I don’t know what it is about some guys, who have this ability to read about behavior like this that seems to me to have easily crossed the line into stalking, and reimagine it as just being friendly and attentive. Even though I’m a guy, I don’t see anything friendly about this degree of overattention. It’s definitely hostile.
That’s the bottom line. You’re the only one living inside your skin, experiencing what you experience. If you’re going to continue to be uncomfortable there, then you leave. It doesn’t matter whether you can intellectually justify how you feel. In something like this, your feelings are the only reality that counts.
I have a girl at the front desk of my gym that has a crush on me and has taken my membership info to track me down on Facebook. I just smile at her when I come into the gym while my friends laugh at how awkward it is. I’ve never had anyone hassle me while I was working out but I’d probably treat it the same way just ignore them and be friendly when I had to talk to them.
An uncomfortable situation isn’t enough for me to leave a gym that I picked over other gyms for valid reasons (location, equipment, price). I guess if there were two gyms across the street from each other that were exactly identical I’d leave but I’ve never seen that happen.
I don’t know if it’s a man/woman thing, though. If you went to the golf course and an employee asked you if you wanted help and you said no because you really didn’t and they basically followed you out, you wouldn’t consider that irritating and/or unprofessional?
The bad part is both these guys are at the front desk, so they are hard to avoid. Every time I checked in, I would have felt awkward if I had yelled “Shut the fuck up!” at them. I mean, what would I do? Hand them my card in silence? It’s just too weird. I guess people’s comfort levels are different. Typically I don’t mind telling people to shut their pie holes, but it’s not as kosher when dealing with people I have to see all the time. I guess nobody really has to go to the gym, but I do go, and that’s the one I’d been going to for about a year. Well, I guess I’m going to a different one now.
You know, I don’t know, he might be. He’s insanely fit, but then again everyone who works there is.
Edit @ Slit: I know, right? I hardly see how this is a man/woman thing. I guess the flirtatious part with Asshole 1 maybe, but Asshole 2 was just straight up pestering me. Gods, that has got to annoy anyone of any gender in any setting.
It’s a gym thing, too. I hate gyms because you can’t get away from anybody. I have had more instances of people following me around asking me stupid shit than not. So the gym bosses do tell their employees to do it, and it drives me fucking bonkers.
I posted “complain” but I came in to post “quit and complain”. But I see on reading that the OP already did that.
Gyms seem to, in general, attract more of these types of guys than many other sorts of places. And while the gym is probably not well managed if they can have two employees behaving like that and, thus, you probably should quit and go elsewhere, I wouldn’t be terribly surprise that, unless you go to a women’s only gym, you won’t run into similar behavior at the new place.
That said, I still think you should complain, no so much in an attempt to stay there, or to get them fired to save them customers, but so other women don’t have to deal with that kind of BS.
That said, being aware that a lot of men will stalk or flirt with or otherwise bother women at the gym, while they’re just trying to get their workout in, I can imagine how frustrating it can be. I imagine part of it is the generally macho atmosphere, and also that the sorts of clothes that are most comfortable and least intrusive for working out can also give the false impression that she’s looking for attention. As such, where one can have reasonable expectations about a woman by herself at a club or a bar, those expectations are not the same at the gym, and so I consider flirting under those circumstances to generally be rude, and won’t do so.
I’m not a woman, so I don’t have the same concerns, but there have been personal trainers who want me as thei8r client.
The progression is
[ol][li]“No thank you.”[/li][li]No thanks".[/li][li]“No”.[/li][li]“NO”.[/li][li]“Don’t interrupt me when I am working out”.[/li][li]Complain to management. If they do nothing but talk[/li][li]Quit[/ol][/li]
Regards,
Shodan
I’m sure MOL has a lot of important things to worry about too and a busy life. That’s pretty much why she said she’s leaving this gym–because her life is busy and the gm is for a work out, not for socializing. As she said, it’s obnoxious that one of them is flirty but when she hasn’t asked for help and a guy comes over to the elliptical to talk to her, that’s just rude.
