Just a preface before I blast off. I'm a pretty quiet person, especially in public, especially in the gym. I've been going to my current gym for about 4 years now and I've had a total of about 3 conversations in that time. My wife goes there and I barely even talk to her when we are there at the same time (generally a butt pat and a smooch on my way out of the door). In over 12 years of working out at different types of gyms (dungeons to 24 hour fitness centers), I think I've had two unpleasant encounters as I've had today.
Today is leg day. As I get to the gym, I see one of the two leg presses has 6 plates on each side. Is someone using these or were the weights left? I decide to wait. This gym is really big but there are not enough 45's in the general area were the leg presses are for two machines to be loaded up.
5 minutes goes by. Nothing. No one else in the gym is working legs today (big shock right?).
I do a warm up set with 4 plates a side, so I need to take two off of each.
I do the set.
As I'm getting up, this guy starts putting the other two plates back on the side. I've seen him before many times. Decent build, goatee, bad tattoos on his arms. I figure he was using the machine (taking long breaks or something, who knows). He seems to keep to himself, much like me, so I load up the other two 45's for him on my side of the leg press.
He does his set. He then moves on to doing incline bench. I guess he is doing some weird ass milos 8 exercise set or something.
I do my next set with the same weight he had on. After 3 minutes or so he comes back does his next set and moves on. I assume this is acceptable gym behavior as I've worked in with people many times before. My next set has two more 45's on each side than the weight he is apparently using. As I am just finishing my set and getting up I can see he is starting to load the other leg press. As I said, there's not a lot of 45's in the area so he's walking a decent distance to get a 45.
He's saying something to me now. I have noise cancelling head phones so I can't hear shit. I take them out.
"What was that?", I say.
"Thanks for taking my machine; I guess there's something wrong with this one", he says (or words to that effect)
"Hey, bro. I waited for five minutes I didn't realize you were using it. Once you did, I figured we were gonna just work on it together."
"yeah, thanks a lot.", he says and continues to mutter under his breath. I can't remember exactly what.
I'm incredulous. "You don't have to act like an asshole about it.", I tell him.
"What did you call me?" The guy takes a step towards me with a 45 in his hand (he's still loading up the other machine. Ironically, I'm done with the leg press and unloading the machine down to the weight he was using).
I repeat and take a step towards him as well, We're nose to nose now.
"You don't have to act like an ASSHOLE...If you didn't want me to work in with you then you should have said so after my first set. I apologize if I bothered your workout, but you were gone for an awfully long time..."
I'm not sure if the word "apologize" disarmed him or not, but he turns away from me, "ok, next time I'll but a nametag on it" (not sure what a name tag on a leg press would say. Maybe, "hello my name is: leg press #1", but I digress)
"Ok, buddy", I sarcastically reply and proceed to unload every fucking 45 on the leg press, making sure he will have to load up that other one fully to do his epic circuit set.
So...who's the asshole here? Was I wrong to do or say what I did? I haven't been in a fight in over 9 years (18 or 19 years old), and I've been in enough to know I don't want to get in anymore. Fights never go like they do in the movies. There is rarely a "winner", usually both people get something they didn't want. But damn, this guy got my blood going...
