My Gym (and Why I Hate It)

People who know me know I hate my gym.  It's because it's not really a "gym" so much as it's a "health club" with an elderly clientele, juice heads, and children running around unsupervised.  

I go here, because it's local and they have a pool, which for me is kind of a big deal.  Laps are the best kind of workout, second being running.  So, for one last time, here's a breakdown of everything I hate at my gym, and why:


The Patronage:

Like I said a second ago, there's just this.. wide swath of people that go to my gym.  Half of the week, I go in the mornings, and I'm forced to deal with the elderly.  Old woman sitting on stationary bikes who bark at you for touching the TV channel, lest they miss one second of Ellen or Rachael Ray.  If they're not on the bikes, they're getting in my way when I want to use equipment.  And they're SO SLOW!  Like, all I want to do is just rip out four sets of ten reps, in under five minutes... but then they just sit on the equipment, while their bored fitness trainer looks on, or texts his girlfriend, or watches the tv, inattentive to their client.  If I try to budge in, even politely, I'm met with resistance. 

The old ladies like to chit-chat with each other too.  True story:  the other day, I was over by the free weights, where no little old ladies have any business being in the first place, when, standing in front of the rack of weights, two old bettys are gabbing about how fucking unbelievably precious their grandchildren are.  I had had enough by this point, and carrying two 60 lb dumbbells, walked between them and set down my load.  They both looked at me as if I just kicked a puppy down a flight of stairs.  I pulled my earbud out and looked one of them dead in the eyes:

"This is not your living room," I told her.  Stuck my bud back in and went back to my workout.  They left shortly thereafter.

The men are no better.  I walk into the men's locker room and there's no less than 6 or 7 pairs of naked, old, hairy balls dangling around.  At what age do men just stop being modest around each other?  Big fat hair-covered bellies and asscracks, the smell of icyhot and farts lingers.... inevitably there will be one in one of the toilet stalls, letting loose bladdery gas as he bares down.  And they all just stand around talking about the most absurd shit!

"Yup, that Obama there ain't been born in this country, no sir, they can't even find a dat-gum birth certificate..."

"He ain't MY president...."

"Jesus didn't die for me to have no black president," and so on.  I just keep my head down and gear up and try to get out of the forest of dicks as quickly and quietly as possible.

The evening sessions are no better.  Low-educated juiceheads get out of their day jobs and clutter up the place with their tiny wife-beater undershirts, bulging muscles, the smell of Hungarian Horsecock Steriods and the all-too-quick-to-point-out attitude about how you're doing your workout "all wrong."  They sit on benches or stand in the middle of the gym on their cell phones, either texting or shouting into them at arms length.

While they're being boobs, they're monopolizing the free weight area, the benches, the machines.... they're like fucking gremlins that got fed after midnight, they just spawn everywhere, shouting at each other from across the gym floor:

"AY JIMMY!  LOOK AT ALL THIS WEIGHT I CAN LIFT!  HAVE YOU BEEN JUMPIN' ROPE LATELY, YOU'RE LOOKING REAL CUT!  NO, I'M TAKING A NEW WHY ISOLATE!  THANKS FOR NOTICING!"

I wish, for creativity-sake, I was making most of this up.

Then you have the unattended children that just run amok all over this place.  Dad's with "weekend duty" will bring the kids to the gym for an hour while they workout.  The kids, unchecked, throw bosu balls around, run and trip on shit, run and run into you, destroy equipment by not using it correctly, and NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING!  I grabbed a small 9 year old boy last weekend by the arm after he was just banging on objects with a light dumbbell and asked him where his parents were.  He pointed across the gym where a sweat-covered middle-aged man was sitting on a machine, sending a text to someone.  I marched the child over and presented him to his parent.

"Unless you're planning on paying me for babysitting duties, watch your own kid," and left it at that.  I'm sure the asshole got indignant about the whole thing.

The Lack of Respect for Equipment:

It goes so much further than just not wiping down the equipment when you're done using it (which no one does, except me and my wife) but not putting equipment back to it's proper place or even cleaning up after yourself.

The locker room is usually a hot mess by the time I'm leaving in the evenings; used towels everywhere, paper towels in clumps by a trashcan because people were too lazy to follow up on their missed throw, loose gear just strewn about.  The airduct above my locker was last wiped of dust when George Bush was president.  The first one.

If I want to take a soak in the jaccuzzi, I can only do so if I'm wearing a condom and a cork up my ass.

Broken equipment stays that way for weeks at a time, no matter how many times my wife or I tell the staff that something's not working correctly.  Benches are torn and there's a sizable hole in the middle of the freeweight section begging for someone to step into it under load and destroy their knee or ankle.  All of these things have been brought up at one time or another.  The best the staff can do I guess, is leave a little computer-printed sign that says "out of order."

People pee in the pool.  I know this because I'll be swimming and find myself in the middle of a murky, warm section of my lane where someone just left.  Cocksucker.

Also, the parking lot looks like a moonscape.  I'm starting to get curious as to what my $55-a month membership fee is going towards?

And rack your fucking weights when you're done with them!  Wipe down the sweaty puddle you left on the goddamn bench you were using!  I'm here to do MY workout, not yours, and I don't get paid to clean up after you!

Jesus.

The Cost:

Lastly, my membership is $55 dollars a month, like I just said.  For that amount of money, I should be getting a goddamn complimentary handjob every time I walk in the place. 

Yes, there's a pool, and yes there are classes I can sign up for, but like I said in the last section, the equipment is very slow to repair, and the place is usually filthy.  Given the bulk of my workout can be done at home (minus swimming laps) it's very frustrating to pay the amount I'm locked into for the next year.  The place can be better.  There has to be 500 people going there a day, total.  That's 500 people paying roughly 60 bucks a month.  Do the math, improve the place.

I'm going to open my own gym one day and membership fees will be assessed based off body fat % and composition.  The less you have, the less you pay.  The tvs will be locked on either the Weather Channel or ESPN.  No bitching, no grunting, no yelling, no children, no cell phones, no naked old men.  It will be bare bones and members will be expected to sign up and train for a local athletic competition within 3 months of starting a membership, or their privileges will be revoked.

This is my gym.