Yeah it happens to me all the time.
Usually it’s like “nice SIXPACK…JERK!!” or “nice ripped PECS…IDIOT!!” or “woooo!! I can bench 280 and squat 400!!! I’m sooo scared!!”
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ok…none of that actually is true.
Just once, and by a staff person. (note: I’m a guy, with a mustache and he already knew me.)
I had come up to the counter to get something and Mr. Macho Weightlifter was working behind the counter. He was showing off for his buddies and said, “What can I get you, MISS Whistlepig?”
whistlepig, loudly: “What the FUCK did you say to me?”
Mr. Macho, “Nothing, I was just joking around.”
whistlepig, “Say it again.”
Mr. Macho, “I didn’t mean anything.”
whistlepig, “Bullshit. You got a problem with me, come around the counter and back it up. You and me, right here, right now. Do you have the balls to insult me again?”
Long story short, he was too chicken to repeat what he said or come around the counter and fight. I had a manager on his ass in two minutes, he was demoted and had to write me an apology. Any time after that when I came near him he walked away.
The moral = NEVER try to get cute insulting someone who grew up drinking/fighting with bikers and oil field workers. Size does not intimidate me.
whistlepig
Never seen it past highschool. I do see the odd guy in the super tiny white Tshirt that will strut around the gym. They are easily dealt with though. Ignore them and you take away what they are looking for, Attention.
None of those. But the porn movies are true to life. Lockerrooms and gyms are hotbeds of sex. It’s assumed that if you walk into either, the room will immediately erupt into a giant orgy.
Are you serious? You had a guy demoted for having a joke?
I have to side with whistlepig. You just don’t insult people you don’t know and then pass it off as a joke. The insult hurts even if the guy was only kidding.
I have been a gym rat for years. People are usually polite. I have never seen anyone get shoved or intimidated. I have heard mildly sarcastic comments made to people who probably deserve it – people who tie up machines unnecessarily in a crowded gym (doing dumbbell curls in the only squat rack), people who try to tie up four machines at once, etc. The comments I have heard were not obviously intended to be hurtful or insulting.
Also siding with whistlepig. Insulting a paying customer to their face will usually get you fired from a job, and rightly so.
My worst adult gym experience was an aerobics instructor who was right left dyslexic, then made me feel like an idiot for messing up like crazy in her class. It is NOT helpful when the instructor says right when she means left, or “right–no, left” - Yaargh! I have no idea how everyone else was doing so well w/ her.
Other least favorite thing–guys who will just stand around and watch women in an exercise class. Yeesh - go find an infomercial or something.
Because they’ll tell on you? 
It’s unclear what kind of relationship they have, but unless it was a buddy of mine, I would be fucking bullshit. I don’t pay $80 a month to hear some meathead try and be clever in front of his friends.
Used to work out at a gym where the Spurs worked out. Tim Duncan was a bit of a bully but in a cut up kind of way. He’d push the other players around or give 'em noogies. That about the worst I’ve ever seen.
That sign would have been for me, if I’d kept going to my gym much longer. I don’t know what it is about the gym, maybe my insane desire for everyone to follow the rules, combined with my usual side-order of misanthropy. In day-to-day life I’m little Mary Sunshine, enduring all sorts of abuse from parents when I refuse to give their child a grade they didn’t earn. I can just smile and gently steer the conversation back to a peaceful place.
In the gym it’s another story-- sometimes it takes everything I’ve got not to scream in frustration when people are doing something I don’t like. Do not leave the machine all sweaty!, food is not allowed in the gym!, and so on, drive me nuts, way out of proportion I think.
I’ve concluded I’m just not cut out for the gym and before I finally clanged someone’s head between two dumbells, I quit and exercise at home now. At home everybody follows the rules and I like Me, Me never does annoying stuff. There is no Gym Rage at home.
I wouldn’t have taken it as a joke. People get fired for far less.
There was this gym I worked out at. One day I was there in the afternoon when almost no one was there but me and this one large, scary looking guy. So what do you do when you’re sitting on a leg machine, with nothing much else to do? You look around.
So big scary guy suddenly comes up to me and says, “I saw you looking at me. You faggots, I see you looking at me all the time. I catch you looking at me one more time, I’ll kick your ass. I don’t care if you call the cops. I’ve been to prison and I don’t care if I go back, I’ll kill you.”
