I’ve lately started using the gym. The rapture may be coming, but that’s not what I’m here to tell you.

This particular gym is part of our apartment complex and is reserved for resident use. While I’m generally friendly with neighbours (at least after having showered), my gym philosophy is more, “let’s ignore each other and get this over with;” we’ll all just keep our heads down, do our thing, and go home. As such, I expected a spirit of shared courtesy.

Turns out some people have no compunction about taking phone calls in this shared space. Personally, I love the break from blue screens and voice calls. Indeed, the gym requires concentration for achieving fitness safely; there’s a reason we sign a liability waver. So it’s remarkable to think that folks can cut a business deal or catch up on the latest gossip while counting reps and keeping proper form.

It shouldn’t surprise me, really. Western society has tracked increasingly insular since the advent of the Walkman in 1979; or rather, its portable headphones. The revolutionary device allowed, for the first time, a private listening experience while in public that simultaneously blocked out much of the actual public noise. You could be in your own world, in the middle of everything. As with any technology, costs emerge alongside the benefits, and manners seem to be the collateral in this case.

Look, things happen, and sometimes you have to take a call. But there are few situations I can think of that are such absolute steaming emergencies that you can’t wait an hour until you’re back at your desk. And in many of those cases, there is little you can do about it in the moment anyway. The inability to detach is its own problem, for another day.

But if you MUST take the call, or simply can’t resist the urge: STEP OUT OF THE ROOM.

Yes, it’s quite simple. Just leave the shared space for a bit. We have a fine lobby attached to the gym, replete with comfy chairs. You’re not being thrown to the wilds. You’re just being thoughtful of others – in that space, and frankly, to whomever on the other end is hearing the soundtrack of gym grunts and crashing iron.

Hardly a courtesy call

To wit. The first time this happened, I had a 20-minute row left in my program. A woman entered the gym and sat down with dumbbells, on the other side of the room. As she started lifting, she also started yakking. Incessantly. Loudly. Perhaps her reps were powered by talking? But my music couldn’t cancel it out, so I decided to be proactive. (I do not advocate for using deafening volumes to drown out others’ inconsideration).

She was facing the mirror, but didn’t notice me walk up behind her. I issued a friendly, “hello!” to which she looked at me, or rather, at my reflection. “I can hear you over my music and it’s hard to concentrate.” “Sorrrrrrry!” she said, in tone both flat and imbued with a thousand eye-rolls. She was definitely not sorry. She was still going, full throttle and full voice, when I left 20 minutes later.

The next time (literally my next time at the gym), a man took a call from the studio floor, behind a divider that separated him from the chest press I was using. It was distracting. So, I hopped off the machine and asked if he could take it outside. He acknowledged this and went out to the lobby. I thanked him when he re-entered.

Today, a third person. Seriously, is this how people are today? This fella was on the lat pull machine, which he left in a suspended state to take his call. Oblivious to his volume, he paced hither and thither, distracting with both his conversation and his anxious energy. I tried to catch his eye a few times as I continued cycling, to no avail. And so, I removed an earphone and called:

“Hey! Maybe you could take your call outside.”
“You have headphones!” he snarled, taking me aback.
“Yes, I can hear you over them.”
Some other throwing out of toys; the fact of confrontation (and the fury of his response) blanked the specifics from memory.
*deep breath*
“It’s not your living room; it’s a shared space.”

A shared space

Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher, wrote that “It’s courtesy and kindness that define a human being – and a man. That’s who possesses strength and nerves and guts, not the angry whiners” (Meditations). Gym friend #3 here reacted with hostility (the question of responding like “a man” seems self-evident; let’s not belabour it). While I think some of his anger was at being interrupted in the activity to which he felt entitled, I suspect the shame of being called out may have been worse. But, we choose our responses, after all; gym friend #2 found the courtesy to take it outside with some dignity.

Does courtesy, then, take strength of character? Marcus wasn’t the first to reflect on this. Some centuries prior,  Aristotle wrote of courtesy in his Nichomachean Ethics, as a virtue “between argumentative rudeness and obedient servility.” No one wants to be a doormat, and that is not what courtesy asks: One should stand on principle. But it doesn’t mean belligerence, or hostility, or whinging, either. It’s an assertive, centred balance (Aristotle did love his Middle Way). Even so, how do you know your principle isn’t an anathema to someone else’s? In other words, am I being archaic and unrealistic in my modern gym-going expectations?

