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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/rumade on 2023-09-21 14:16:13.

I (33F) recently took up lane swimming at my local pool. When you book to swim, you have to pick a lane, which helps them manage capacity. I always go for medium- I’m not a superstar swimmer by any measure, but I’m there to improve and most of the time I’m matching the speed of others in the lane. I swim during the day and the slow lane often has much older people in it. If someone is swimming faster, it motivates me to push myself harder. I keep track of how long it takes me to swim 1km and I’m trying to improve that time every session. Last time it was 28:18.

This session especially I wanted to see what my true time was, as I’d done some weightlifting beforehand and wanted to see how that would affect it.

Today I booked my slot for 11am, and when I got there, there was a couple already in the lane. It was pretty quiet today tbh, with only 1 person in the slow and fast lanes, so I can understand why they took that lane. But when I started swimming, I quickly realised they should really be in the slow lane instead. For starters, they weren’t strong swimmers- I kept seeing them put their feet down to the bottom of the pool and walk for a bit and they rested regularly at either end of the pool.

At first I tried pausing to space out our swimming, but I was finding it really frustrating. Moving across to the fast lane was not an option because the guy in there was really hauling ass. Eventually I just started pushing myself, and if the couple were in the way, I would overtake them. Towards the end they were resting more and more at the shallow end and talking and they looked uncomfortable before they left.

Here’s why I might be an asshole: at one point, before I said “fuck it” and started overtaking them, I was swimming behind the guy at my normal pace and he started walking along the bottom. I end up kinda putting my hands in the air in a “come on ref!” style while looking at the lifeguard and imploring her to tell the couple to move lanes. I feel like that was unnecessary.

I also never just clearly said to them “would you mind moving into the slow lane?”. They were speaking to each other in a non-English language (I think they were Filipino), so there’s also a chance that they don’t know the swimming culture here. And at the end of the day, it’s just swimming, and it’s not really fair for me to make someone uncomfortable. We all paid the same and we’re all there to swim.