Another thing to consider is a lot of beginners are afraid to ask others for a spot or help because they are embarassed or too shy, especially to ask a big muscular guy for help.
I am in 100% agreement with this.
I was a shy kid that was always smaller than average, I remember being scared to even go to the gym because I thought it was going to be intimidating.
Fast forward to age 19, I had just moved to Hawaii and almost felt like that all over again. I trained at a gym that had some really hard core looking clientele. Locals don't always like people from the mainland, so I already felt awkward about that. The guys at the gym were jacked, heavily tattooed (on the neck and hands, some even on the face). They looked hard core. I remember one guy in particular had a couple gold teeth.
So I'm the only guy there who is white, didn't live in that little town his whole life, wasn't jacked, and and wasn't familiar with the gym. I was timid as hell.
I warmed up a few sets on incline, and began a rest paused set (was doing DC at the time, this was when 'cycles for pennies' was first posted).
There were no safety pins or smith or anything like that, I was just on the incline and the only place for the weights to go was on the rack or on my body.
My first two parts of the RP set went fine, and I was taking my breaths for the last part of the RP. I took the bar off the rack when my time was up, and got a couple reps out. I usually know when I have 1 rep left, but when I did what I thought was going to be my 2nd to last rep, I just completely failed at the bottom and couldn't budge a millimeter. I could see myself in the mirror looking like a red blowfish and the weight began teetering like I was going to dump it.
The guy with the gold teeth covered in tats ran over, jumped over some equipment and helped me rack it at the last moment. He introduced himself, shook my hand, and told me if I ever needed a spot to just ask him or one of 'the guys' and pointed to the small group across the room. I couldn't believe how polite he was, I had really passed judgement on these guys before getting to know them.
I felt really welcome there after that and enjoyed training there until I moved to another island.