Took my DS (5) to his swimming lesson yesterday. It starts at a particular time so can't wait around and being the holidays it was busy.
I have twins just under 1 in a double buggy and can't take them out there as the floor is wet, hard slippy and their clothes would get soaked and they'd hurt themselves if I did. DS still needs a little help to get dressed so we need to be together in a space big enough for the double buggy. I use whatever is available.
Normally we go in the ladies communal but the narrow corridor leading to it is not accessible if another pram is left there or the lockers on it are busy, both of which happened yesterday so that was out and all the large family cubicles were in use except one.
In the only empty one there were two backpacks left. Now, the swimming pool has ample lockers and plenty were free and it is not the done thing normally to leave items in rooms during your swim. It also worried me slightly re security of unattended bags, so I lifted them slightly to see if potentially heavy enough to be dangerous and clearly all they each had in them was a towel.
So now I'm a bit pissed off because clearly someone has 'bagsied' the changing room and buggered off for their swim. So I decided I would use the changing room anyway because I thought it was unfair and rude to take one of a limited number of large changing rooms out of action for the entire length of your swim. It's also difficult for me to wait for a cubicle because the buggy blocks access routes somewhat and causes a bottleneck for other people. So we went in and started getting changed. I left the door ever so slightly ajar so if the person arrived they could see their bags were there untouched.
We were almost finished when suddenly a woman turns up and asks for the bags. I handed them to her and apologised saying we needed to use that changing room and indicated the double buggy. She was really arsey about it and snapped 'So do I, large family' then started stomping about getting her kids ready clearly pissed off I had gone in there.
She had 5 kids with her. Most of them were old enough to dress themselves apart from one who was about 6/7 so could possibly have needed a hand. She hadn't been in the pool either, so apparently they could swim unsupervised but not dress. And obviously because she hadn't been in the pool they had no need to leave the bags unattended.
We were out probably about a minute later and she was making a big show that she had a couple of kids cramped in two changing rooms and was having to go between them and towel their hair and was grumbling and huffing.
WIBU? Is it okay to bagsy changing rooms at busy times if you think you have a need? Should I have left the cubicle empty?