The following was written on a Monday when there was no coffee in the kitchen at my place of employment. So while it may seem harsh to some, in this context hopefully everyone acknowledges I deserve a Nobel Prize for restraint.

Directly in front of my favorite elliptical machine at the gym, about fifteen yards away, is a row of machines dedicated entirely to abdominal exercises. To my left, about ten yards away, is a machine called “The Butt Buster.” I’m sure the machine has a more technical name, but why use it when you have a sophisticated, alliteration-filled name like Butt Buster?

Anyway, there are four or five people at my gym who follow the same routine whenever I see them. They’ll come to the gym and go straight to one of the ab machines (or the Butt Buster). They’ll use the machine for five or ten minutes. And then they will leave. They won’t do any cardio. They won’t use any of the other 184 or so machines in the gym. They just do their 5-to-10 minutes workout on the abs or gluts, and off they go.

The problem with this, in case it isn’t obvious to everyone, is that you can’t “spot reduce.” You can’t be 30 pounds overweight, do ab exercises (and only ab exercises) a couple times a week, and magically obtain a washboard stomach. It just doesn’t happen. Until you drop those 30 excess pounds, it doesn’t matter what kind of muscles you have hidden underneath.

Now, I used to feel sorry for these people. “They just don’t know any better,” I would think to myself as I tried, sometimes seemingly in vain, to get my own self into shape. But then I tried looking at it from their perspective. And once I did that I realized I shouldn’t feel sorry for them.

I should heckle them.

Let’s assume none of the people who do this at the gym have been told it’s an exercise, so to speak, in futility. Put yourself in their shoes. You walk into a gym and see dozens of people of all shapes and sizes. Some are already fit. Some are overweight. Some members from both groups are just standing around talking instead of exercising, but those that are exercising are all working up a sweat. You see men and women lifting weights. You see men and women jogging, riding bikes and being awesome on ellipticals. They all appear to really mean business.

If you were in one of these person’s shoes, and you saw all these people working their tails off, wouldn’t you, at some point, question your “do ab exercises for five minutes and then go home” workout routine? Wouldn’t you think, “hey, maybe they know something I don’t?”

The people who do this are the same people who go into a bank, see several long lines with people already waiting, and walk right up to the teller that doesn’t have a line. Rather than assume the other twenty bank customers might know something he does not, this individual assumes they must not have noticed this other teller. The teller who, by the way, has a giant “Deposits Only” sign directly overhead.

Too many people in our society look for shortcuts. They always want the path of least resistance. The expression “nothing in this world worth having comes easy” is lost on them.

Rather than work hard and save, they buy lottery tickets.

Rather than actually pay their dues, they try to get a reality television show by pretending their ridiculously named son is inside a hot air balloon.

And rather than gain valuable life and political experience by serving in the Senate for a decade, they immediately run for president under the promise of “change” and…

Actually, that’s a bad example. And sadly, just like the people who do win the lottery each week, it’s the exception that validates the rest and gives them hope.

Too bad all the hope in the world won’t give them that six pack they’re after.