I often warm up and dry off and stretch in the dry sauna at my gym. It feels so good.
Now some of the stretching I’m doing is physio stretching on my operated on knee. That bit doesn’t feel good. And I confess, I use my phone for physio. The clinic I go to has an app with all the stretching and mobility work I’m supposed to do and I also use the timer on my phone, no beeps though because I’m not a monster.
Enter two other women from my aquafit class. They sit down and started talking loudly about family members and then one says to the other, I hate people using their phones in here.
There’s only three of us in the room. Obviously it’s me. I’m the phone user but I’m puzzled why they didn’t just speak to me.
Next, same lady says let’s check the list of rules. I bet phones aren’t allowed in here. She puts on her glasses, complains about the size of the type, and walks up to the printed list of forbidden activities on the wall. I’m familiar with the list because I did actually read it. I am a rule following sort of person. The list includes shaving and changing. It also forbids taking photos. I think the inclusion of changing is odd but whatever. I also think it ought to include loud talking but it doesn’t. Notably phones aren’t forbidden.
The women read the list out loud and lament the lack of a rule against phone use. They could have just asked me to stop me using my phone. I would have said sure, though I might have also asked them to stop talking.
I mean I guess that was the weirdest thing about this non-encounter, not talking to me when it was just the three of us there.
What would you have done given that they never spoke to me? If you were me would you have said something?
And I get that you might agree that phone use ought to be forbidden. But it’s not.
Also, it’s rude to talk about people in their presence without talking to them.
I just kept using my phone until I was somewhat stretched and mostly dry and then left. But I’m still puzzled about whether or not I should have said something. What would you do?
