Tuesday 18 February 2014

PICTURE THIS .....

.....I go to the gymn in our apartment this morning. As I start my half hour on one of the exercycles the woman who was on a treadmill in the row in front of me gets off and wanders away. She leaves the big screen TV in front of the treadmill on and blaring out advertisements with the occasional (minimal) coverage of the Sochi olympics. I wait to see if she is coming back but no, she heads off to the weights room so I dismount and go over and turn the TV off.
 The woman comes back and says "sorry I was watching that".
 I raised my eyebrows and she amended her response to "there's something I want to watch".
 She went further down the row of treadmills and turned on a TV further away from me and sat in a corner doing some stretch exercises..



I resumed my pedalling.
About 5 minutes later another woman came in. She selected the treadmill right in front of me and turned on the TV. She turned it on to the exact same channel (Sochi olympics) as the TV that was blaring 3 machines away.
I called out to her "excuse me but why don't you use the treadmill by the TV that's already going?" A reasonable request I would have thought.
"It's too noisy" she said.
"What" I said, "the TV?"
"No" she said, "the treadmill".
"Bugger me" I thought, "how the hell could she hear the squeaking of a treadmill over the blaring of the TV?"
I just waved a hand and said "turn it on then".
She said "I'm going to".
Bitch.
I looked at both of these women. Late 20's. Part of the Me, Me generation.




I stopped the exercycle, wiped it down and stormed, walked outgiving them a significant look.





8 comments:

Richard (of RBB) said...

You certainly showed them, old fellah!

THE CURMUDGEON said...

Yeah you're right, the MeMe generation are thick-skinned when it comes to being aware of other people's feelings. I guess I should have just unplugged the TVs.

THE CURMUDGEON said...

... Or turned on the music system really loud.

THE CURMUDGEON said...

....or pretended that I had earphones on and sung tuneless sly out loud..

THE CURMUDGEON said...

...where are all the double basses when you need them?

Tracey said...

Nice to hear you're making new friends and working on international relationships at the grass level!

THE CURMUDGEON said...

Yes Tracey. The first woman was Indian and the second Chinese so I'm getting to grips with those cross-cultural issues as well.

Richard (of RBB) said...

Ha ha Tracey!