When an overweight, out of shape old man attends a muscle builders' gym and then burns that bridge.
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| Not a true representation of me. |
Over the years I've attended several gyms, mostly in Canada but some in the Philippines, Japan, a military gym in Kandahar and several locations in Chiang Mai and the Pattaya area. I won't name the gym here since that's an unnecessary critical slight that is not, necessarily, the fault of the owner's business model but is the fault of a clutch of bullies (men and women) who make up the bulk of their membership and the staff who did not enforce even the most common sense rules.
My only long-term experience in a gym was in Canada where I attended the same gym for about 3 years. That was, to my best reckoning, about 12 years ago from this writing. That gym was very well equipped and had strict cleaning and apparel rules. There were many 'bodybuilders' who kept to themselves and their routines. This gym was also a local leader in training hockey players from the more competitive leagues, some Junior “A” players who had an eye toward playing professionally worked out there. The difference between my Pattaya and Canada experience? Everyone was treated equally and they enforced the rules of the gym in Canada. Dress properly, clean your equipment after use, do not use more than one apparatus and even share them on busy days. Simple rules are easy to follow but they must be enforced to be followed.
Then there were the bully boys in Pattaya: Some of the muscled “alphas” (aka assholes who need to be on the top of the compost pile) would take over multiple circuit training apparatus. I got barked at on two different occasions over a towel placed on an apparatus. On one occasion, when the member noticed me sitting down at a machine he'd laid claim to (I was new there, had no idea at the time that was a thing) he broke off his conversation that had been going on for the entire length of time I had spent doing 3 sets of 10 reps on a nearby machine, stomped over to me and read me his riot act. He was much more annoyed than he should have been so I acquiesced without argument and moved to another machine, checking around to make sure he was not reserving that machine as well. He then went back to his conversation with his pal. At one point, a few minutes later, both went to different machines, not the towel marked (pissed on) one I had been berated over but a different one, when I noted, each conversant did one set and then returned to their conversation in the center of the room. Their ground was staked out (I did not see a flag waving from the parapets) and no one outside their pack was allowed in. The very definition of bully.
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| Work, work, work. |
Another day as I was doing my usual routine of 3 sets of 10 reps in the circuit training area, where the machines are packed uncomfortably close, I was made the butt of a joke by 4 young women. I take a one minute break between sets so, during one of my breaks one of the young women walked along the row of machines where I was working out. As I said, the machines were packed uncomfortably close together so if she 'needed' to walk about there were much better choices. In this case, she paused directly in front of me and did a sky reaching stretch. Since she was less than a meter away from my nose, and directly in front of me, it was impossible to miss this. I saw this as a playful antic. She continued her 'walk' to the end of the row of equipment and exited by turning to one side and squeezing between the machines and out to the open aisle to where her friends were giggling like the 20s something children they were.
My first thought was “Who cares, she was pretty, in great shape, they're just having fun and playing a little, no big deal.” Then a second one ran this gauntlet, gave me a different pose and moved on. A microsecond after that pretender appeared I focused my eyes on the floor, trying to extricate myself from their game. They all laughed. Then after a 3rd one appeared – I got up and moved to a different machine in a far corner. They laughed and giggled, seemingly very pleased at their success in humiliating me. There were cleaning staff on the floor but no management or front desk staff anywhere in sight. I just kept my eyes down and the music from my headphones turned up.
I could go on and on about the abusive behavior of the various denizens of this gym but my point is made. I was determined to burn off 20+ kilos and had decided a month before to try to ignore the bullies and the poser girls and just do my work. Live in my own world. Isolate.
Staff in the gym in Pattaya contributed to the discomfort I felt as well as the bully boys/girls. The obviousness of their disdain concerning my presence was made clear from the moment I entered to the moment I left everyday. This gym fired(?) the only person (manager) who showed any deference to me and other non-regular (as in non-lifetime gym bunnies) gym members. She would say hi, she would walk through the gym with a friendly greeting and a “how are you?” The young woman who replaced her had well honed shunning skills. She never made eye contact, never said hello, never acknowledged my existence, never enforced simple rules like cleaning your own apparatus, wearing a shirt and wearing proper shoes (many barefoot and flip-flops worn.) Her power walks through the gym had little purpose outside of intimidating the cleaning staff. I saw no other use for her there.
