u/mantislover10

I am a 16 year old boy, and today I went to the gym at night instead of my usual afternoon time. Everything was fine until about 10 minutes in when a man in his 40s, who I’d never seen before, came in. He said hi to me, and I said hi back as usual. The gym wasn’t crowded, there were only 2–3 other people there.

After that, I noticed he kept looking at me and randomly smiling, whether I was looking at him or not. It was a pull day for me and a leg day for him, but he always seemed to choose the leg machines closest to where I was. I ignored it at first.

When I finished my workout, I went to the ab crunch machine. There’s a cable row machine directly facing it. He came to that area at the same time as me and sat behind me for a while. Then he moved to the cable row machine and started using it sideways, which would not have been weird if he wasn’t doing leg exercises the whole time, then suddenly back.
I looked up, and he had turned his head toward me with a really creepy smile. That was when I decided to leave because I felt uncomfortable.

About 30 seconds later, he came into the locker room, even though I was the only one there. He sat directly in front of me and just watched while I changed. He kept smiling the whole time. I only changed my pants because I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.

I don’t know if I’m overthinking it, but I’m still really creeped out by him. I’m a conventionally attractive male, and he was very skinny (which is not a problem at all) with an eerie looking face. That smile is still burned into my mind… it didn’t seem friendly at all, it looked like he had some intentions behind it. I’m not sure if I should tell the receptionist or if I’m just being dramatic.