I think not. The Golden Rule is one ballast for testing principles, imploring us to treat others as we wish to be treated. Yet, this is perhaps flawed by our tendency to assume that others do wish to be treated as we would, rather than taking a clue from the way they treat us. Perhaps hostile gym bro doesn’t mind other people’s conversations as the soundtrack to his workouts, and so this logic fails. Yet, I don’t imagine that others wanted to hear his call, nor certainly that their gym experience was enhanced by it; indeed, loss of focus by distraction can lead to injury. Is in a fair utilitarian call to make if one person is worsening the experience for, or endangering, others? Moreover, he could step into a comfortable lobby for his call; and, indeed, it’s common gym etiquette. So, the principle stands.

Society: is a thing!

Our increasing distance from the practice of sharing space, especially as we so easily escape into our private devices and amusements, risks the loss of a sense of courtesy and consideration. “I blame neoliberalism” remains my stock phrase. The late British Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher, whose ghost has much to answer for, stated that “there is no such thing as society,” but only individuals and families who should pull up their socks and not expect government help, how dare they! (My paraphrasing, obviously). And that spirit of individualizing life’s outcomes (which is simply wrong: here’s just one recent system-level intervention that reduces social cost while enhancing individual, and collective, outcomes), persists in various and toxic forms to this day.

“It’s all about me” isn’t likely how folks who exhibit such behaviours consciously think, but lack of self-awareness is one of the culprits. Much has been said about the amplifying effects of our increasingly virtual and correspondingly isolated lives. Placemaking, too, has evolved to sell space to the highest bidder (who need not be located or participating in said space). Community spaces give way to private rooms and gardens accessed only by residents who can afford entry (like this, or this). Even privately owned and managed community-oriented spaces (RIP The Railway Club, where music brought us together) are devalued in terms of ‘not having a product enough people want to buy’.  

As if buying stuff were the pinnacle of existing (I’m looking at you again, neoliberalism).

But shared spaces, community spaces, matter. They matter in terms of congregating, realizing shared values, forming friendship and loose connections, and of moral and practical support in life. But they also help to shape and socialize us. Relationships help us to understand whether we are being awesome or an asshole. They lead us to ideas and realizations we may not have come to alone. And certainly, your AI friend isn’t going to give you that honest feedback, or the nuanced and personal understanding that connecting in real life, in the real world, brings.

The inability to receive, or even access, that social and contextual feedback means you can’t course correct. And if you’re not hearing the feedback, chances are your behaviour trends toward the self-centred. When you’re self-centred, you can’t possibly be wrong! Which means it’s taken as a personal affront when someone finally gets through to you.

If we consider Marcus’s idea that kindness and courtesy, and not angry whining, are signs of strength, then I wonder if the practice of social grace, and of the parabola of feedback – reflecting and potentially modifying our behaviour –holding others to account, is actually a muscle we work not just to get along in society better, but to strengthen our inherent selves.

Character takes work in the real world

If social myopia and its concurrent self-centredness lead to a weaker sense of self, then it follows that one’s character will be correspondingly weak. Some of this is undoubtedly the result of isolation and loneliness, for want of relational awareness, confidence and skill. But it in turn risks being self-reinforcing: lashing out at someone reminding you to be courteous is a missed chance for flexing the relationship muscle and strengthening social bonds, quite aside from potential self-improvement.

“Maybe you could take that call outside,” is indeed about specific inconsiderate behaviour, but it is also an invitation to consider how you are being received in community. And despite the tech bros and other ultra-wealthy to decamp to their yachts or bunkers, the fact is, we are in this life together. Certainly, in our urban spaces and shared gyms, we are.

Yes, hell is other people, at least sometimes. But other people are also the only way that we receive meaningful feedback about ourselves and our own behaviours and affects in the world. And courtesy, it seems, is a good ballast for navigating the difference between the two.

For my part, I have zero interest in being the gym police. I’ve modified my routine to an earlier time when phones don’t seem to be prevalent. It’s been working well, for my sanity at least. Not sure how courtesy is getting on.

What do you think? Is it time to reclaim courtesy, and consideration of others? Is there a time you reflect on where you wish you had been more courteous? Or am I desperately old fashioned and out of touch?

Let me know in the comments!

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