Saturday, November 18, 2006

At the Gym

A guy was expelled from his gym in upstate NY because he was lifting heavy weights and he grunted. The gym seems to be one of those dysfunctional management horrors, but the article led me to ponder certain things about my own gym.
I like my gym.
1. It couldn't be any closer to my house, which is why I go there.
2. It's pretty low key, at least at the hours I go -- which are freelancer hours, when the gym is mostly empty. That is probably the reason why I like it so much, the lack of people.
3. The members are mostly homely. Only a couple of tall girls with flat tummies and excellent legs, not too many built up guys; lots of regular people with paunches, cellulite, short, ugly, old, etc. So I feel good about myself, like you are supposed to when you go to a gym.
But there is always something, or rather someone annoying:
There is a creepy guy who not only grunts and huffs and sighs, he does that while stretching on the mat, lifting nada. He looks like Lee Harvey Oswald. He tends to want to start conversations with women who are also stretching on the mat. It is obvious he doesn't talk to men and he tries to call attention to himself with the weird noises he makes. Icky predatory loser. He talked to me once and I was polite bordering on rude; that is, I answered the minimum required, putting on the best unfriendly face I could muster and continued working out so he could take the hint to leave me the hell alone. He has not pestered me anymore, but when I see him, I avoid him. The other day, a very good looking girl had a too polite conversation with him, as she stretched out. Of course, he wouldn't let her be, sticking to her like the goo on a snail. Then he gave her his phone number. Eeek!
There is a woman who shows up with a Fendi or some such horrific expensive bag and a fur trimmed leather jacket, as if she was going to the casino in Montecarlo, but with sweats. She leaves her all her shit sprawled around the treadmill, as if she was in her own home. Creep.
There is a guy who has not gotten the memo that there is such a thing as exercise clothes. He does his stuff wearing jeans with a belt and a button down shirt and sometimes sneakers, sometimes moccassins, sometimes Timberland booties. Go figure.
Then there are the people who talk on the phone while on the treadmill. I leave my cellphone at home. The point of the gym is to exercise, thereby relaxing from the pressures of the world outside. Or am I wrong?
Then there are the trainers. They may be the nicest, smartest people; in which case, my apologies, but most of them look really shmucky to me. There is one trainer girl who wears her hair like Pebbles Flintstone (something that only looks good on a 2 year-old) and chews gum distractedly while her trainees do the reps. You can tell she is bored out of her wits, as she chews like a cow out to pasture, so I can't imagine that she instills a lot of motivation on her charges. There is a bald, beefy guy with a goatee who just mills around doing absolutely nothing. He gives me the creeps.
I will not talk about those who seem entirely professional because that is boring.
But I have noticed that gym employees for the most part have verbissener ponims (fart faces for short) and can barely be counted on to give you a nice good morning greeting. I'm sure they get paid accordingly.

1 comment:

  1. The worst is the grunt accompanied by the fart. That's why I never go to the gym withou my iPod.

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