My Top Five Health Club Pet Peeves.

1. People on cell phones. Get off the phone, and use the damn machine. Or step out of the room, and finish your call.

2. People singing along with their iPods. I don't want to hear you. Shut up!

3. People not wiping down machines. Women are actually worse about this than men, perhaps because women think they don't sweat.

4. Grunters. Again, shut up.

5. People with terrible form. I can't stand to watch people - usually men - who are doing lifting exercises incorrectly. They will arch their backs in order to do more weight in an exercise in which the back is supposed to be stable. It's just stupid and, at its extreme, dangerous. And then these fools strut around like they've earned a gold medal in the Olympics.

Bonus Pet Peeve: Teenagers. Teenagers are by far the worst offenders in the gym. They do all of the dumb, obnoxious things I've listed above, plus they don't put weights back to their appropriate settings, they sit on machines and talk to friends, and they basically don't know what they are doing.

Ah, it's a good thing that I can work out my aggressions in the gym, because being in there can sometimes raise my blood pressure!

Learn more about this author, B. B. James.
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