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I went to the gym the other day and a woman was talking very loudly on the phone. Hands moving. Dramatic conversation. Loud, so loud that even though I was like 8 feet away and there was a large space between us and I had noise cancelling headphones on, her voice kept penetrating my headphones and distracting me.
So I asked her nicely to lower her volume and she seemed offended and annoyed and waved her hand at me like she wanted to dismiss me and completely ignored me. Whatever, maybe she will wrap up her conversation. A few minutes later, she kept talking loudly. I asked her nicely again, and she basically did a dismissive wave like I was irritating her, rolled her eyes, and continued to ignore me and speak loudly on the phone.
So I got a worker to talk to her, and I was shaking because I was so nervous. The worker talked to her and she insisted that it was just a 5 minute phone call and that I was being rude and overreacting but then the behavior stopped. So I went back to my workout and she made it a point to face me and stare at me and intimidate me while reading her book. I just ignored her, but when I turned to her she was flashing a book cover called "surrounded by idiots" to me with a clear and obvious message: that I am an idiot and she wants to make me uncomfortable for asking her to be quiet. She kept staring at me and making it a point to flash this book cover at me because she wanted to a) make me uncomfortable in retaliation and b) try to provoke a reaction that she can complain about.
I complained to the gym manager about bullying and got a call back from the manager that the gym is on my side and that her behavior was rude and unacceptable.
The manager and staff told me that next time I am working out and someone is being loud on their phone and disruptive and rude, to go discretely call the front desk and they will send a worker to tell them to stop making noise. It's against the gym rules to talk on the phone in workout floors, and there are signs posted about this and the workers are paid to enforce these rules.
Now this girl clearly has a vendetta against me at the gym, and I am going to constantly monitor for behaviors that are intimidating. Also, I have to monitor for safety in case she is violent and seeking revenge because her pride was hurt.
My life lesson? Don't ask people nicely. Go straight to the manger, leader, cops, etc. you
On reddit or other advice pages, if someone has, for example, a neighbor who is throwing a loud party late at night, people always jump in to say "don't call the cops, just ask them nicely". I had a friend in school who had a neighbor who called the cops on her family for having a loud party late at night and the family would say "omg why did they call the cops and not ask us nicely! We would have listened to them!"
But today I learned that people get offended and petty if you ask them things nicely. They can retaliate and get revenge and it has real world consequences. Now I am worried I will be bullied at my gym. Or worse, violence.
Literally, for safety and to avoid retaliation, just go to the staff and complain and ask them discretely to confront whoever is being disruptive. Let the employees deal with the backlash, because they are paid to enforce gym rules. If a neighbor is being noisy at 1 am with a party, don't nicely ask your neighbor (who is also likely intoxicated) to tone it down. Just go directly to the police and let them handle it.
i have had various times in my life when someone asked me to turn down my volume. I always immediately said "I am so sorry!" And whisper and tone it down. Even if I disagreed with them, I would still tone it down.
Occasionally, a rude person will talk loud on the phone on the treadmills. From now on I'll just immediately report them and ask a worker ti come up and scold them.
Asking for help is not being a "tattle tale". It's literally just protecting yourself from rage and retaliation.
I agree with you, and here's why: Sure, they might react nicely and immediately tone down the behavior. But it seems like at least 50% of the time, they will not, and you will end up having to go to an authority anyway.... and THEN the person knows, or at least strongly suspects, that YOU were the one who reported them. And then they have the vendetta against you. If there's a chance that you're going to have to go up the chain (and there's ALWAYS that chance), then do it right away and save yourself the harassment.
Good thinking. There are exceptions, but incthis case, if she’s rude enough to have a loud phone conversation at the gym (when she knows phones aren’t allowed in the gym area), she’s going to react badly to being told to keep it down. But who goes to the gym to talk on the phone and read a book? That’s weird af.
I nicely told a dude no for a date and he ruined 1 year of life with bullying and stalking. Im not nice either. I take action.
I disagree. I think while it’s always possible to have a situation where someone reacts rudely, the majority of people will be civil human beings and respond graciously to being asked to tone it down. Especially most women, who have been socialized to feel downright mortified for making waves/disturbing people etc. I actually recently had someone do this to me: go straight to the “authorities” instead of just letting me know I was doing something to upset them. It was awful. I feel sorry that this person was such an asshole to you, but I don’t think “tattling” right away is a good thing either. I’d especially give a woman the chance to show she was a good person before doing something like that. I honestly think the way you handled this was good, though I wouldn’t have asked her twice.