I encountered some random and extremely rude behavior at the gym yesterday. It came out of left field from someone I didn't even know and had never seen before. The vehemence and shouting was so extreme that I felt I needed to report it to gym management so they could speak to the person. Incidently, I have to wonder why the management didn't hear, or didn't act on, what happened immediately...
I went to gym and a man was there on another treadmill. I leave a space and get on one myself. All is going good till about 15 min later when a second man walks in and gets on another treadmill about 3 down from me on the other side. Shortly after 2nd man comes in, a friend of mine comes out of a class, and walks up to the tradmill to speak to me.
We are having a discussion about supplements, a job search of mine and how its going, etc. Nothing controversial, we're not being overly loud, we're both regulars there, etc.
Out of the blue, 2nd man, again whom I have never seen before, shouts at me "Hey, can you take that outside?" At first I didn't know he was even speaking to me so I didn't turn my head toward him. He yells even louder the same statement so now I have to turn to see who he is yelling at only to discover it's me and I'm in disbelief. He follows up with "Take it to the cafe and shut up!" I say "Excuse me?" still confused as to why he is going at me verbally. He repeats, "I said shut up!" (Remember we are in a smallish to medium size gym with weights clanging, the overhead stereo system playing music, other people laughing and talking, etc.
I'm so shocked and so is the lady I'm speaking to that we simply end the convo and she says I'll see you tomorrow and walks away. I look over at man number one, who was the original of the three of us there, and he is looking at me and shrugging. After we are done on treadmills, man one and I are both in back of gym working out on the arm and leg machines. He approaches me and asks if I told gym manager what happened and I said yes. He says good because he was thinking it needed to be reported and he would if I didn't. He also told me to tell them before I left that he would back up what was said by man 2 because my friend had left and he, man 1, had witnessed the situation. I did that and before I left, I said to gym manager that man 1 was my back up to what happened. Rude man was still there when I left but, they promised to speak to him.
What would you have done? Frankly it was all I could do not to get off treadmill and go over to verbally confront him but, I'm glad that I didn't because it may have come to some violence. Have you ever had some random person go verbal on you? I never had that happen before so I think that added to the shock factor.
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