The Gym

At work on Friday, something happened that made me question the way we deal with certain people and situations.

I was at the gym with a client when another gentleman came in. He worked out for a few minutes, then went to get a drink of water. When he came back, he picked up the remote control and began trying to figure out how to turn the television on.

It was a purely innocent action, but here’s why I found it interesting: some people that I work with don’t like to have the television on while they work out. If they come in while someone else is working out and watching, they try to suck it up and get their work done (and usually do quite well), but given a choice, they prefer quiet.

Now, if one of my clients walks into the room when someone else is working out and watching television, and he or she just goes over and turns off the set without consulting anyone, that would be considered rude, right? I’d have to explain that you should ask before you do that, and if the other person refuses to accommodate your wishes, you either have to deal with it for a few minutes because they were there first or wait until they're done to start your workout. That seems reasonable to me, and I suspect it would seem reasonable to most of the people I work with.

But this guy who grabbed the remote and turned on the TV? He didn’t ask if we had a problem with it. He just did it. And try as I might, I could not think of any reason why this was any less rude than turning off the television without asking.

In both cases, you’re changing the status quo without expressing any concern for the wishes of the other people in the room. Yet while I would be on hand to explain to my client why his or her actions were socially inappropriate, there was nobody to tell this gentleman that he was being just as inappropriate, even though the intent was the same in both instances.

Moral of the story, I suppose, is that if you walk into a gym and someone else is already there, check with them before you turn the TV on or off.