I'm so ashamed that I failed to channel my inner MN - a leisure cntr changing room, so I should have known what to do!

[Fatmomma99]

VERY rarely use the changing room at our leisure centre - usually go already dressed, but tonight had to get changed first. There's a note on the door of the gym changing room saying "this is for DRY sports, for swimming, please use the village changing room next door".

so I walk in, it's not a big space, and immediately there's a small girl peeling off her wet swimming costume, while the adult with her is sat on one of the approx 5 bench spaces, talking on the phone in a foreign language. There are 3 other adults in the room, one is also wet.
__

Benches are as so: L

The woman is sat on the far right of the across one, and the other 3 adults are near the L shaped one. The small girl is in the floor space next to the - one, which is the space that leads to the showers.

So the first thing I do is go next to the woman, and I assertively/passive aggressively pick up her bag and put it on the floor, put my bags in it's place and start getting changed.

That bag belongs to the wet woman, who has just used the showers. I am shamed. Woman on phone hasn't noticed.

I consider:
Turning to the other women to comment (don't have the balls)
Going out to reception to complain (can't imagine them doing anything, and the child at this point is naked)
Making a statement about the note on the door just out loud
Wonder what language the woman is speaking, and think it might be German, which I don't speak.

I do nothing.

I tell myself to channel my inner MN.

The woman on the phone finishes call, and interacts with child, she's clearly English.

I continue to do nothing, except keep getting changed. Blood boiling. Uselessly. I mentally try and decide the difference between pithy comments and PA comments, wonder what those might be, and try and muse on the difference. The best I mentally come up with is "perhaps if you weren't on your phone, you'd have seen the notice on the door". Decide it's rubbish, and don't have the balls to say it out loud anyway.
I consider getting out my phone and pretending to call someone and using the worst swear words, but can't bring myself to do it in front of a child who at this point (it's 1/4 to 6) is getting into her pajamas.

The woman is by now sitting on one of my socks. I pick the sock up aggressively. The woman apologizes and says she's very tired. I say nothing.

The child gets changed, they leave, I continue to say nothing.

I comfort myself with the fact that most MN-ers in changing rooms don't say anything either.

I am ashamed.

How could I have done that better, please?

I realize this thread is quite long for something relatively trivial!

You are going to give yourself a stroke. Let It Go. If this is the extent of your problems you are very lucky indeed.

Why did you need 'the perfect biting comment'?

Polite works much better.

I'm not really sure why you would care at all where the mother and child showered or why it should upset you that the mother was on her phone. However:

You could have just said conversationally (with a smile) "is there a problem with the swimming pool showers tonight?"

If she said "no" or "I don't know" then you could have said "oh I just wondered as these showers are generally reserved for people using the gym or doing classes as there isn't much space"

She made have:

A) not known
B) had an excellent reason for using them.

Of course you'd need to be careful with your tone and body language during this exchange so that they didn't think you were a deranged busy body with nothing better to do, but it's perfectly possible.

I'd be more concerned that you measure your responses to real life situations against a forum on the Internet. Weird.

I channelled my inner mumsnet too, got into a minor short argument, left feeling silly at my overreaction. It's not worth it

If you'd channelled your inner mumsnet you'd have called her a carcas and called 111 just to get it logged.

I think it's good that you said nothing. If you had said something, you might have really upset her and her dd. Who may well have had their reasons, and, even if they didn't, breach of the note on the door is hardly akin to murder.

I'd be more concerned that you measure your responses to real life situations against a forum on the Internet. Weird.

This! Really dramatic and ott for nothing.

I'm not British, which might make a difference.
But, once she finished the conversation I'd point out to her in a nice way that they were in the wrong place. As for needing space to change, I'd simply make a sign to her while on the phone and ask please would she let me use the space as an actual gym user. And tell her she was sitting on my sock rather than pull it angrily.

Why did you feel any need to be passive aggressive, what were you trying to prove and to who? It would make more sense to me to just ask if you could move the bag because, well, it's just polite to do that instead of doing it yourself.

