Have you ever had a job for such a long period of time that when you no longer worked there it was hard to turn off the habits you had while working there?

In this story, one former gym employee is in that situation. He has trouble acting like a gym member and keeps falling back into gym employee mode.

One day, he really took it too far. Let’s read all about it.

Lady at the gym had to remind me that I don’t work there!

Up until a few months ago I had spent my entire adult life working in gyms as a personal trainer, group fitness instructor, front desk, and/or anything else that they would pay me for.

Then I got a job as a supervisor at a nursing home taking care of fitness and non-fitness related activities.

Their fitness center is great, but I needed something a little different so I got a membership at the local YMCA. That’s where the problems began.

He can’t seem to stop himself from helping out.

It started off pretty harmless.

I’d be in-between sets and notice that the weight tree would be a complete mess with weights in the wrong place. I’ll tell myself “I don’t work here I don’t need to fix that” but then 5 minutes later I’ll be putting the weights back in the correct place.

Or other times after I’m done using something like a treadmill I will do a REALLY thorough job of cleaning it. Like wiping down every square inch of it.

Other members will look at me all confused and I’ll just say “Sorry, used to work in a gym. Just a habit.”

It started with an accidental mess.

But this time the YMCA staff had to tell me to stop.

At the Y they give each member a little individual spray bottle to clean off their machines after they are done. I’m doing just that when the sprayer detaches from the rest of the bottle. The spray cleaner is all over the machine and the floor.

I go to grab towels and clean up as much as I can. The floor is still kind of wet though.

His instinct was to solve the problem.

I can see wet floor signs behind the front desk and without even thinking about it I start walking back there to get one.

Then the lady that’s working front desk notices me and is like “Excuse me can I help you with something? Members aren’t allowed back here.”

Ooops! I guess when I don’t work at the gym I can’t just go wherever I want!

That’s funny! When you’re used to helping out at a gym, I can see how it would be hard to break that habit.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

A gym employee wishes more members were like OP.

A former bookstore employee feels the same way about bookstores.

This gym member can relate.

This is very true.

It’s hard to unlearn old habits.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.