Last night while at the gym, a little itty bitty girl all decked out in her Victoria’s Secret Pink workout clothes hops on the elliptical next to me. You know the kind of girl I mean – she looked like the kind of girl who would wear pearl earrings while running. Anyway, she pulled out her headphones, plugged them into the jack for the TV, and started flipping through the channels, while I happily continued watching The Biggest Loser and pedaling away.
Then – she doesn’t put the headphones on. She leaves them sitting on her elliptical, and pulls out her cell phone. I wasn’t really paying attention at this point, but nothing could stop me from noticing when she starts talking in a cooing, baby voice with a lisp that sounds distinctly fake, as if she’s trying to sound all cute. There is NO WAY that voice is real. She’s shrieking away about her day and the latest hot celebrity gossip, and then she says something about her mom that makes me realize: she’s not talking to some guy she’s trying to impress with her idiotic femininity and baby voice. She’s talking to her sister. Which means, there is a good chance that that voice is real and she’s not putting on an act.
Oh. My. God.
I kept trying to get up the nerve to say something to her. Anything to make her shut up. I first tried the evil looks and disapproving glances, but she didn’t seem to notice those. Then again, I was doing a pretty intense workout, so my death glares probably just looked like I was struggling with the high resistance level.
I kept trying to think whether I had seen actual signs saying “no cell phones” in the gym, or whether that was just in the locker room, or if I imagined them altogether. If there aren’t signs, there should be! I contemplated tattling to the receptionist, but then the ellipticals are only about 3 feet from her desk, so I was scared the girl would overhear and I’d be all embarrassed. Throughout all of this, I kept pondering different word choice for if I decided to just open my mouth and say something. These ranged from the polite: “Excuse me, would you mind taking it down a bit? I can’t even heard the TV show I’m watching through my headphones.” To the not-so-polite: “Can you NOT talk on the phone in here? I know you’re going at zero resistance at a slow pace while you gab away, but some of us are trying to get an actual workout in, and your yapping doesn’t help.”
I settled for just being pissed off throughout the workout (she talked for at least 33 minutes, at which point I left so I have no idea how much longer she kept going). I continued to shoot dirty looks at the girl, especially when the screeching reached a particularly high decibel level. I comforted myself by saying I’d say something to the receptionist on the way out, and see if maybe they could enforce a no cell phone rule in the future. Unfortunately, as I walked over to the desk, I could see that the receptionist herself was yammering way on her cell phone. Probably not the best time to go on an anti-phone tirade.
Tonight I’m considering bringing my own “no cell phone use in the gym” signs and strategically placing them on the machines around me. Anyone have any better ideas?
that’s too funny. Imagine if you had to wake up to the voice every day of your life. Yikes.
I was watching one of my students text while she was running on the TM. The person waiting for her to get off was mighty P.O.’d
Wow. That is hilarious — although I can totally believe it. With how packed my gym has been this month (hello New Years Resolutions) I can’t imagine that she would have gotten away with it for long … There had to have been other people giving her the evil eye too!