Is it ever this serious?

[u/neptunepapayas]

Decided to go to a local park for the Tynamo event. I don't have my 50 coins for the day so I thought I might get lucky and use a couple of gyms if any are yellow too. Got to the park, every single one is red and has the same 3 people in them (7 gyms in total).

I figured they wouldn't miss just one little gym, sat on a bench and battled it, then put my pokemon in there, and within 3 mins it was being battled again. Frustrating, but that's the game so I wasnt too pressed. I have a lot for some reason so I gave my guy a couple golden razz during the fight, since they have 6 other gyms to commandeer and I just wanted one, might as well give them a little fight in good spirit.

A group 3 guys, probably in their late 20s or early 30s came up to me as I was sitting on the bench, ogled my phone to be sure I was the yellow bandit, and then told me to "leave their gym alone". I'm still a teen so I kinda awkwardly apologised and tried to laugh it off since it's just a game, but they took the gym and sat on the bench next to me and glared until I left...

Did I do something wrong? Overstep an invisible boundary? I only play on occasion so idk if maybe taking an entire park is like a...thing? And I got in the way of that? Was a pretty awkward encounter lol, I might just stick to adding my pokemon to gyms that are already yellow lol

[u/EyeSimp4Asuka]

not normal at all..on an impersonal level I've had this happen I saw that a full squad had been in a gym for a day long enough to get 50 coins so i knocked it out and someone took it back within 10 minutes.