A couple of months earlier I had posted on the gym's Facebook page a story of the bully boys and their penchant for intimidating us old folks and was thinking about giving up. I mentioned seeing several older men being harassed by these jerks for similar 'offenses' that they had bullied me over, but then not seeing them again. One can only assume they quit that gym, something I said I was going to do. Management of that gym were monitoring the FB page and responded with apologies and led me to believe they cared about everyone of their clients, good courteous business practices. I decided the FB contact was right and I should not let the bullies intimidate me, so I stuck it out and did my best to ignore the obnoxious asses, and the girls who liked humiliating older guys. Although the disgust from some of them was palpable. They're not old...yet.
One day something unnecessarily disturbing happened though. I was working out on a machine when two people, very nice people from all accounts, approached me and asked if I was Allan, the one who'd chatted with them on FB. I looked at them, fumbled out a “yeah, I guess” and they introduced themselves as part owners and were in town from Bangkok for the day and were my contact on FB. A friendly hand-shake was offered, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, a friendly handshake was offered. I responded reflexively and shook hands, although my brain was saying “What, are you stupid? You don't shake hands right now.” These were very friendly welcoming people who possessed no ideas of boundaries and rules
They had, I can only guess, done the necessary work to discover who I was and was pointed to by their staff. Now, the entire staff working in the gym can recognize the old guy who complained to their bosses. I had been exposed like a sore tooth. I had been fully doxxed in public. I was asked if there was anything they could do to make me more comfortable (paraphrased) which I responded to with “um...I, I, I'm not sure...” keep I mind, I'm in my 70s, working out, sweat dripping off me, huffing and puffing and now I find myself in a surprise conversation with two nice people about my feelings of being intimidated by the bully boys who were standing 3 meters away - right at that moment. Yeah, I felt a little intimidated, bullied and exposed. My only way out was to babble some nonsensical clap-trap about cleaning supplies and their lack of availability.
This gym was extremely well designed and equipped so I had decided to put up with the bullshit and hit my personal targets. It was a hard row to hoe but I got to where I wanted to go, burning off <20 kilos in 10 months. The problems I experienced there can be summed up with the following anecdote.
One day I went to the gym and when checking in, the staff, as usual, ignored me. On this day, however, there was a large man who I recognized from a couple of YouTube videos as the owner/founder of the gym here and in Bangkok. This guy knew his stuff, a former bodybuilding champ, gave some workout advice in those videos I took to heart and still use. Kudos and thanks. He looked at me, then he looked at the 3 staff members nearby who were trying to figure out a rule or procedure of some sort, he looked back at me with my hand extended, holding my membership card. He snatched the card and waved it under a nearby scanning unit, but it did not work. He waved it a few more times and it still did not work. I pointed at the white paper stickers on the back of the card with an expiry date crudely written on it, he glared at his staff, grumped at me and said 'okay,' then went on about his business. This gym had not even shown me the simple respect of adding me to their database. I had been written up on a sticker.
During this time, Bangkok was the epicenter of the COVID pandemic in Thailand. It had hit a massive wave of infections and was spreading country wide, people were dying in triple digits everyday. The gym owner/founder was a foreigner (not Thai) from Bangkok, the aforementioned epicenter of the rampant COVID pandemic in Thailand. There he was, behind the counter, making direct contact with an old unvaccinated guy (the vax rollout was not working well then) while he was not wearing a mask and didn't seem to care about distancing or any of the other health 'rules' the government was haphazardly putting in place. He was probably "naturally" immune anyway and had a business to run.
This summed up my time in this gym perfectly, “Rules? We don't need no stinking rules.”
Since then I bought a small set of weights, a bench, a set of resistance bands, a stationary bicycle and added 5km walks. So for me these days “Gym? I don't need no stinking gym.”
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