This kind of happened to me on an airport shuttle. I had landed in San Antonio and was taking the Avis shuttle to pick up a rental car. I was headed to my dear stepfather’s memorial the next day.
The shuttle driver was a chatty type and kept talking about what FUN San Antonio is and what FUN I would have. I was still in “almost tears” mode with grief and didn’t feel like making small talk. I kept trying to read my book and wasn’t really responding and he kept BUGGING ME. I finally said “hey, I’m sure San Antonio is fun, but I’m here for a funeral.” (I mean, normally I’m not about laying that kind of personal sad info on strangers just making conversation).
The guy still wouldn’t shut up about San Antonio as the THE PARTY CAPITOL of Texas!
I really wanted to complain - I don’t really remember the exact conversation but I remember thinking he was TACTLESS and ANNOYING.
I would have complained, and had it not been taken care of, escalated it to the next level, ie a manager of some sort. If I had to escalate it, I would have demanded a credit on my account. This of course is worthless at the GloboGyms of the world, there nobody gives a shit cause they have no stake in its survival (like Gold’s, 24 hour fitness, and our new terrible Urban Active), but I find my complaints are addressed quickly and the staff much more professional and even courteous at gyms that are on a much smaller scale.
My gym was closed for Rosh Hashanah, so I tried out a new gym, which I considered switching over to once my SO leaves the city (the couples membership is inexplicably only $15 more than an individual). The spinning class was full, so I was directed to an abs class by the staff. I waited around 20 minutes for a class that was on the schedule that had been canceled for over a month. And I was met with blank stares when I told the front desk that not only was the class canceled today, but it had been for a month. I don’t think anyone even scratched it off the schedule or made a sign to prop up so people could see it as they walked in.
I’m actually surprised they let you quit Mean Old Lady if you were under contract. Did you have to pay a cancellation fee, or were you month to month to begin with?
You don’t have to be a social crusader to give people a chance to clean up their act. Changing your schedule is more of a hassle than it needs to be, so I’d personally work to correct the current gym, especially when it seems like the problem is just a couple of people. Certainly if the problem is systemic and people are rude or invasive overall, it’s not worth mentioning a thing.
I said “Something Else” because quitting is OK; but you should also have complained. Either by letter or in person when you quit, it doesn’t matter. If you and a friend both got the bad vibe then there’s more of you out there. By complaining you’re helping out the next person that’s annoyed with that shit.
Indeed. One of the responses to this from my friend was “Guys at gyms are assholes.” A bit of a broad brush, but funny and not terribly wrong. I was already working out at YWCA as it is. Don’t tell me I’m going to have to start going to Curves.
[quote=“Shodan, post:50, topic:553744”]
The progression is
[ol][li]“No thank you.”[/li][li]No thanks".[/li][li]“No”.[/li][li]“NO”.[/li][li]“Don’t interrupt me when I am working out”.[/li][li]Complain to management. If they do nothing but talk[/li][li]Quit[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
See, I was with you until the end. I guess I’m being a giant baby, because once I’m so bothered that I need to complain, I don’t want to go back anymore. I don’t want to stay and see if management improves things. I want to leave, so I combined the last and second to last step into one.
The membership lady asked me repeatedly if there was anything she could do. I told her she can tell the two to knock it off, but at this point, I feel so uncomfortable with them, that I would not be coming back. Then the manager e-mailed me twice asking me to talk to her about it, and in her second e-mail she said she promised she wasn’t going to try to sales pitch me into changing my mind. She really wanted to talk to me about what these a-holes were doing.
Oh I meant the social crusader thing in regards to what Cat Whisperer said, not you. But of course underlying unease should be avoided, especially if you don’t think it could improve.
I thought that’s what you meant. That reminds me, I forgot to respond to the rest of your post. There are a lot of gyms by where I live and work where I can go to, so I won’t have to change my schedule at all. I chose the YWCA in an attempt to avoid douchey gym guys, and that didn’t go over well. Who knew the douchey gym guys would be on the staff! Maybe I will have to go to Curves.