LANSING, Mich. — After wrapping up a set of press exercises, local gym-goer Dan Chambers set to work wiping away the sweat and general body residue he’d left behind on the equipment until nothing was remaining of the machine at all, confirmed sources.
“It’s just the polite thing to do. You get your workout in, then, before someone else has to climb onto the seated row machine and feel your nasty sweat on their body, you just wipe the thing down until it’s all gone,” said Chambers, whose workout regimen has completely bankrupted a number of gyms in the area. “Start with the bench—wiping that completely away with a gym towel’s gonna take 10, 15 days of uninterrupted back-and-forth wiping, which the next user will very much appreciate. Then, move onto the back rest—now, those things generally aren’t just foam anymore, they’re often a molded plastic beneath a leather pad. To wipe them until they’re nothing at all, well, you’re gonna have to put your life on hold for a beat, but the future user will thank you for your effort when there’s a clean pile of equipment particulate for them to try to use.”
Other clients at Chambers’ gym, while appreciative of his sentiment, aren’t too pleased to have him destroying the equipment they’d also like to use.
“There’s considerate, and then there’s what Dan Chambers is doing,” explained Carolina Ramirez, another gym-goer. “Yes, your nasty post-workout body residue should be wiped off of the machine when you’re done, that’s a no-brainer. But if you’re wiping until you’ve eroded a bench press, you’ve gone too far.”
Cleaning equipment when you’ve finished with it is a long-established gym standard, but the extremes Chambers go to are unlike any even Shannon Chi, who owns the gym he works out at, has ever seen.
“This gym runs on two things: membership fees and the culture. Now, unfortunately, some members take that culture—which, at its best, is professional, if a little competitive—it’s a gym, people are working their adrenaline—too far,” explained Chi. “Dan has now reduced a chest press, two lateral raises, and a leg extension to nothing but a mound of metal shavings and leather dust. We’re temporarily closing until we can replace everything he’s wiped into oblivion.”
At press time, Chambers was seen taking a floor buffer to a palm print he’d left on the gym door when entered to workout.
