Wow, quite a lot of interesting responses. I have never actually been intimidated in the way I described in the OP. However, I once felt intimidated by the staff when joining a club. Specifically, I’d been shown into a room to the side to discuss the terms of joining. I was reluctant because I had just finished grad school a few years before and was still keeping up a rec center membership. I got a lot of value from this membership, apart from the gym and pool, because I was able to park for free on campus and have easy access to the finest library system in L.A. I mentioned this to the two oversize gents who were in the room with me, between me and the door, and they scoffed! ONe might almost say they mocked! It was very unsettling. In the end I signed up, but then wired my repudiation of the contract the same day.
I use to dread going to the gym on campus in college. It was always crowded, and there were a lot of meathead frat boys and jocks who could be pretty intimidating. They’d hog several machines in their “rotations” and not let you get a chance, they’d push you out of the way to get to weights, and they loved to load lots of weights on the bars and then leave them – I’m not a great weightlifter, and just unloading after they were done was more weight than I was used to dealing with. They didn’t care, because the world revolves around guys like that anyway. They’d also laugh and make fun occasionally, in between hogging the equipment and hitting on the girls (as our gym was quite the “meat market” for those who looked the part, which I didn’t). I just stopped going eventually. It was hard to start a workout program when I felt so out of place, and those jerks made me feel like I was back in high school.