I'm torn on this. When I used to goto the gym it was a smaller one in town that was privately owned.

It used to drive me nuts when someone would plant their stuff down on a piece of equipment and then just leave it there. I had to get the manager quite a few times to remove it, but he would always ask to wait a few minutes to see if the person just ran to the bathroom.

A couple of times he would remove the stuff and the person would show up 10 minutes later yelling at me.

Sometimes the stuff would be there 20-30 minutes.

On the other hand I understand that if you finally get that piece of equipment and have to run to use the bathroom its tough to give it up.

I guess it would have to come down to whatever the gyms rules are.