totally serious, they set the pads low enough to where they can do a quarter squat or so and proceed to bang out quarter squats, not kidding at all.
I've seen this dozens of times at my gym. I am pretty sure one idiot started it and everybody saw him do this and now they do it too. I guess they don't want their shoulders or traps to hurt from the bar. Some other weird shit I've seen:
1. Attempts at using the hack squat machine for shrugs and shoulder presses (upside down shoudler presses once!)
2. Smith machine vertical rows (I just don't see the point at all)
3. pushups with feet on one bench and hands on another bench
4. putting the weight stack on the lat pull down machine to the max and then doing pull ups
5. cable flies while laying down on a bench