Not quite so weird. I must admit that in my brief observations of martial arts schools here, there was some spying going on. Mostly friendly observation. Some guy from the muythai school would observe the tae kwon dos, the tae kwon dos would see what the shotokan kids were up to. Usually its pretty harmless, but one of our teachers said a taekwon do student from another school enrolled just to pick fights in the parking lot after class and prove his school better.

WHICH IS SO AGAINST MARTIAL ARTS TEACHING. Bullying, fights, posturing and bragging-- so beneath traditional schools. But that's probably getting waaay off topic.