When you go to a gym area, it is important to be courteous and make sure that other people can work out as well.

What would you do if you wanted to work out in a small gym, but someone else was hogging multiple machines at the same time?

That is what happened to the guy in this story, so he waited nearby for her to finish, but she got upset that he was just standing there on his phone.

Check it out.

AITA for leaning on a nearby wall after being denied use of gym equipment by a woman doing supersets?

So my apartment building has a small exercise area including a cable crossover machine, an adjustable bench, dumbbells, some treadmills, and a small side room for yoga or other bodyweight/kettlebell exercises.

The gym was empty this morning except for one woman doing row exercises on the cable crossover machine.

Hopefully, she moves it when she sees someone else wants to work out.

I noticed that she had placed her phone next to the bench with a couple of dumbbells.

For context, I’m a tall-ish guy and she’s shortish and appears nonbinary (which is fine by me, I’ll refer to her as “she” here because I don’t know her pronouns or how she personally identifies).

I specify this because it seems like that plays into the dynamic from her perspective.

“Can I use this bench?” I ask.

“No,” she replies. “I’m doing supersets.”

I was a bit taken aback.

There is room for two, maybe three people in the resistance/weight training area, and she was using every piece of equipment.

This seems reasonable.

Not sure what to do, I lean on a nearby wall and start looking at my phone.

I’m a bit miffed and I look up every so often to see when she’ll be done.

She takes her earphone out and says something to the effect of, “Are you just going to stand there?” and we get in a big argument.

I say something to the effect of “What else am I supposed to do? You won’t let me work in.”

“I don’t want you up in my space. Go do something else,” she says.

“So I can’t do pullups on the cable crossover while you’re using the bench?” I reply.

This is a shared space, not her space.

“No. I don’t want you up in my space,” she says.

“That’s just bad etiquette,” I reply.

It then continues like this for a bit.

How is waiting across the room for a piece of equipment ‘male privilege’?

I accuse her of being rude, she accuses me (verbatim) of using my “male privilege.”

Eventually she finishes her sets and leaves.

Yes, you shouldn’t ‘reserve’ gym equipment like that.

In every gym I’ve worked out at it would be considered rude to bogart multiple pieces of equipment while others have to wait.

I lived abroad for years before this – is this still the case in US gym culture?

Was I wrong for leaning on a nearby wall and waiting, rather than going and stretching or running on the treadmill?

Not wrong at all. It seems like she was just looking for a fight.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

This commenter says this was not male privilege.

This woman says he was not out of line.

Exactly, the only way to reserve a machine is to be using it.

Here is someone who says supersets are a luxury.

This person says she can’t use all the machines at once.

She needs to learn some gym etiquette.

Who hogs a public gym this way?

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.