No Sweat

In my gym, I consistently see an overweight man wearing what appears to be a rain jacket, in doors, while he rides the Stairmaster. The tight plastic green jacket snuggly fits him, and during his workout, he manages to sweat completely through it. By the time he is finished, it looks like he just ran inside my gym after being caught in a torrential downpour. I guess he is trying to sweat the fat out. While I'm not sure that his escapades in sweatyville have actually caused him to lose any significant amount of weight, one thing they definitely have accomplished is to grossify everything in his path, (I don't think grossify is a word, but if it were, it would refer to people who drench gym equipment machines with their sweaty ooze).

As I approached the bench to do some presses, I noticed him nearby, doing his usual dripping to the oldies routine, and it made me hypersensitive to possibility that his sweat have made its way onto the bench. I went to the paper towel dispenser, grabbed the disinfectant, and gave the bench a good scrubbing. Feeling better about what I was about to lie on, and doing my best to not look at, (or think about) Dr. Drippy, I proceeded to do my workout.

Then, as I sat on the bench catching my breath, a DIFFERENT sweaty guy approached me. Somehow, this stranger managed to surpass green sweaty guy in wetness. This man, in his white t-shirt and shorts, looked as though he had just gone swimming in his clothing.

"Can I jump in and do a set?" he asked.

"No. Of course not. You're disgustingly sweaty. Take a shower or two, and then we'll talk" is what I said. Or rather, what I later wished I had said as I watched him proceed to befoul the bench with his sweat-sodden clothes.

I think I could deal with her sweat though.

After finishing, he got up and looked down at the puddle he had left on the bench. I guess he realized what a mess he'd made, but rather than getting paper towels to clean up the mess like a normal person would, he put his hand in his shirt and commenced "mopping" up his mess. However, since his shirt was clearly already saturated, he only managed to push the sweat around into an even distributed layer on the bench, and then looks at me with a smile that says, "Ok, there you go!" I decided at that point that I was done with that piece of equipment, definitely for the day, and maybe forever.

Look people, everyone sweats. Some people sweat a little, some sweat a lot. And whatever type of sweater you are, (dry, wet or cashmere), that's fine, you can't choose the amount you ooze. However, you CAN choose to bring a towel. Clean up after yourselves, and make the world a better place. Or if nothing else, a less gross one.