A word about personal space

In the last 24 hours I've had 3 run-ins with people over personal space. In none of those incidents did I say anything because it's not against the rules or anything but just something of a societal norm that I think some are more sensitive to than others.

The first incident was last night in Safeway. I was standing in the express lane with my selections and a woman came and stood behind me with her basket. But her basket kept touching my lower back. It was very annoying and she was clearly in my personal space. I couldn't take a step forward or I would be in the next person's personal space and touching him with my own basket. So in a very passive aggressive way (LOL) I leaned back to hopefully signal her that her basket was touching me. However that did nothing and by the time I could have said something the person in front of me had moved up so I moved up too.

Second incident occured this morning at the gym. After my workout I went to shower in the open shower area. There are 6 shower heads and someone was using #6 so I started using #3. #6 finished and after a few seconds alone another woman came in and started using shower #2. I was very put off by that. There were 3 showers she could have used that were not right next to me (#'s 1, 5, and 6) and it seemed a huge invasion of privacy to be naked and have a naked stranger stand as close to me as possible. I finished showering as quickly as possible and got out of there ASAP.

Third and final incident was also at the gym. I was doing my hair/makeup before leaving the changerooms for the day and I left my gym bag on the bench in front of my locker. About one minute before I finished a couple of young girls (obviously university students) walked in, scooted my bag down the bench, and sat down. Now I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and assume they had a locker nearby. But they never opened a locker, they just sat there and talked. But I fail to understand the need to move someone's bag. I would NEVER move someone's bag that was on the bench because it's not mine. But these girls had no problem doing so. Note that I try to be aware of those around me and if they need bench space that is being taken up by my bag I will always move it out of the way.... but again, it's my bag and I'll be the one to move it.

So this is a little bit of a rant and really not much can be done to improve these situations because no one is really doing anything bad or wrong.... they are just making me uncomfortable with their obliviousness to personal space. A little more awareness from some people would go a long way to making this world a better place :)