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How Restaurants Got So Loud

theatlantic.com

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Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#281

Post by 4ad »

jimison wrote: post #150
mnw21cam wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally hate it when a waiter comes up, interrupts my meal, and asks if everything is OK with my food. Are you seriously saying restaurants are being encouraged to do this?

My father believed that truly great restaurants don't do this, because they KNOW their food is perfect. Practically speaking, though, dpeck is right... shortly after the food is dropped, the waiter should confirm the meal is to the customer's expectations. This is also the chance for customers to ask for condiments, get a replacement fork for the one they dropped, etc. Nothing worse than sitting in front of a hot mea…

If I need something, I'll ask for it. When I visit the US there is nothing more annoying to me than waiters interrupting my meal.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#282

Post by throwaway675309 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #248
clairity wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even if you don't relate, other people have different desires and motivations and it's worth trying to understand that (for social harmony at the very least). you seem to want quiet and solitude in public places, but that's just not the norm. rather than distracting, i find cafes ideal places to work, as they have the right amount of low-recognition distraction (unlike home, where things are too quiet and my bed is s…

>dogs are bundles of joy and love, and make (most) people happy. I'm at the point where I would pay extra for businesses and facilities that didn't allow animals. The service animal law is also being used fraudulently by so many people, I just assume it unless I can see the person is blind.

I'd prefer the opposite, businesses that don't allow children. Why can't every place be a bar and/or strip joint?

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#283

Post by throwaway675309 »

jtreminio wrote: post #145
bluGill wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also means I can't understand my wife when she speaks. It is bad enough at home with my kids yelling at the top of their lungs (any ideas on how to break them of this?), when we go out it is impossible.

Use a water spray bottle - No one, including [children], like to be squirted with water, so you can try a quick spritz at your [child] if they are somewhere or doing something they shouldn't be.

I don't know, that sounds like a lot of work. I think a well-calibrated shock collar would suffice and would sell better in drought-prone areas.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#284

Post by wenc »

lfx wrote: post #212
pcarolan wrote: post #61

I work remotely and find myself working from a lot of Starbucks. The music level seems consistent no matter where you go to the point where it feels like a policy. It is just loud enough that you can't drown it out with a good set of headphones or take a conference call without annoying the rest of the group. It seems too consistent to be unintentional. Conversely, there's a new coffee shop in Chicago that is designe…

This sounds like an awesome place! Do you have pay extra for anything? I would happily agree to pay like 10$ for some time just to run away when I have to work. Additional extra points would be if they would offer some external monitors as well. This was my dream for a while now.

> offer some external monitors as well

IIRC even more expensive co-working spaces like WeWork don't offer that (some folks bring their own monitors). Maybe this could be a new business idea? Might be hard to break even at $10 though, not sure.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#285

Post by clairity »

decebalus1 wrote: post #269
clairity wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so do children. keeping dogs away from human eating areas reduces your chances of disease by a negligible amount. you would be much better off requiring everyone to wash their hands and/or disinfect their phones upon entering.

> keeping dogs away from human eating areas reduces your chances of disease by a negligible amount. Citation needed

zoonotic transmission (transmission between species) is not seen as serious enough by the CDC to even track it. but for comparative purposes, there are 1-2 deaths from rabies per year in the US (and infection is as likely from rodents as anything). so the burden of proof is on the dog cynics.

in any case, the primary transmission concerns are poop and mucus membrane contact. so again, the main thing you need to do is wash your hands with soap (and don't play with poop or make out with the dog).

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#286

Post by mcv »

naravara wrote: post #164
mcv wrote: post #96

There's a really nice restaurant in our neighbourhood, with amazing food, and you need to reserve a couple days in advance. But whenever we go there, it's ridiculously noisy. They went for a bare stone industrial look, and that clearly doesn't dampen any sound, so you end up hearing everybody in the restaurant all at once. But we are also to blame; when we bought our house, we removed some walls to let more light in,…

>We've got a neighbour who works in a sound studio and advised us on some sound absorbing panels, but they don't really fit in our interior Can't you just mount them on a wall or ceiling? Otherwise you can do lots of good by just putting down rugs or hanging woven artwork. Plants work too

We could, but we're not sure where. No matter where we put them, they would ruin the lines of the room.

My wife hates rugs. We have some plants, but that's clearly not enough.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#287

Post by aembleton »

yellowapple wrote: post #255
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…

Sounds like there'd be a good market for places that charge you for the time you spend in them rather than for the merchandise. Maybe just a bunch of desks and someone walking around with coffee/tea and snacks (free or cheap). Charge, say, $10/hour.

Ziferblat [1] does this for £4.80 an hour, with a four hour cap so you never pay more than £19.20 per day.

I've not found the environment very conducive to getting much work done though. It's too noisy and there aren't enough desks. I've had more success with the Department of Coffee and Social Affairs [2] which charges in the same way as a coffee shop but feels more like a co-working space.

1. https://www.ziferblat.co.uk/

2. https://www.departmentofcoffee.com/

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#288

Post by aembleton »

mattmanser wrote: post #44
dingaling wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK my partner and I have started going to Wetherspoons pubs. They're reviled in middle-class circles as a cheap, chavvy chain that buys-out traditional pubs but they're clean, friendly and QUIET.

Ugh, they're usually not clean or friendly, the staff are also usually incompetent and slow. I have been in them a lot over the years for various reasons and my best description of weatherspoons would be a bit shit. That they don't buy a music license is a cost saving measure. They're ok when they first open, but after a year or two get a bit of a run down feeling. I also walk past one of my local ones occasionally a…

That's a shame, I find the majority of them vary between OK and Excellent. The only ones I consider shit are Manchester Piccadilly, Monument in London, one in Carlisle and another in Hull.

There are also some really excellent ones such as one I found near the south downs. Can't exactly remember where but it had two roaring log fires in it. Great Malvern one is nearly as good.

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#289

Post by brokenmachine »

willvarfar wrote: post #15
tapland wrote: post #6

Locally (Stockholm, Sweden) the head of the city libraries has made a statement of battling the 'quietness norm' in libraries. Most of them now have playgrounds, one in Kista (where I happened to live at the time) won awards for best library in the world and in Sweden the same year. It was completely unusable for what me and my fiance usually do at the library. The study rooms had the ventilation system for the build…

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…

>I'm a big fan of the making-libraries-loud (loud as in happy) movement, but I'm usually bringing my kids

This is so different to me, it's ridiculous. Loud is not happy. Loud is not sad. Loud is just loud. I'm not going to a loud library. If your kids can't be quiet, then keep them out please.

Probably there should be libraries for children that are louder, but that's a different conversation.

When I go on bushwalks there are teenagers with their damned bluetooth speakers. Every business blares their horrible music at you to get you out of there faster. Workplaces want insanely distracting open-plan offices.

Can we not have one quiet place?

Re: How Restaurants Got So Loud

#290

Post by xbmcuser »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #275
NotAnEconomist wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never got this working from a coffee shop thing. This is an old tradition. Cafes, bars, tea houses, etc have served as social hubs and placed to read or work on documents (now computers) for literally thousands of years, everywhere on the planet. There's simply a social need for a space like that, because it's a more efficient usage of space to have people work on a revolving basis in a shared space than everyone…

Actually the thing which kills this model nowadays is the obscene cost of real estate and the rentier class. Coffee shops simply can't be profitable as workspaces any more. You still can see coffee spots as social places in developing countries.

But more people need these work spaces as they can't work in the closet like apartments they are sharing with 2-3 other people. You are correct in saying it's because cost of real estate
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