly annoys by both exposing you to his lame conversation (that could totally have waited half an hour until the workout was done) and by needlessly taking up valuable workout equipment as he does. Every gym has a Way Too Comfortable Naked Old Person, who lounges around the locker room in the buff as though it were the tea parlor of a nudist colony.

It's as though some people walk into a gym for a brief escape from every day life and think that concept includes the right to escape from all sense of social normalcy. Other people walk in for a work out, and just tune out the rest of the world.

I had an encounter with one of these Oblivious Guys last week.

I was doing some shoulder lifts in front of a rack of dumbbells (by which I mean weights, not the crew I've already described). There are 8 dumbbells on this rack, which is surrounded by a large, open floor, presumably so that eight people can use this weight set simultaneously. But not if Oblivious Guy has anything to say about it.

In between sets, I walked over to get some water, and I hadn't yet moved two feet in that direction before some dude takes the exact spot where I was standing, the exact dumbbell I was using, and throws his towel over the the entire front half of the weight rack, rendering half of the 8 weights on it inaccessible.

Post-hydration, I walk back over to the weight rack. Oblivious Guy has finished his set, but he's now leaning, arms spread eagle, over an entire side of 4 x 4 weight rack, with his towel draped over the other side. The combined effect shuts out about 6 of the 8 dumbbells from use. I stand behind him and wait a good 2-3 minutes, but nothing happens. He notices me waiting but does not move or acknowledge my presence. He just leans on the rack.

Finally, I just walk around to the other side of the rack, deftly avoid the hanging towel, and grab dumbbell near the bottom that's 10 pounds too heavy for me. I step a few feet to the side and start an abbreviated set. Meanwhile, Oblivious Guy stops resting on the rack and walks around to the side I'm standing on so he can lean against the rack from that direction. Shortly thereafter, he, for no apparent reason, takes two steps in my direction, almost bumping into me as I finish my set just in time to step around him.

I put my weight back on the rack, and he grabs it and starts a set of the exact same exercise I was doing. His towel, of course, remains draped over the entire rack.

I manage to re-grab my original weight from the front side, and finish my workout shortly before Oblivious Guy (who now has a stack of 4 differing weights sitting uselessly at this feet) grabs it, and adds it to his collection, only to resume leaning against the weight rack. Long after I left that section of the gym, I looked over and noticed that he kept his towel draped over the rack, and all five weights at his feet, only using one, until his workout was complete.

Oblivious Guy couldn't have done better if he were actively trying to antagonize me, but I really don't think he noticed me at all. He showed no signs of ill-will, never changed expression or even acknowledged my existence the entire episode. He was just working out and nothing, or no one, else mattered. In Gym World, people do that. It was as though I was completely invisible; my existence wholly unremarkable and not worthy of the slightest notice.

I bet that never happens to High Shorts Guy.