Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Restaurants Got So Loud

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 319 posts

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#151

Post by jimison »

fredley wrote: post #57
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the mechanism is supposed to be that you talk less, which in turn means you drink more. Places serving food have piped music so you finish your meal more quickly so they sell more covers; you're unlikely to sit around chatting afterwards with music playing. They also clear plates at the earliest chance providing an enhanced social pressure to finish.

My partner and I are 'mystery shoppers' for restaurants. We have our bill covered plus a bit extra on top (but have to fill out hefty, detailed questionnaires afterwards). One of the things there's always a whole section on is timing: every single interaction has a time-window in which it must occur. You must be greeted within (t1), you must be seated within (t2). Plates must be cleared within (t3), you must have a '…

How do you covertly take notes in a restaurant... on your phone?

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#152

Post by michaelcampbell »

kevincennis wrote: post #132
whatshisface wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noise is noise, and if you cancel it out it's gone. Sound waves obey the superposition principle, which means that if I take 1 psi and superimpose -1 psi, I get 1-1=0 psi.

That's true, of course. But it's much harder to actively cancel higher frequencies. This is why noise cancelling works brilliantly on an airplane (relatively low frequency background noise) but it does almost nothing to filter out the sounds of conversations around you.

Yes, but the question was essentially, "does the sound it cancels out and you don't hear still hurt you". If you still hear it, you're answering something else.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#153

Post by tass »

JohnBooty wrote: post #68
Alreadyobsolete wrote: post #2

It's worth mentioning that the noise levels of restaurants and public spaces can also be inaccessible to those who hearing impairments and those who may be sensitive to overstimulating audio input. I can personally attest to being in busy restaurants in which my grandmother simply cannot have a full conversation with me since there's so much surrounding noise.

Yeah, my hearing's not the best and I really just cannot hear what people are saying half of the time. It's like... everybody's struggling to hear each other, but I really cannot hear. I just can't do those kinds of spaces, at least not if I want to have a conversation.

Visit an audiologist for a test. I recently had a hearing test for the reason you described and was told there were no problems.

I started to ask people if they could actually hear or understand while with them at a loud place and many told me they couldn’t - they were mostly pretending to understand after eventually giving up.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#154

Post by naravara »

keiferski wrote: post #17
willvarfar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big fan of the making-libraries-loud (loud as in happy) movement, but I'm usually bringing my kids to browse the shelves and pick books to bring home, not to actually spend time there reading them. In my experience kids find quiet libraries intimidating. (Which is at odds with my own preferences, I should add, but I prioritize the kids.) What the libraries need is a quiet reading room, rather like the trains ha…

Libraries are not playgrounds. This idea that the primary functional purpose of an important space should be some kind of afterthought is rather depressing, but I guess is follows from the entertainment-centric culture we live in. The purpose of a library is to read, not to entertain your kids.

>The purpose of a library is to read, not to entertain your kids.

Libraries are just repositories for literary or artistic works. They have a secondary function of acting as a "third space" or community center. Being able to find places to read is part of that, but there is no reason you should expect them to be tranquil zen gardens at all times. Most people should be able to tune out the general background noise of kids playing or whatever. It's really just loud conversations that cause problems.

Hell, most public libraries in my town are basically just de facto homeless shelters.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#155

Post by switch007 »

jlokier wrote: post #108

There's an ice cream and bagel place in town. In the late evening it's consistently packed with people on their laptops or reading books. One day I noticed the music was much louder than usual, and asked the staff to turn it down. I figured it was a mistake because it was normally much quieter. They told me this was the new company policy. To set the music uncomfortably loud to make people leave, after finishing thei…

Pret is really obviously doing the loud music thing too (and has for a couple of years at least). They lost my patronage. Not that they care: I think they had very good financials before their sale to Krispy Kreme.

[aside rant] We have a very strange cafe culture in the UK compared to continental Europe: too many chains, too expensive, poor quality, takeaway coffee. The latest insult is chains not wanting to wash cups, so now we have to bring in re-usable cups. At least they're offering discounts, for now.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#156

Post by acct1771 »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #146
apacheCamel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is a very negative way to view the situation. Libraries should totally be "fun". It should be "fun" to go and find a book that you enjoy or just spend time reading in an area dedicated to the love of books. It shouldn't be a place to just drop the kids off and leave, but it should be a place kids want to go. Reading can be fun and I almost feel like it is a "trendy thing" of my generation (Millennial…

Where have you seen the reading hate trend?

Go around and ask any people, younger people the better, what the last three books they've read are.

Watch them struggle.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#158

Post by checkyoursudo »

ben509 wrote: post #111
briandear wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the primary purpose of a library is to be a repository of books, not a reading room. Just like the primary purpose of a bookstore is to sell books, a library is a place to check out books. Besides libraries should change! Who the heck goes to a library to look at encyclopedias to write papers anymore? If you are doing academic research, go to an academic library — a place where you’ll find few kids. But a co…

> That should be a place where everyone is welcome and excited about books... But to get excited about a book you have to be immersed in it, and that requires reading it and really focusing on the subject matter. If people are talking all the time, they're not reading books, and others aren't able to enjoy their books. > ... not a coworking space for old curmudgeons. Old curmudgeons aren't part of "everyone"?

Is the set of people who can only enjoy, or even read, books in silence pretty large? There is certainly a threshold of noise where I lose reading comprehension, but it's quite loud.

Do other people need silence, like absolute silence, to read?

Before I worked for myself, I never worked in any office that remotely came near to silence. Most were roughly the equivalent of moderately loud cafes, at least.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#160

Post by naravara »

adwhit wrote: post #14
keiferski wrote: post #7

I'd love to read an analysis of how the world in general has gotten so loud. Even a few hundred years ago, the centers of massive cities like Paris, Rome, or Istanbul must have been significantly quieter, being that cars, horns, trains, speakers, boomboxes, industrial plants, airplanes and everything else that creates noise pollution didn't exist.

Cars must surely be the main cause. There is an interesting phenomenon known as "shifting baseline syndrome" where we tend to compare our environment to what we recall as a child and inevitably conclude that is has gotten nosier/busier/more polluted, not realizing that environment of our childhoods were already heavily degraded. The world in which we evolved would have been almost silent, almost all of the time, apar…

Cars, industrial equipment, and things like HVAC systems all play a big role.

Racism was definitely the primary motivator of White flight for the cities, but I also wonder to what extent people just wanted to get away from industrial noise pollution, which surely must have been at a peak during that era.

Post reply on HN