I feel your pain OP but I think pp are right and it doesn't really matter in the bigger scheme of things. I had similar at the gym the other day when a couple of parents were changing their wet and whiny DC after swimming lessons in the adult changing room. Family bit was not busy so they could have gone in there instead. I huffed and puffed a bit - if I wanted to be surrounded by whiny DC while getting changed I'd have brought my own - but eventually decided I was in a bit of a grump and should just leave them to it. I am one for religiously obeying the rules though and know it pushes my buttons when others take a more flexible approach to them!

also remember, she might have been told to use the room you were in.

when I was a teenager and there were smoking compartments on the train, some of the carriages had blown lightbulbs or no electricity or something. I was told which carriage to go into, I asked about smoking and the guard said just smoke in this one.
I proceeded to puff away, there was a Furious man who shouted at me saying This is Non Smoking. being a teenager, I said "I'm allowed", "What" he shouted. He was furious.
The morale of this story is, don't be furious. She might have been Allowed

Perhaps there is no mobile signal in the other changing room

I am struggling to think of another molehill that beats this one for overinflation

I'm sorry...what?

So - what I am getting from this is:

Ops bags are more important and deserving of bench space than the bags of another person using the facilities and

Ops sock is more deserving of bench space than another leisure centre user

Have I got that right?

You should have assumed they all have SN of some sort so forgiven all behaviours, while simultaneously chanting hatred of the Daily Mail and voicing support for Corbyn.

THEN you may be a true MNer.

See now if I walked into that changing room and found myself giving a tiny mouse sized fart about any of it

I would hope my inner Mumsnet would come flying out, slap the shit out of me with a wet water wing and throw me head first into the swimming pool, haven taken the sensible precaution of securing concrete blocks to my feet.

But I guess our inner Mumsnets are all different

I truly can't understand why any of this would have bothered you at all, it would not even register with me. In fact, I can't quite figure out what bothered you so much. I also can't figure out why, ifyou really did feel the need to say something, it would have to be pithy and passive aggressive.

WRT the sign though; maybe it wasn't displayed on the door when they entered, maybe she was vision impaired, maybe she couldn't read.

I really don't have a clue what you're talking about.
It gave me a headache half way through.

If ifs and buts were chocolate and nuts

We'd all have a happy Easter

Did the wet woman have a right go at you for moving her bag?

So you were particularly annoyed about a bag on the bench as you thought it belonged to German Guardian of Trespassing Swimsuit Child. Double misdemeanour - not only in wrong changing room but hoggingall the space wth a bag.

As German Guardian was on the phone you could not ask her politely to move it, so you moved it yourself but then realised it belonged to Wet Dry Sport Adult (who you accept was perfectly entitled to be there). So only a single misdemeanour on the part of Wet Dry Sport Adult and therefore less deserving of your wrath?

What did Wet Dry Sport Adult say to you about moving her bag? She was as unreasonable as German Guardian to have put it there, but did you feel shamed because you could have asked her to move it?

It seems that the correct course of action would have had 2 stages:

1. To say to WDSA "oh sorry, I though that belonged to her, but we're short of space in here so I just moved it" - at which point WDSA would presumably say "oops, sorry".

1. Once GG was off the phone, say to her "I'm not sure if you realise, but you can't change in here after swimming, there's a notice on the door. "

Either she'd say "gosh, sorry I had no idea, won't do it again" or she'd give a plausible explanation "other room was full so staff told me to come in here" or she'd get all defensive and tell you to fuck off in which case you'd have done the best you could and retained the moral high ground.

That's it - no need to over think, or make PA comments. Just polite human interaction. Or am I missing something?

That does sound a bit annoying OP! But only a bit and not worth thinking about any more
I get a tad irritated about changing room etiquette too. This is my fave: Went into empty changing room (very basic) in a workplace gym. Put my shoes under the bench and my clothes on a peg. Only a few other pegs were in use. When I finished my workout and came back to the changing room, someone else had put their clothes ON THE SAME PEG AS MINE. Literally on top of my clothes. wtf? There must have been 20 or 30 empty pegs! I swear I am not making this up!

i channel you Fatmomma and tell mners regularly to look for things to praise their dcc for not things to punish! I forget your wording -it was better than mine.

Crikey, all of that angst over a bag on changing room bench. I'd love to have your problems.