Me: “Uh, ok.”
As soon as he left I told the staff and they were all, “Oh, well, like, ok, like, well, you know, like, well, we’ll look into it 'cause, like, well you know, like well we can’t have that, 'cause like, that’s just wrong, and like, well you know, like, ok we’ll maybe say something if it, like, you know, happens or again or something.”
A couple days later the same guy comes up to me and apologizes and says something to the effect that the other day he was just kinda “freakin’ and no hard feelings, right?” I know the staff didn’t say shit to him either.
I was thinking, “why doesn’t someone just kill you, asshole?” But all I said was, “OK.”
I didn’t belong to that gym very long after that. I wanted a place that wasn’t over-crowded during peak hours, and a place thugs wouldn’t threaten to kill me during non-peak hours.
Just a quick piece of advice levdrakon. If you stare at a single point in space or stare at a point on the wall you’ll find you can concentrate more on the muscle contraction and technique. 'Course if you’re between sets you shouldn’t be resting on the machine.
I get the humor, but you’re confusing me with someone who isn’t familiar with gyms, or lifting weights. I get annoyed with people who never concentrate, never sweat, and seem to chat their way through an entire workout.
That’s not me. I wasn’t in between sets, and I don’t rest on machines. When I’m lifting a weight, that’s all I’m doing. When I’m sitting my ass down on a machine, I might look around at my environment. Doesn’t mean I’m checking you out. So please don’t threaten to kill me if my eyes fall on your side of the gym while you happen to be in that side of the gym.
Fair enough, carry on. 
Used to go to the gym regularly, and sure could use it now, but that is another story.
I went the one of the most Gay gyms in West Hollywood. They didn’t even have a women’s changing room. There were guys in there who, literally, starred in porno films…but not once did I ever hear a single word against the new (always in January) members who were woefully out of shape. To the contrary, I would hear them go up and explain how to use the machines.
That said, I also went to a studly (non-Gay) gym in Berlin and the guys there were just plain rude assholes. I was in as good as shape, if not better, at the time…and they would just cut in on a machine without asking or make snide comments about someone new. I didn’t last long at that club.
I’ve seen out and out intimidation of member on member, but at the gym where I used to work I mostly saw a lot of member on worker intimidation. Especially of the “clean team” (the folks that wash towels and clean up).
One in particular happened when I was working out and not on the clock. One “hanz and franz” type macho type A jerk started yelling at one of the clean team people because he was vacuuming. He claimed it was kicking up dust.
It wasn’t. What made me angry was the WAY the man talked to the cleaner. Like he was a child or someone without any brains. I stood up from the bench where I was working out and said “he is a PERSON, there is no reason to talk to him like that.”
The guy then started getting all macho and complaining with me. “Look I have told management about this before and they AGREED to not clean at this time of day when it’s the busiest” (it wasn’t, it was the middle of the day).
I told him “look…sweetheart, he’s got to clean SOMETIME, there are always a lot of people here, and no noon is NOT peak time, 5 to 7 is”. Then I told the cleaner to go ahead that I’d take the heat if any of upper management complained.
The other guys in the club FINALLY started making slight agreement noises with me(wimps) and the guy finally shut up and went back to his workout. It was pretty clear that it had nothing to do with any dust being supposedly “kicked up” by the vacuum cleaner, and everything to do with a testosterone overload and him needing to vent on someone for no other reason than him to just be able to show his supposed superiority.
I hate people like that.
DMark,
“…everybody talk about mm pop music…”
Okay, bad one. Everybody can kick me around at the gym.
The only time I have seen intimidation and pissy behaviour is when 2+ guys are doing some type of rotation exercise with 7 machines and won’t let you work in.
Seriously, I have seen this a few times- They are using 3 machines, a bench and 4 sets of free-weights and refuse to let anyone use them until they are done - which takes 30 minutes. And the whole time they are joking and talking and goofing around.
Nowadays I mainly exercise in Thai boxing and classical boxing gyms…it’s amazing how polite people are when they know that most of the people in the room know how to fight.
-Tcat
Atlas used to get sand kicked in his face at the beach. [sup]Anyone remember this?[/sup]