Illustration by Damon Taylor.

One last thought about weird things that people do in the locker room. When your members go through your locker room doors, all of the odd behaviors that they typically keep hidden behind their own doors are on full display. That can make for some interesting tales.

For instance, some people can be real slobs in the locker room. It's more than a little discouraging to walk into your locker room just an hour after the cleaning crew has been there to see protein bar wrappers, water bottles, hangers and personal clothing items strewn about the area. (Exactly how do people forget to pack up — or wear — their underwear?)

Some members take over a corner of the locker room with their exercise bag, toiletry bag, purse, yoga mat bag and coat, then shoot daggers at anyone daring to invade their domain.

Sometimes, people take over more than a corner of a locker room. My club isn't upscale enough to provide hair dryers, but that doesn't mean some members haven't found a way to use club-provided equipment (i.e., the hand dryer) to dry their hair. These women not only take over one of the four hand dryers in the locker room for 10 minutes or more (punching the button seemingly harder each time the dryer stops), but the proximity of the dryers to each other makes it dangerous to dry your hands near one of these women if she decides to flip her long, wet hair.

If getting whipped by long, wet hair isn't bad enough, what about getting hit by the errant toenail of a stranger who plops down next to you to cut his or her toenails, a personal grooming activity that I think is best performed at home?

Not quite as “dangerous” but still a bit befuddling (and, yes, amusing) is the woman who paints her toenails in the locker room, then proceeds to walk barefoot with toes up (or encircled in toe separators) over to the hand dryer, which she uses to dry her toenail polish — one foot in the air at a time.

One guy I know saw a man walk into the shower area wearing his baseball cap, so he informed the man that he'd forgotten to remove his cap. The guy responded, “Yeah, I know,” and proceeded into a shower stall with his cap on.

Even more perplexing was the man he saw walking into a shower stall with all of his clothes on (sans shoes). The guy turned on the water, stood under the shower head, wet all of his clothes, lathered them with soap and then rinsed them off before taking off each piece of clothing, hanging them over the shower stall and continuing with his shower.

These behaviors may be a bit odd, but other behaviors border illegal. I'm sure that if your club provides shampoo, soap or lotion in your locker rooms, you've occasionally caught a few people filling plastic bottles with these liquids. And who hasn't had towels stolen? That all comes with the price of the members' dues, right? (Then again, maybe not.)

Plastic bottles are easy for members to hide in gym bags, but what about larger items? One person told me about a staff member who restocked the women's rest room with a full load of toilet paper only to come back a few hours later to find most of the toilet paper missing. Someone obviously had an aversion to shopping for toilet paper but not an aversion to stealing it. How exactly did the woman get out of the building without being seen with all that toilet paper?

If this behavior is what people consider putting their best foot forward, I wonder what they do in the privacy of their own homes? Then again, perhaps that's something best left unknown.

Want to use this article? Click here for options!
© 2012 Penton Media Inc.