To be annoyed that my gym only has open mixed sex showers

[Hothothothothotdog]

My local council gym with a swimming pool only has open showers in the mixed-sex swimming pool. This means I have to rise off, dress, then go home and shower which just seems absolutely ridiculous to me.

AIBU to be fuming about it? It means an early morning swim is off the cards as I’ve not got time for that faff (or ever tbh!).

I think this is pretty standard at public pools. YABU to be ‘fuming’.

You can wash your hair, presumably? What do you need to wash that can’t be washed? Isn’t a rinse enough to go to work?

Strangely id be more worried about being unable to shower thoroughly before getting in the pool, than washing after.

Is it your first time in a council leisure centre? This is what baffles me about the uproar over unisex toilets when council gyms/pools have always had mixed changing rooms and nobody bats an eyelid.

All of the council run pools around me have communal showers. No-one is ever naked so it's just a rinse off with swimsuits on. People do wash their hair though.

If I let it bother me I'd never be able to swim

It’s absolutely standard. To be honest ( I am sixty ), I don’t remember it ever being different other than ladies only pools/sessions. There are sometimes single stalls in the health suite area.

I swim regularly, and manage a fairly good shower with my costume on, it should be possible.

Do they have separate changing rooms for the gym? My council pool has mixed in the pool area but through in the gym it’s separate changing rooms with individual shower cubicles in each. Just a thought as if you didn’t use the gym and only the pool in my one you’d have no idea the big changing rooms existed

Go in to the ladies and take a shower there

Yep. My council gym has a swimming pool and it’s mixed showers that are open to the side of the pool. Everyone just washes with swimwear still on, some people wash hair. I’ve never thought anything of it tbh!

Clearly I’ve been going to different pools to everyone else. I’ve used the pools in a number of different towns and counties and none have had mixed sex changing or showers.

Pool near where we used to live had open showers but also male and female showers separately.

Can you not shower with your costume on and just reach under it to get soap on your torso? You’ve just been in a public space in your costume around dozens of other people of both sexes in their costumes, standing under the shower next to them whilst you rinse off and wash your hair can’t be so different. Pool showers have pretty much always been communal and mixed at many pools.

No they didn't its only become a thing in the last decade or so.

Have they just changed the set up?

Exactly

and I reckon the OP’s one will also have it

I’d say that’s pretty standard. Showering with your costume on is an option. That what most people do where I swim.

You should be clean before you enter the pool, so a rinse shower and a hairwash is all you should need. Personally I have never experienced a council pool that didn’t have open showers and a changing village.

Ours is mixed changing and mixed open showers but does have a couple of ‘cubicles’ for showers. They just have a curtain across though so I wouldn’t be stripping off! I’d just shower properly at home, wash my hair if I needed to or else I would just rinse off and shower when I got back. I don’t really enjoy having showers in public places anyway, regardless of cubicles or single sex changing.

All the council run pools near me have open showers and then additional showers in private cubicles.

Fair enough I’ve only ever been swimming where there has been a separate women’s changing room with showers.
i know I could wash my hair/give my body a rinse but does no one feel gross all day not been able to properly wash the chlorine off your bits and pits?

There is a separate ladies changing room which could have a shower but you’d have to walk through all the communal lobby area wet with a swimming costume on so not sure that would work?

Look around for a family change room or a room for wheelchairs.

Somewhere in the complex there will be a single doored shower.

Unless OP is a wheelchair user/disabled, why would you advise OP looks for an accessible changing room?

My 12yr old daughter had a man put a phone under her door in a mixed sex changing room..

Women need separate places for safety

I have ? but I'm 67 and didn't encounter this "changing village" thing until I changed gyms and found their pool had this set up.

Previously, all pools I went to had entirely separate women's and men's changing rooms. And we know these still exist because we've had any number of threads on Mumsnet about mothers taking their male children into the women's changing room at the pool.

It's definitely not always been the case. I have frequented several pools in my time and most have had showers within a single sex changing room - often open, not necessarily in cubicles, but you could shower naked if you wanted to. Our local pool now though is as OP describes.

However after being in a pool and having the chance to rinse off and wash my hair, I would consider myself clean enough to go to work.

Same at my local leisure centre, has been for the two decades I’ve lived here. Not sure why people have an issue with it all of a sudden.